The Wild Goose Lake (Nanfang chezhan de juhui)

 A series of escalating petty rivalries within a motorbike-stealing cartel result in Zhou Zenong (Hu Ge) shooting a cop to death. The police mobilize en masse and track him down to Wild Goose Lake, a remote lakeside community where crime runs rampant.

 When the police offer 300000 yuan to anyone who turns Zhou in, he hatches a plan with a couple of close associates to be "handed in" for the reward money - he's got no illusions that the police (which the movie frames in parallel with the criminals several times) will let him live, so he might as well leave his estranged wife some money after he's gone. But because everyone involved has a criminal record, they have to enlist the help of Liu Aiai (Gwei Lun-mei), a 'bathing beauty' - a sex worker who makes a living from lakeside tourists to act as the informant.

 Meanwhile, the asshole who stirred the shit that got Zhou into the whole sorry mess is still around, with eyes on the reward as well. As for everyone else, that amount of money might give people ideas... maybe shift some loyalties.

 The plot is loose, even a little disjointed, and it leaves a lot open for the viewer to interpret. Writer/director Diao Yinan doesn't really neglect the twisty, pulpy plot, nor the expected lurid action. But his attention wanders easily, and the meticulously composed scenes often follow its characters while they go on with their lives without doing anything that might impact the story - if it wasn't so carefully crafted, it'd look heavily improvised.

 It's wryly funny as well - there aren't any real jokes in the script, but Yinan has a real appreciation for the ridiculous. The most over the top example is an unorthodox (and very bloody) use Zhou finds for an umbrella, but there are a few minor sight gags, humorous (at least to me) abrupt cuts and surreal tableaus. Elsewhere the script bogs down (in an enjoyable way) to show, say, some of the finer points of motorcycle stealing (in a scene that reminded me, not for the last time in the movie, of Emily the Criminal), or an improvised disco night where the dancers, for lack of a light-up floor, wear light-up shoes.

 The film is structured as a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards as the various characters and the police circle around each other warily. There's next to no exposition, and none of the main characters are very expressive; You're expected to keep up with all the various factions (or not).

 This complexity does give the film a jittery, paranoid vibe. The suspense tips over into violence several times over; Short bursts only (don't expect complicated choreographies or extended shootouts), but what's there is enjoyable and doesn't shy away from getting a little silly.
 More than anything else, it's an exercise in mood-setting, with almost every languid, morose scene dripping with neo-noir atmosphere (cinematographer: Dong Jinsong).

 I'm not that convinced of its substance, but with this much style, it's a moot point. It requires some patience, but I liked it a lot.

Bad City

  Kaiko City is... Bad City.
 It's the sort of place where Gojo, a top-level Yakuza (played by Lily Franky) can shrug off a bunch of charges (with the help of the prosecutor!) and then immediately announce a candidacy for mayor. His plan? To use an urban renewal project as cover to build a few casinos. He needs the Korean mafia at his side to do that, so there's a bloody coup brewing as his second in command (Yoshiyuki Yamaguchi) tries to take over with the help of a silent knife-wielding psycho (Tak Sakaguchi, well utilized).

 There's so much corruption no one can do anything against this madman. So one of the few clean prosecution officers in the city goes and does what you do in those situations: put together a crack, off-the-record task force, duh. These policemen and -woman (Hideto Katsuya, Masanori Mimoto and Akane Sakanoue) all come from the serious crimes unit, and their old boss is taken out of jail to lead them (Hitoshi Ozawa).
 The plot is pretty straightforward, but you wouldn't know that from watching the movie for a while; The storytelling is muddled, throwing a lot of names and complications into the mix without a lot of explanation. The film's a throwback to Japanese '80s VoD police thrillers, but since I haven't seen a lot of those what this reminded me most of is the more recent The Roundup films.

The glamour shot.

 Luckily all the crime means that there are a lot of fights as our secret task force tangles with Gojo and his cronies -  and this is where the movie absolutely shines. Early on there's a great fight against a baseball team's worth of Korean mafiosos which Ozawa beats down with a megaphone (the movie isn't devoid of humour, and this fight includes some great prop comedy), and the finale is a rolling brawl where a handful of people face off against a mall full of thugs. The action is varied but mostly consists of large punch-ups, sometimes with bats and knives, and while it's mostly realistic (or, to be more precise, 'realistic',) there's some cool silliness like Takaguchi being just too damn awesome to let himself be hit by bullets.
 It's a very low-budget production, but that's not as noticeable as it could be. There's some extremely dodgy-looking digital blood in one of its rare gunfights, but other than that it's pretty smart about not letting its reach exceed its grasp.

 Writer/Director Kensuke Sonomura is only a couple of movies into his directorial career, but he's been an action coordinator and a stuntman for decades. His experience shows: the choreography here is tight and everyone gets a chance to show off some pretty cool moves.
 He does stumble when trying to keep his story threads straight and/or compelling, and when trying to add in some drama (cutting a plucky reporter minor plot would honestly enhance the movie somewhat). Worst of all, at one point you find out one of the good guys had some information right from the beginning that made pretty much the whole plot irrelevant (this is known as The Force Awakens school of scriptwriting). But the characters are likeable, the violence frequent, and Hitoshi Ozawa's gruff charisma help hold things together when people aren't creatively mauling each other on-screen. It's an enjoyable bit of silliness.

The Roundup: No Way Out

 Well, it only took two sequels for the Crime City series (seemingly renamed to The Roundup in the west, despite the first one lacking that title) to become a parody of itself. This is a problem when the series didn't take itself that seriously from the beginning.

 This time around the threat is a rogue group of Yakuza who've stolen a batch of a deadly new designer drug dubbed Hyper from Japan, and are prepping to put it out on the streets. They're protected by the police chief in Incheon (Lee Joon-hyuk), a silent partner in their drug trade, but things get complicated when headquarters back in Japan realize what's going on and send a small army of thugs led by katana-wielding Rikki (Munetaka Aoki) to kill everyone involved and take back the mechandise.

 Unluckily for all of them, Ma Seok-do (Ma Dong Seok/Don Lee) of the metropolitan police and his team of hangers-on are on the case and working their way up the crime chain.

 I really liked the previous films mostly due to how they balanced gritty cop drama with Ma Seok-do's outsized  comedic persona. He's basically the only adult in a world of eight-year olds, slapping both thugs and the law around until things fall into place, but they worked like eighties cop movies in that respect.

 The Roundup: No Way Out exaggerates that aspect even more and amps up the comedy and action until there's no sense of threat. Don Lee's basically a superhero at this point: infallible, unbreakable and possessed of superhuman strength; His punches now regularly send people flying through walls and at one point he knocks a thug unconscious with an open-handed slap.

 At the same time the plot he's up against is a bit murky and overstuffed with characters. It woks... kinda, but it's nowhere near as compelling as the previous movies' cases. And the pacing is a bit repetitive, falling back on Don Lee arriving, kicking everyone's ass, then finding the clue that will lead to the next throwdown, or cutting to internecine fights between the criminals.

 The action is all right, as always - the choreographies tend toward the basic but it's clear, often funny, and it's full of good stunts. Don Lee's presence helps a lot, his boxer training, bulk and charisma lending credence to his physical threat, and his weary 'can you believe this shit?' expression is always funny.

 The comedy is a bit more unreliable; A new character (Jeon Seok-ho, I think) scores quite a few laughs as a criminal-turned-informant who gets a little too into helping the police, and the few times the movie dares poke fun at Don Lee are pretty funny as well. Less successful: all the bits where the police gleefully roll their eyes at due process and ethics - there's yet another scene where the police cover up the cameras in their (much nicer, this time around) office so they can engage in some police brutality with a suspect, which has become a running gag in these films.

 Later on there's a scene with the Yakuza brutally beating one of their own for information, and I wasn't sure how I was meant to feel - I mean, it played very similar to the police scene before, only people weren't smiling and the music was menacing. I know it's tiresome to bring this up, it's a fantasy where the police are infallible, yadda yadda, but... screw this shit.

 Things have now become untethered enough from reality that the movie loses the sense of danger that the previous installments managed to still hold on to. Either that, or the formula's grown stale for me. It's still watchable - returning director Lee Sang-yong knows how to make slick entertainment - but if I have to be honest, I'm way less interested in seeing where Don Lee and his crew head on next.

Emily the Criminal

 Emily (Aubrey Plaza) is a criminal: she's got a charge of aggravated assault logged on her permanent record. She's stuck in a menial gig delivering food, as that one black mark is very visible to all prospective employers, and the incident derailed her university degree. It doesn't help that she lacks the social graces to butter up people - Emily is completely unable to let bullshit slip, and you can imagine how that would go on a modern work interview.

 So she's stuck on a dead-end job, saddled with a student debt she can only pay the interest for. It's understandable, then, when someone at work hooks her up with a dodgy gig that'll pay two hundred dollars for a couple hours, she takes it.
 The gig is buying electronics with stolen credit cards, and the way it's set up is eerily similar to a Herbalife or Amway meeting - a reasonable-sounding guy (Theo Rossi) explaining what to do, politely explaining that it's illegal, what the risks are, and inviting anyone who's got doubts to walk out the door. Put that way, actually, it's more honest than Herbalife or Amway.

Crimes!

 Emily accepts, with trepidation, and things... well, there are some hiccups, but things end up working out OK. So after a couple of jobs she approaches the organizer to learn the ropes of the business, and the film turns into a sadly plausible low-level crime saga as Emily realizes she could have a future on her own terms as, well, an actual criminal. Like Goodfellas or The Godfather, but in the distinctively unsexy world of credit card fraud and the current worker-hostile economy. Maybe more like an Elmore Leonard yarn but with less humour and more social commentary.
 

 Writer/Director John Patton Ford has crafted an impressive debut feature film, an effective thriller with precisely calibrated stakes and an unpredictable storyline that doesn't quite go the ways you expect it to. It feels gritty and real in a way that many other films that aim for the same completely fail to realise. But his secret weapon is Aubrey Plaza, who turns in a bracing performance as Emily; she fully inhabits the character, making it easy to cheer for her even as she makes questionable (and a couple of downright stupid) decisions.

The Crew (Braqueurs)

  Now this is a movie that knows how to get the fuck out of its own way. It starts with someone setting explosives on a manhole in the middle of the woods, cuts to a football game with some of the same people (as the credits roll), then to a scene where a guy asks for more money, and the other guy agrees but "only because you're my brother". You can bet that'll be significant later on. Then you get an amazing armoured truck heist, pulled off with military precision and no loss of life.

 Braqueurs doesn't exactly skimp on crime movie clichés, but it uses them to tell its story efficiently, and give it room to go to some pretty unexpected places. Yanis (Sami Bouajila), a sort of master armoured truck thief, leads the titular crew; His brother Amine (Rédouane Behache) is their gofer, Nasser (Youssef Hajdi) and Frank (David Saracino) act as drivers/muscle, and young Eric (Guillaume Gouix) has just been recruited as the demolitions expert - the very first scene of the movie is his induction test.

 They have a pretty good thing going until the fallout of that first heist hits; Turns out they didn't dispose properly of one of the guns, the one gun that was used (to fire warning shots). That results in some drug traffickers gaining some leverage over the crew, and they use it to coerce the crew to steal a drug shipment from a rival gang.
 Yanis knows that the traffickers will never let them go once they start working for them, so he sets in motion a plan to try and get out of the deal. And going any further would spoil the pleasures of this twisty, unusual crime film, but events end up endangering the families that the film has been carefully introducing in the background.

 The crewmembers are cool and likeable but not necessarily relatable, and definitely not infallible; The acting is solid throughout. There are multiple extended shootouts and the action is of the action/thriller variety, hewing close to its characters with shaky handheld shots; For the most part it does a good enough job establishing where everyone is so that things don't get too confusing.
 Colours tend towards cold blues and greys, not because the palette is desaturated (much), but because of the urban environments most scenes are set against - cinematographer Philip Lozano knows to add some colourful interludes in between as palate cleansers. Palette palate cleansers.

 Director Julien Leclercq (who also wrote, along with Simon Moutaïrou) has done a few of these French action thrillers - I tend to like them, and this one is above average. He's also done some pretty good action movies with both Van Damme and Olga Kurylenko. He's making a remake of The Wages of Fear, which I'd find terrifying if I were him - it's only one of the best suspense movies ever made. We'll see how that goes.

Bad Times at the El Royale

 For whatever reason -blame the aggressive marketing push, or the terrible title- I only now got around to watching Bad Times at the El Royale. I should have had more faith in Drew Goddard and the amazing cast he assembled. It's no revelation, and it does like to ramble... but it's an extremely solid, fun, twisty as hell neo-noir.

 El Royale is a fancy hotel near Lake Tahoe, straddling the state line between California and Nevada. That's the hotel's Vegas-like gimmick; they've drawn the state line on the ground, and where it bisects the building the styles change slightly - especially where the color palette is concerned; Seamus McGarvey's cinematography and an excellent production design (Martin Whist, with Michael Diner and Lisa Van Velden in art direction) are a huge factor in why the film works as well as it does.

Warm | Cool

 After a short, 1959-set introduction where a man stashes a bag under the floorboards on one of the rooms, the film jumps ahead a decade to a fateful day when a bunch of strangers arrive at the hotel.

 It's a motley bunch: A priest (Jeff Bridges, making full use of his raspy affability). A young woman lugging huge swathes of bedding around (Cynthia Erivo, whose gets a surprising amount of chances to show off her incredible singing voice). A callous vacuum salesman (Jon Hamm, hilarious in full motormouth mode). A taciturn hippy (Dakota Johnson). After crossing paths in the lobby with each other and the concierge (Lewis Pullman), they head off into their own rooms and their own subplots. Chris Hemsworth will put in a late appearance that makes great use of his rock-star charisma and good looks.

 It's an episodic tale that takes more than a few left turns and seems determined to include all those signifiers of the death of idealism in the sixties; Vietnam, Nixon's ugly mug (and a few Watergate-evoking shenanigans), cults and the Manson killings, the era's casual racism and chauvinism. It's all done with... well, not subtlety, but a surprising amount of care and treated with a seriousness I did not expect from watching the trailers. It's more Coen brothers than second-generation Tarantino knock-off.
 I don't want to oversell it - it's still a pulpy, knowingly ridiculous movie, but it's a serious ridiculous movie.

 Director Drew Goddard does an impressive job of weaving a large amount of stories into a coherent narrative using a load of visual prompts - he also wrote a very solid script that manages to veer in all sorts of wild directions - the seeming premise of the hidden bag is just one subplot here, one that quickly gets subsumed by everything else going on at the hotel. It has an unfortunate tendency to sprawl, though; I can't help but to think the film's almost-two-hours-and-a-half runtime could have easily be trimmed by thirty minutes or so. But I guess the flab goes well with the almost pyncheon-esque abandon the script grafts new ideas in.
 And the the flashback structure, which is one of the biggest offenders in inflating the film's length, pays off in a big way near the end, providing context to a previously underdeveloped character in a manner that's both revealing and affecting.

 The acting is superb all around, the filmmaking propulsive, the sets gorgeous and the constant twists... umm, twisty. It might not be as clever as it thinks it is, but it's clever enough, and a ton of fun besides.

The Killer (2023)

 In the abrupt, kind of cheesy/kind of awesome title sequence to David Fincher's The Killer, there's a quick montage of assassination methods - from basic (poison in the coffee) to pretty funny (handling a live snake). Blink and you'll miss a frozen baby in a fridge; This is a pretty glamorous film, because anything directed by Fincher and starring Michael Fassbender is never going to look anything less than fucking amazing - but... yeah, this one's about a guy who's willing to put a baby in the freezer if he gets paid enough.

 The killer (Fassbender) has rules. As he stakes out a Parisian penthouse waiting for his target to show, he tells us all about them, at length, along with the ins and outs of his craft and his philosophy: how waiting for stuff to happen sucks, that nothing makes sense and if he hurries some deaths along, what's the problem? Also, the advantages of killing someone up close over an 'Annie Oakley job'. Turns out the killer has a hankering for a good drowning.

 Note that at no point does he mention bullshit, transporter-style rules about not shooting women or not making babecicles; Instead, he warns against empathy and to 'stick to the plan'.

 Things go tits up during the Paris job, and his target survives. Not without consequence: When The Killer makes it back to his hideout in the Dominican Republic, he finds someone's broken in and tortured his lady friend (Sophie Charlotte). Instead of cutting his losses, he decides to come out of the shadows and make sure no one is ever in a position to do the same again (to him) - neither his handler (Charles Parnell), the contractors sent after him (Tilda Swinton and Sala Baker) nor the person who took the original job (Arliss Howard). As he goes along he's constantly explaining his actions and his philosophy in a stream of narration that at some point starts sounding like maybe he's trying to convince himself.

 The movie is structured into chapters, each one a target, each one with a different setting, feel and texture. Because The Killer loves to show off, all of them take a weirdly, compellingly procedural feel, but they're built around exposition, a sort of philosophical debate, a terrific close-quarters brawl, or puzzle solving. The film takes its time getting anywhere but the direction is so precise, and Fassbender is so good, it never feels like it's wasting yours.

 It's an action thriller with a, honestly, pretty low action quotient and a heavy emphasis on the psychology of the character and the minutiae of The Killer routine. This is a little bit of a problem since the character is basically a cypher, someone who's basically brainwashed himself into being a consummate professional in his chosen field. Good thing that his chosen field is inherently interesting and bound to fuck anyone up, then. What with all those freezer babies* I keep hearing about.

 Fincher could make punchy genre stuff like this in his sleep, and the cinematography (courtesy of Erik Messerschmidt) is very slick. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross contribute a cool synth soundtrack.

 The script by Andrew Kevin Walker (based on French comics by Alexis Nolent and Luc Jacamon) does a good job of switching things up and gets a lot of clever touches in (I liked how events would frequently interrupt The Killer's internal monologue; there's a wry sense of humor running through the film). It also doesn't forget to spike any sympathy that might develop towards the protagonist with the odd horrific killing, adding a splash of discomfort to the proceeds.

 If it ends up feeling a little bit hollow, well, that's OK - couldn't be otherwise, as it's partly a character study on a character who's desperately needs to believe he is hollow. The film around him has so much going for it that it's a moot point anyhow.

 *: Seriously, I'd love to know more about how that frozen baby came about. Is that from the comic? Was it in the script? Did someone pitch it while brainstorming ideas for the title sequence? Does Fincher think about this as his frozen baby movie?

The Stronghold (Bac Nord)

 French action thriller The Stronghold is named after a large housing project in Northern Marseille where criminals parade proudly outside, doing criminal shit out in the open, and the police don't dare to tread.
 That's the international version; It's originally titled after the name of the police force that has that beat under its jurisdiction.

 The film follows the exploits of three cops working in the area, a lively bunch of larger-than-life action heroes that wouldn't be too out of place in a Fast and Furious film. You've got the leader, Greg (Gilles Lellouche), circumspect and stoic. Yass (Karim Leklou), the family man, the one with scruples. And last but not least Antoine (François Civil), the rookie-ish young 'un whose topknot marks him as kind of a douchebag.

 They're not above bending the law a little and abusing their authority when it suits them, but that's ok because deep down they care, so their corruption is mostly played for laughs. If that sort of thing bothers you, well... it gets way worse; If you can roll with that it mostly works because despite having the visual language of a gritty, more realistic policier, the movie's tone is pretty heightened, much closer to am over-the-top action movie.

 After establishing their day-to-day routine of catching petty criminals and sometimes going above and beyond expectations (and common sense) to make more of a dent in the criminal element, Greg is approached by his boss (Cyril Lecomte) to plan a huge raid on the the titular criminal stronghold.

 But. To get some critical information, they need to pay an informant (Adèle Exarchopoulos) with five kilos of hash. Because the boss rightly balks at giving them the drugs from impounded evidence (as he rightly points out, it would go right back into the streets), the heroic trio makes the brilliant decision to steal the drugs from consumers. With the boss's implicit approval.

 It's a bone-headed, ridiculously stupid decision, so evidently wrong on so many levels that I thought was setting up a left turn at some point... and that's only partially correct. In the short term their stings go off almost without a hitch, even when they do it in the dumbest possible way, just parking around the corner from a dealer's den and straight out stopping anyone who comes from that direction and stealing their shit.

 When the dealers come out they basically posture and then run away, no other consequence; how the hell they could keep their turf is never explained. It's hilarious.

 After that and a light-hearted montage of drug acquisition, the trio gets the intel they need and we get to the film's centerpiece. The raid itself is an excellent collection of choppy, nervy action sequences; I mean, it's not credible by any measurement (the number of criminals on any given scene depends on script needs entirely), but it's well put together, fun and tense in equal measure. And it's a big success; the sting nets a bunch of high-level criminals and a lot of merchandise.

 So our heroes become public heroes as well... until the other shoe drops. Turns out they were under investigation by internal affairs the whole time, and the powers that be for some reason have a dim view on their drug-hijacking hijinks.

 From there the movie becomes a Serious with capital S police drama, as the world turns against these completely blameless individuals and Greg, Yass and Antoine try to fight the rap and prove themselves.

 It's a deadly serious movie about some very silly shit. It uses action movie clichés to lionize its three protagonists, so when they're held up to scrutiny it's presented as the biggest injustice ever. All of which is torpedoed because... well, what the fuck did they expect? I loved it when the news mention that the people they incarcerated might be released if they're indicted. Extremely manipulative stuff for a certain kind of viewer, like the judge letting a killer go in a vigilante movie.

 But once again it works out because it's so damn over-the-top. I think playing it so seriously is the right choice; Once you get into its loopy mindset and accept the guys as a bunch of Dirty Harrys, you can enjoy the effective police drama elements without taking it as seriously as it's apparently intended.
 The action is good for what it is - don't go in expecting good choreography or cool stunts, as director Cedric Jimenez shoots for a more immediate, disorienting effect with mostly interesting results; it's not my favorite style of action, but it fits the movie and what's happening is clear at all times. Some good car and foot chases, and a good sense of fighting overwhelming odds.

 The script (by Jimenez and Audrey Diwan) also finds space for some humor, the highlight being a completely strung out juvenile offender who keeps insulting the cops until they find a song on the radio he likes. The acting is very solid across the board, with the main trio selling their differing balances between world-weariness and idealism, and it's fun to watch their extremely macho bonding. It's very much a lad's movie.

 I had Cedric Jimenez in the doghouse for so badly botching the HHhH adaptation. To be honest this doesn't even begin to make up for that, but taken on its own, and on the spirit I think it's proffered it's a pretty decent watch.

Killers of the Flower Moon

  While the Trail of Tears was still within  living memory, the Osage nation settled in a forsaken patch of land in Oklahoma. Half a century later, oil was discovered beneath their territory, turning every full-blooded Osage into a rich person overnight, thanks to a deal they struck with the government.

 It's a ridiculously rich, interesting setting: The natives are a sort of nouveau-riche caste, but a government system that declares the Osage 'incompetent' means that they cannot spend their money freely. So white people rush to take advantage of the whole system. White business owners take advantage of the tribe with "Osage prices", and others try to woo natives to gain what's essentially a controlling share of their wealth as they take a guardianship role. There's also the expected resentment as a group of people are forced to wait on another group of people they view -with the tacit support of their government- as their genetic and spiritual inferiors.

 Into this stew wanders Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), discharged from his position as a cook in the great war due to medical reasons. He's the nephew of a local prominent white businessman William "King" Hale (Robert DeNiro), an avuncular sort with deep ties with many native families.
 Ernest soon starts work as a taxi driver, where meets and falls in love with Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone). With some urging from his uncle, maybe, but their relationship is genuine.

 The problem is that Hale is a complete and total sociopath who now has the opportunity to consolidate a whole bunch of oil-rich Osage lands under his ownership, via Ernest and Molly's marriage. This will necessitate the deaths of a few people, some of whom Hale professes to view as his own family; How unfortunate.

 There is very little mystery to Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon. For a while there is some doubt as to whether Ernest will help or oppose his uncle, as DiCaprio plays him as a likeable, dumb, spineless lug who really loves his wife. It's resolved quickly.
 The movie is instead more similar to something like Goodfellas or Wolf of Wall Street, a view of the events from the ground level as they develop, anchored intellectually (a loose use of the term; he's a moron) by Ernest and emotionally by Mollie.

 The difference, of course, is that in the other cited movies you had a roster of despicable characters mostly turning on each other. It was easy to disconnect their actions from the real impact they had, so you can have fun watching everything play out. Not so here, where the horrifying nature of the enterprise (not to mention its basis in fact) is front and center, and each death hits poor Molly and the Osage community like a boulder. The film is almost three hours and a half long, and much of it feels like an emotional pummelling.

 It's Scorsese, so it's still an enjoyable emotional pummeling. There's a black-as-coal sense of gallows humor running through some of the scenes, especially when Elmore-Leonard-esque petty criminals are called upon to implement Hale's plans. You could probably cut out forty minutes to an hour out of the film without it having a huge impact, but there's so much going on it never felt like a chore to sit through even when the shaggy-dog nature of the story is going off on some tangents; Most of these also feel like they still inform the action. This is one of the rare instances where the inflated running time feels earned.

 And the surfaces of this thing are gorgeous. The film miraculously got a huge budget to work with, and it shows on every scene; Scorsese's direction remains as muscular as ever, finding ways to punctuate the film with startling scenes of surrealism or shocking violence. The editing and cinematography, by regular collaborators Thelma Schoonmaker and Rodrigo Prieto respectively, are top-notch, as always, and the wardrobe is stunning. Costume designer Jacqueline West comes up with lots of ways to replicate the Osage's mixing of flapper-era fashion with their traditional styles in a very striking way.

 The cast is also unanimously great. DiCaprio delivers a great, ego-less performance (I can't imagine Brad Pitt in the same part), as does DeNiro, but it's Gladstone who anchors the film. It's a thankless victim role, but the way she registers the blows, manipulated and refusing to believe she's being manipulated, is a huge part of why the film hit as hard as it does.

 The script (by Eric Roth and Scorsese) apparently veers off the source David Gann book a little, which was a more straightforward mystery narrative told from the point of view from the FBI agents who pop up late in the tale; The focus on Ernest and Mollie's relationship reportedly came from Scorsese's conversations with Margie Burkhart's (Ernest and Mollie's real-life granddaughter), as she reminded him that they truly loved each other.

 Events build up to a somewhat satisfying third act - there is some justice, at least (this is not a given in this sort of story). But it's the coda that packs a punch: a beautifully crafted "and then this is what happened" capstone that ends in a beyond lovely, heartfelt eulogy that left me reeling, while still recognizing that this is white people packaging other people's tragedies for white people's consumption. 

The World We Knew

 British indie horror/crime hybrid The World We Knew is pretty impressively crafted - a consummately professional film that hides its low budget extremely well. It's so well made that it's easy to overlook that the script doesn't really do much with its cool premise ('a bunch of criminals hole up in an haunted hideout') other than let the criminals hang out and maybe see a ghost now and again. Maybe that's enough, when the movie is as engaging as this.

 The criminals are Barker (Struan Rodger), the old hand, experienced and theatrical; Gordon (Johan Myers), boisterous, unpredictable; Stoker (Kirk Lake, also has a writing credit along with director Matthew Jones), who's in it to go legit; And last but not least Poe (Alex Wells), the audience surrogate, a reluctant criminal who nonetheless shot a cop. They're laying low after a job gone wrong (left, as in Reservoir Dogs, an obvious inspiration, off-camera) that left a policeman and one of the criminals dead, and another one of theirs shot and bleeding to death upstairs.
 The location is an old abandoned house in the countryside, and they're left to the tender care of Carpenter (Finbar Lynch in a very Mark Strong role), another criminal who's higher up in the chain and is charged with figuring out what to do with the sorry lot. And when it starts looking like they were set up, that involves making them all stay the night to find out what really happened.

 There is good tension between the characters, and some intrigue - who set them up? Is Carpenter gearing up to kill them all as loose ends? Is Gordon going to snap and shoot up the place? Later things take a supernatural bent as the past starts intruding on the present. All of the plot points fizz out ineffectively, though; there is a twist at the end, but it barely registers. What remains is a quiet, atmospheric character drama, and while most of the characters are fairly stereotypical, they're no grandstanding motormouth gangsters. Everyone's given at least some depth and the dialog is written well enough to keep things interesting.
 That is, as long as you can understand it; the sound mix, which sometimes buries the actors' lines, plus the heavy British accents and sometimes mumbled dialog can sometimes make things hard to follow. The acting is pretty good, with most of the actors displaying the required gravitas, regret and/or menace, and the soundtrack (from French band The Limiñanas) is excellent, sounding like an indie psych-rock band doing a spaghetti western set - plus some cool synthy tracks thrown in for good measure.
 The filmmaking is also good, with a strong command of ambiance and well-considered handheld shots (DP: Laurens Scott, directed by Matthew Benjamin Jones and Luke Skinner). This is a movie that punches far above its weight in almost all respects.

 It fumbles a few times. Mostly in the plot department, but there's also a pivotal scene with Eddie confronting his sins that's a bit cringeworthy. And even when it's well written, there are some scenes that seem to be there just to pad out the run time: I'm all for a lovely retelling of the Orpheus myth, but to be honest if there's a thematic link other than the whole underworld business... I didn't catch it. Points for trying though.
 All these weaknesses don't do much to dilute its strengths, particularly when it's over at a lean eighty-two minutes. I hesitate to call it a horror movie; even with all of the principals named after famous horror authors and directors, it doesn't really even attempt to be scary. But whatever the genre, it's pretty damn good.

The Roundup

 The Roundup chronicles the further adventures of detective Ma Seok-do (Ma Dong-seok, but I'm going to start calling him by his chosen anglicized moniker of Don Lee) and his merry gang of police brutality enthusiasts, last seen in 2017's very enjoyable The Outlaws. We first get a look at him when he stops a nutjob who's holding a grocery store at knife-point. He gets annoyed at the would-be stabber and actually stabs him lightly in the ass a few times after brutally putting him down. Then, when the newspapers (correctly!) call out undue force, he and his buddies chuckle over the headlines!

 It's... I mean, I think it works within the tone of the movie, which is basically a more comedic, over-the-top Dirty Harry were Clint was a wise-cracking uncle who's not afraid to show some tough love. As with The Outlaws, it operates in a heightened world where torture works, regulations only hinder honest folk who want nothing but to do their job well, and Ma is basically an uncorruptible, infallible engine of justice. I'm ok with it because that's the buy-in to enjoy the film, and I can find it funny. But I'd understand it if others might not... so take this as a trigger warning, there is a lot of  shit in this film that should rightly horrify any right-thinking person.

 With all that out of the way: it's another fun outing for Don Lee and the gang. This time around they're sent out to Viet-Nam to extradite a Korean criminal; Detective Seok Do and his chief (Choi Gwi-hwa) are all set to take it as a holiday, but soon they discover that the real reason why their charge has turned himself in is to escape from a nasty psycho (Son Suk-ku) who's targeting Korean tourists abroad. Of course they decide to go out and investigate, even though it's completely out of their jurisdiction, and from there things get a little more complicated as their quarry angers the wrong millionaire and starts getting hunted down by mercenaries.

 I actually like the structure of the movie a lot - the movie starts with a brutal kidnapping, and the rest of the plot grows out of that organically; it's a good script, even if it often gets a little too ridiculous and kind of loses the plot by the final act.

 Don Lee remains the main attraction here, with a lot of cool dad energy (he even delivers a beatdown with his belt!) and comedic chops. It's a pretty funny film, and a lot of it is based on how inappropriate the shit they pull off is. They even sort of repeat the torture scene from the first movie and kind of turn it into a running gag. Bad Detectives: Port of Call Ho Chi Minh, except that the movie is completely, uncritically on their side.
 Most of the cast returns from The Outlaws; all of the cops and even some of the criminals are given supporting roles. The action is also great, a little upgraded from the first one - not just in that Don Lee now delivers some super-powered punches and knocks out someone with a slap, but the main antagonist gets a very respectable one-take knife/machete/cleaver brawl that starts out like the hallway fight in Oldboy but then spreads out into the surrounding house. Lots of cool stunts, people going through lots of furniture, some good vehicular action.

 All in all I think I liked the first one better, even if this is a better case - some of the stuff here just went a little too broad for my taste, especially how much they get away with over in 'Nam. It's also a clear case of a sequel that delivers more of the same, but louder, bigger, and sillier. That's fine, but let's set some higher goals for the third one.

12-Hour Shift

 Mandy (Lucky McKee regular Angela Bettis) works as a nurse at one of those minimal-security movie hospitals where the staff can just grind meds and snort them in side rooms, people just wander wherever they want as long as they're wearing  scrubs, and any sort of post-mortem investigation is non-existent. The perfect place to run an organ-smuggling operation, then.

 It's a simple setup: With full complicity from the head nurse (Nikea Gamby-Turner), Mandy either waits for someone to die or Kevorkians terminally ill patients (her favorite method seems to be to use bleach - and if you wonder how that never raised any red flags, remember: movie hospital). She then pops by the mortuary to retrieve the organs once the coroner is done with the bodies. Finally Regina (Chloe Farnworth), a cousin by marriage, picks the grisly package up and delivers it to the mob in her pink barbie sportscar.

 The problem: Regina is a complete idiot and forgets the organs on her way out after a pickup. Aggravating this: Regina is a fucking psycho, so when she goes back to the hospital and doesn't find the package, she decides she can just kill someone else and take their kidneys.
 You'd think that'd be enough for a 'one crazy night at the hospital' story, but you'd be wrong. A dangerous convict is brought in (David Arquette, sporting a co-producer credit) and escapes thanks to Mandy's meddling; Her brother is wheeled in, OD'd. A couple of police officers get involved once bodies are discovered (Only a couple, because the movie is set in '99, and most of the police force is doing preparations for Y2K). And to top it off, the mob sends a hitman to collect on the kidney Regina didn't deliver. Hers, if none other is available.

 Writer/director Brea Grant (who's done her share of acting in indie horror movies), works off a shoestring budget and keeps things lively and fun... if not always smooth; By the end, after multiple crescendos, things do get a little too forced. Regina's appetite for murder is a too cartoony from the get-go, and some of the stuff with the mob enforcer is a little too much. But the tone is great, with some pretty funny stuff emerging effortlessly from character work and bizarre situations rather than jokes. 

 Besides the direction, the film has two great strengths: Angela Bettis, whose insouciant behaviour is really fun to watch (a less imaginative, or more marketing-driven title for this could be Bad Nurse), and has the chops to infuse her character with some humanity by the end. It's rare to see her get a role this juicy, and she does wonders with it.

 The other vital asset is composer Matt Glass (who also shares a producer credit). The soundtrack he's come up with is outstanding: a lovely, propulsive as hell mixture of drums, strings and opera singing that weaves between different styles depending on the scene, lending a huge amount of energy and not a little personality to the film.

 It's a bloody movie, but not a particularly gory one; The body count is fairly low and the carnage is explicit but not over the top... and that's OK. It gets by on pulpy energy and general craziness just fine.

I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore

 I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore opens with barrage of low key, quotidian assholishness heaped on poor Ruth (Melanie Lynskey) by random people. You know the type: people cutting in line,  not picking up their dog poop, littering - not giving a fuck about others and just being generally shitty. The first of these incidents gets the biggest laugh in the movie: a dying woman dies in the middle of a horrible tirade right in front of Ruth at the hospice she works in as a nurse... later, surrounded by her grieving family, she's asked if there were any last words.
 She doesn't have the heart to tell them the last words were "Keep your gigantic monkey dick out of my good pussy."

 Linskey is aways good, but especially so here playing a quiet, decent person who feels increasingly out of step with the rest of humankind.

 When she gets back home after this particularly shitty day, she finds someone's broken in and stolen her laptop, some silver that belonged to a late, favorite family member, and meds. It's a shitty thing to happen to anyone, and Ruth's reaction to it all - a sort of resigned heartbreak mixed with impotent rage -  is spot on and like so much of the rest of the movie, very relatable.

 When the police get there they basically brush her off and give her a hard time for not locking her front door. Cold.

 After stewing over it for a couple of days, Ruth starts sleuthing around and is able to track down some of her missing stuff; So she enlists the aid of one of her neighbours for backup - Tony (Elijah Wood, in a pseudo-mullet with a rattail and a Saxon T-shirt), an introverted weirdo who seems to be less of a dick than everyone else. And off they go, on an initially successful quest across their little Texan suburb to get Ruth's shit back.

 As their crusade goes on, Ruth gets a little too much into it. Not that it turns into a proper vigilante movie or anything - her plan is simply to confront people and maybe get them to, at most, explain themselves. Get them to be at least a little ashamed. But unfortunately for Ruth and Tony, part by skill and part by dumb luck, they do eventually manage to catch the attention of the people that originally robbed her place - a trio of strung-out petty thieves (led by David Yow!) who'd barely register as mooks in your standard vigilante movie, but drip with menace here.

 Writer/Director Macon Blair became known after playing the lead in Blue Ruin, and this, his first movie, is definitely in tune with that film's sensibilities. Describing it as Blue Ruin but played as a comedy is a bit glib, but fair - at least if we're thinking of comedy more in the ancient Greek sense; There are some good jokes here and a pervasive bleak sense of humour, but it's undercut by a nasty intensity, a queasy sense of danger that seems to promise things will not go well. And.. well, they don't. Should anyone make it through alive, you can be sure they'll have earned getting to the finish  line.

 There is some action, and it is suitably brutal, deflating any glamour or the more vicarious thrills this sort of movie might offer. The film doesn't stay pinned on Ruth's viewpoint, either; other characters get a chance to expand on theirs too, and a lot of these make a lot of sense. The script remains sympathetic to Ruth and Tony to the end, but it never completely romanticizes the action or loses sight of how fucked up, dangerous, and just plain stupid some of the stuff they get up to is.

 Some of the events towards the end get a little far-fetched, but it's easy to forgive a little silliness given how grounded most of the movie feels at that point. It's a good one.

The Outlaws

  "Based on a true story!" Boasts the trailer for The Outlaws, a 2017 Korean film, exclamation sign and everything. I'm going to take a wild guess and say that, like Cocaine Bear, it uses a real incident (an early 2000's police sting which resulted in a bunch of arrests) as a springboard for a pretty nuts police actioner rather than an attempt to shed any light on what actually happened.
 And this is fine! Because as it turns out it's a fun and well-made pretty nuts police actioner.

 Detective Ma Seok-do (Ma Dong-seok) heads up a small serious crime unit embedded in the Chinatown section of Seoul, trying to curb Chinese gang violence from escalating. The guy has a personal, almost friendly relationship with most of the gang bosses, to the point where he stops a turf war from exploding by browbeating two opposing gang leaders into playing nice with each other.
 He patronizes another gang den, one of those bars/karaoke joints which... yeah, pretty sure it'd count as a serious case of corruption. He and his team also do that thing where they beat up suspects while pointing the office cameras away. Ah, police brutality, always hilarious.

 It works, though, because the movie adopts a pretty heightened tone that doesn't fully break with reality, but it's made abundantly clear that it's not one-hundred percent serious either. They do this mostly by deploying Ma Dong-seok's outsized charisma and impeccable comedic timing; The guy is ridiculously likeable, and can do no wrong even when he fucks up. There's quite a lot of understated humor in the movie, and most of it comes down to Dong-Seok's considerable charm. He's just as likely to treat an armed assailant as a child and annoyedly ask for the weapon, rather than getting into a fight... and the funniest part is that it seems like common sense, yep, that would probably work. At least for Don Lee.

 The main plot arrives in the shape of a trio of mainland goons led by one Jang Chen (ex-K-pop singer Yoon Kye-sang, in good badass form). They come to collect on a debt, and instead take over one of the gangs and start to brutally murder their way across the criminal underworld. They're so ruthless that it actually works! But their methods call too much public attention, and cause the police commissioner to take the case away from the Serious Crimes unit.

 Ma Seok-do takes exception to this, and manages to keep the case for ten more days by betting his job on being able to make 25 arrests before that time is through. Again: not how the world works, but it's a snug fit with the somewhat goofy, ultra-tough tone of the film.

 There's some cheesy business with a surrogate son figure (though he might be his real son, if I understood correctly? That would make it a lot cheesier) and some brutal, actually upsetting violence - torture, sexual violence, that sort of thing. As with much of South Korea's cinematic output, the tone can vary wildly from one scene to the next, but overall it's pretty well considered. There's some bloody detail to some of the carnage but nothing too gory.
 The action is pretty great. There's a lot of it, mostly short and brutal, not show-offy at all. It still manages some fun sequences, my favorite ones involving cars. The standout is the one drawn-out fight set in a public restroom, and it's an absolute winner: no porcelain is cracked, but you can't say the same for mirrors, glass partitions, a flowerpot (!) and some pipes. Great stuff.

 It was hugely successful and has already spawned two wildly popular sequels, with a third one on the way for next year. Based on how enjoyable this one is, I'm really looking forward to catching up with the further adventures of Det. Ma Seok-do and the gang.

Avengement

 A prisoner (Scott Adkins) is taken from jail, under heavy police custody, to the hospital where his mother lies dying. They arrive too late.
 As the title card takes up the whole screen, we hear the sounds of a scuffle and muffled groans... and cut to Adkins leaving an elevator full of fallen policemen and quietly escaping the hospital. To get his Avengement, you'd presume.

 And you'd presume right. An unspecified amount of time later he breaks into a pub full of gangster types, pulls out a shotgun, and holds everyone hostage. As he makes his demands and spars (verbally and physically) with assorted hoodlums, the movie flashes back to fill in the blanks of Cain's (groan) backstory and motivations.

 Avengement is the third and latest collaboration between Adkins, director Jesse V. Johnson, and writer Stu Smalls. This is a lot grittier than Accident Man and quite a bit more dour than The Debt Collectors. Its story is both simple and razor-focused on Cain's quest for revenge, its time-jumping organically incorporated into the dialog: segues followed as Cain recounts and remembers the chain of events that ended up with him going after his brother's blood.

 Everything gets explained away; Obviously, important things like who the hell this Cain character is anyhow, what he's up to, and why... but even minor details get filled in, ranging from where he got the shotgun to (in a pretty funny touch) an origin story for each one of his scars.

 And of course those asides include a ton of fights. Brawls, more like, don't expect any wall-running or acrobatics; While very well choreographed and shot, they're kept simple and (mostly) realistic. There's an appropriate focus on brutality and on the bloody aftermath of the attacks, a lot of wince-inducement to go with all the excitement.
 The low-and-dirty tone extends to the locations (which show London at its dingiest even in the obligatory nightclub action scene), the plot points (which include some really loathsome petty organized crime activities), and the acting, which has everyone at peak nasty bloke. I'm not an expert on British accents, but everyone seems to be having a lot of fun putting on their cockney.
 I had some trouble buying Adkins as a dangerous badass, but that's mostly on me for watching too many of his podcasts and interviews (the guy is as pleasant and good-natured as they come.) He's got a lot of makeup (scars) on him here, and does pretty well by the material despite my minor misgivings.

 It's not without its grace notes. Cain's relationship with his mum (Jane Thorne) is touching, and there's a redemptive arc which feels a bit forced but kind of welcome after being submerged under all this scum for more than an hour. There are also a few pretty funny lines here and there and a minor role for Louis Mandylor.
 I sometimes felt like it was trying a little too hard, but all in all it's a great little bit of genre meanness: lean, punchy, and badass. Cain describes himself at one point as a hardened, rusty nail, a great line that also fits the movie.

Confess, Fletch!

 Confess, Fletch is a new adaptation of one of Greg McDonald's Fletch books, coming in more than thirty years after the second Fletch movie - and that wasn't even based on any of the books, just the character.

 That previous incarnation of Fletch, a freelance, countercultural journalist with a penchant for getting into trouble was famously played by Chevy Chase, who created a great character that ran parallel to the literary Fletch but eroded too many rough edges and made him way too goofy, with elaborate disguises and the sort of silliness you'd expect from a hungry young comedian trying to make a post-SNL name for himself.

 This new movie adapts the second Fletch novel and is also perfectly happy to make any number of changes - the book's police antagonist had to be excised for rights reasons, for example, because he got his own spinoff series. But while he still has his rough edges sanded down a bit, this new Fletch is much closer to the low-key, overconfident, professional meddler depicted in the books. Even if he's no longer kind of a scumbag.
 Now played by John Hamm - who is, if we're going to pick at nits, at least two decades too old to play the part faithfully, and way too charismatic - the goofiness is dialled down, leaving most of the humor in this noir comedy to smartass quips, ill-judged decisions, and character interactions. It's the sort of film that's too slight to leave a deep impression, but it's expertly carried by everyone involved.

 The Fletch here is maybe a little bit better treated by people at large than in the books, and has gained a measure of respect in the art world. Enough that he's hired by a rich family to track down a number of stolen paintings. Complications quickly ensue: As soon as he gets to Boston to follow up on some clues, he finds a dead woman's body in the living room of his rented house.

 Now a prime suspect in a murder investigation, not that he's too worried about that, he goes off to investigate the best way he knows: by going around stirring shit, seeing what comes out. 

 Director Greg Mottola mostly keeps out of the way - any stylistic flourishes are over and done with after the credits, leaving the actors and the mystery to do most of the heavy lifting here. Despite having all of Boston and a chunk of Rome to play around in, this is not a movie with any real visual flair.

 The characters fare a lot better: most go a little too broad at times, but since the only real comedy here is character-based, that's understandable. The funniest, arguably, are the two police officers assigned to Fletch's case (Roy Wood Jr. And Ayden Mayeri), who had to be invented whole-cloth for the movie; but they perfectly portray the antagonistic relationship that Fletch had with any and all authority figures in the books. 

 Because the mystery isn't all that great (it's reasonably involving but doesn't end up making all that much sense) it's all about those characters. Besides the police inspector and his assistant, you get Marcia Gay Harden as a very funny European countess, John Slattery as a newspaper owner who can barely stand Fletch, Lorenza Izzo as the rich heiress/girlfriend, Kyle McLachlan as an art dealer who's into EDM... Most of them get at least a few solid jokes in. Even incidental characters get some colorful personality traits. And while the story isn't very compelling, it's well told and things keep happening at a decent pace.

 It's damned to be considered as 'pleasant', and to be honest, it's laid back and languid enough that I can't really say that's an unfair assessment. But dammit, some of the dialog and situations here are so funny and true to the books I really wish we'd get another opportunity to see Hamm and Mottola get another go at the character. 

The Mission (1999)

 The Mission is a Hong Kong Triad thriller from Johnnie To - an uneven director who's nonetheless provided more than his share of essential movies across the years and within multiple genres. This one's near the top of those.

  When a Triad boss (Eddie Ko) narrowly escapes an assassination in a bar, his brother (Simon Yam) puts together a crack team of enforcers; their mission, should they accept it, is to protect him from any further assassination attempts, and if possible to work out who's ordered the hit.
 In one of the movies brilliant touches, we've already seen the members of the team before they're properly introduced - shown as the camera roved the streets in introductory scenes, each one in his place of business ('his' being the key word here- this is very much the type of lad's film where women are only ever an inconvenience.)

 There's Curtis (Anthony Wong), cool as a cucumber, the experienced leader.
 James (Suet Lam), the weapons expert, whose defining trait is, unfortunately, being fat(-ter than the others) and eating all the time. He's still given the opportunity to be very cool and professional, though- not at all a comic relief character.
 Roy (Francis Ng), the hot-headed one.
 Mike (Roy Cheung), the pretty one, an ex-pimp. Suave and eager to move up in the world.
 And Shin (Jackie Lui,) the necessary rookie in the team, puppy-like. Roy's protégé.

 The film's considerable pleasures mostly stem from watching this team of likeable badasses come together and deal with situations both professional (there are multiple action sequences, a couple of which are stellar) and interpersonal. The script cleverly arranges for us to get to know the characters at the same time as they get to know each other, and lets us watch as they build ties of respect and affection for each other.

 The action is, as you'd expect from Johnnie To, impeccable. It's all gun violence, but it diverges from, say, John Woo by focusing more on suspense than on action beats. Here we also get to see the protagonists function as a team, all of them highly professional and coordinated - a shootout at a mall should be listed up there with the best HK action scenes, and it clearly shows off To's sensibilities.
 A couple of the gunfights consist a bit too much of people just emptying clips at each other, but there are plenty of cool moments and maneuvers so that it never gets boring. Great stuff, and especially impressive given the amount of money they're working with.

 Because it's very low budget, there aren't a lot of fireworks, and everything is kept mostly low-key. The director makes it work in the film's favour - this is a crime film that makes time for an absolutely joyful scene consisting of an extended take of a bunch of hitmen kicking around a crumpled ball of paper in an office while they wait for their boss to finish his business.
 And the filmmaking is immaculate and extremely atmospheric; Johnnie To had already been making films for almost two decades when he made this, and his talent and experience shine through the rough patches.

 The soundtrack is cheesy as all hell, but it's so insistent it's almost ingratiating. By the end of the movie it kind of grew on me; A weak point, but certainly memorable.

 The main problem with the movie is that, like so many of its brethren, it's criminally hard to get a hold of a decent copy here in the UK. It's on youtube in its entirety, but it's not a great transfer of the DVD; I'd been holding off  watching it for years, waiting for a proper disc release until I finally caved in. It's not ideal, but I'm so glad I did.

First Love (Hatsukoi)

 Takashi Miike's done just about every genre in his ridiculously prolific career, and quite a few of them have been Yakuza movies.
 First Love, from 2019, is one of his more restrained efforts - and by that, I mean restrained by his standards; It's still pretty nuts. It almost passes for a normal Yakuza movie most of the time, and a damn good one at that. A funny, twisty delight with some pretty damn memorable characters and scenes. So many cool little details and unexpected touches; Very highly recommended.

 As the title implies, the film's got two young lovers at its heart. Leo (Masataka Kubota) is a disaffected youth, a boxer who fights only because he's good at it, without joy or passion. His life is turned upside down when he gets diagnosed with a deadly brain tumor. Meanwhile, Yuri (Sakurako Konishi) was basically sold into sex slavery by her father, and she starts the movie with withdrawal-induced hallucinations of her dear old dad coming after her wearing only his underwear.

Hey, I think I played this part in one of the Yakuza games.

 And then there's the crime story. As the local Yakuza slowly lose ground to changing times and Chinese triads, Kaese (Shôta Sometani,) a mid-ranking officer, decides he's had enough and wants out of the family. His plan: Steal a bag of meth from a couple of goons, kill said goons, give the drugs to a crooked cop (Miike regular Nao Omori,) and frame the Triad. Meanwhile, he'll turn himself in for another crime and serve a few years. His hope is that by the time he's out, his family will have been wiped out by the Triad.
 Oh, and it just so happens that the goons that are marked for death are Yuri's pimps.

 Kaese's worked everything out well in advance, so it's especially funny when absolutely everything goes awry as soon as things get going. He manages to kill one of the goons, but ends up infuriating the dead man's girlfriend (Japanese personality Becky), who basically goes berserk and spends the rest of the movie in a hilariously unhinged quest for revenge. The movie's MVP.

 The crooked cop doesn't fare a lot better; He was supposed to pose as a John, take Yuri somewhere quiet and kill her. But Yuri, who's hallucinating as a result of going cold turkey, sees him as his father and asks a random passer-by to help* her.
 The random passer-by turns out to be Leo, still in a daze from learning he's got only a little time left to live. Acting on impulse, he punches the cop out cold, and leads Yuri away.

 And so the two have to run away from both the Yakuza and the Triads, who think Yuri has the drugs, while Kaese and the Cop try to eliminate them to erase their tracks. It's a contrived, but very effective setup, and it's milked for all it's worth.
 It's billed as a romance, but to be honest while the relationship between Leo and Yuri is very sweet, it's not a very romantic movie - Leo is too indrawn for overt romantic gestures, and Yuri too damaged. But they both watch out for each other and behave selflessly, and their blooming friendship/romance is pretty affecting.

 I should probably mention the soundtrack, which is wonderful - a very muscular sort of jazz that goes very well with the rest of the movie.

 Miike's always been a great director, and while this is not the showiest of his movies, he gets a lot of chances to shine. The gore is tame for Miike's standards but still pretty gruesome - one of the first scenes is of a headless corpse stumbling around like a headless chicken, while his head blinks confusedly an alley away. The action is also pretty great.
 Miike can't help but to let some of his usual weirdness and wicked sense of humor seep in, but it's mostly done within the boundaries of the world and story - most impactfully on a very funny, very cute scene that shows that sometimes laughter can really chase away your demons. But you also get someone rubbing meth into an open wound to get John-Wick-ian superpowers... so, you know, Miike stuff.
 He also seems to get bored by the end, and the movie dips a little into symbolism and even an animated interlude (which I suspect was done due to budget issues, not being able to work out a realistic out to the situation, or both.)
 But it's only a little, and it doesn't derail the whole thing. The earth doesn't explode in this one. The man's getting softer in his later years.

*: Taskete (help) is one of the few Japanese words I know, mostly because of Ryoshi Kurosawa's Pulse. When my son started to babble, I tried to teach it to him in hopes he would repeat it randomly.
 I figured if my son started repeating it in the vicinity of someone who had watched Pulse, that person would shit themselves. I have no idea if it worked, but I dearly hope it did.

See How They Run

 See How They Run is a fictional, jokey whodunnit built around the real West End theatrical run of Agatha Christie's Mousetrap back in the fifties.

 It's a very cute and pretty funny movie that falls flat in some respects (especially in its central mystery, and its attempts to either bring anything new or deconstruct the genre) but is saved by a game cast, a lot of mild but good gags, and a snappy pace.

 Detective Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and police constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan) are assigned to investigate the backstage murder of Hollywood director Leo Kopernick (Adrian Brody) during the celebration of the play's 100th performance. It quickly becomes clear that everyone wanted a piece of him, and they're soon awash in red herrings and complex motivations.

 The truth when it comes out of nowhere and is sure to disappoint anyone who was expecting a well-crafted mystery, but the modest joys in this movie are more related to the characters and their interactions. Detective Stoppard is experienced, easy-going, world-weary and often drunk, while PC Stalker is a young and bushy-tailed, diligent, highly excitable and will often just blurt out whatever comes to mind. Their dynamic together is a delight and scores some big laughs from tiny details like the way they greet each other by their titles. And as a bonus both get a bit of depth added to their characters, while everyone else is basically a caricature.

 I love Saoirse Ronan's work here. Like Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky, she takes a potentially annoying character and makes it impossible to hate.

<3 P. C. Stalker

 Where the movie is less successful is in trying to get clever with structure and conventions. "What, Flashbacks?" says the fictional playwright who's been tasked with creating the script for a movie adaptation of Mousetrap, after the movie has indulged in a ton of flashbacks. "Next you'll ask to include a  title card that says 'Three weeks later...'" And of course, immediate cut to a title card that says "Three weeks later..."

 This, and some other stuff like this is... cute, and kind of clever, but not nearly as much as it thinks it is. Not as executed, anyways.

 Also, this is not much of a complaint but if there's any reason for there being a very obvious reference to The Shining here I completely missed it.

 Agatha Christie buffs might be more satisfied by the film as there are a few decent in-jokes in there. The best of which is a real-life factoid that comes up in the movie as one of the possible motives: The reason there's never been a movie adaptation of Mousetrap is that there was a provision made in the contract when the rights were sold to British producer John Woolf (who's one of the suspects here, played by Reece Shearsmith) stating that the movie could not be made while the play was still running. And... well, it still is. It went on hiatus for COVID, but it's back on now.

 Lines and scenes from Mousetrap also have some significance, as well as its origins in a true case. 

 Even if it doesn't work that well, it still moves at a quick pace, looks pretty good and again, the acting and character humor is a huge amount of fun. It won't set the world on fire or anything, but there are way worse ways to spend one hundred minutes.