Tag: Bob Odenkirk

2025 In Film: Day Nine (The Almost Amazing)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

Companion
Ups: Bloody
Feminist as fuck
Great performances
Funny.
Genuinely great mid-twist.
Downs: It doesn’t seem to live up to its potential.
Too many important things happen that don’t affect the plot.
Best Performer: Sophie Thatcher
Best Moment: Her encounter with the cop. Genius.
Worst Moment: The suicide of Eli doesn’t quite hit as it should.
Opening: Iris talks about meeting Josh, then states she kills him later on. Doesn’t give the game away too much (unlike the trailer).
Closing: She waves to another companion. It should have been better.
Best Line: You’re right. I do know you. I know everything about you. I know you take almond milk in your coffee. I know you like your bedsheets untucked. I know your favourite hobbies are bar trivia, video games, and prattling on endlessly about everything the universe owes you. I know that you always need to be in control. I know that you have a below-average-sized penis. And I know that you think that having a few million dollars will disguise the fact that you are just a sad, bitter, weak human being.
Original review here

Heart Eyes
Ups: Some great kills.
Fantastic chemistry between the leads.
The attacks have weight.
Downs: The reveal is underwhelming.
The red herring is too obvious.
Best Performer: Olivia Holt
Best Moment: The meet-cute. May be a bit weird to put that in a horror movie, but it’s central to the characters working and you easily buy into it.
Worst Moment: The reveal. Easily.
Opening: Two (insufferable) people die. They really are annoying.
Closing: The couple are still together. Very sweet.
Best Line: I didn’t know that murder was a love language.
Original review here

I Swear
Ups: A touching look at an often misunderstood condition.
Highlights how far we’ve come in disability acceptance (but still not far enough)
Downs: Not every part of his story is needed.
Doesn’t mention he was part of a BBC documentary, which kind of undermines his message somewhat.
Best Performer: Maxine Peak.
Best Moment: When he meets the young girl with it.
Worst Moment: When he moves into a council house and ends up a drug dealer. Could excise that entire section and you wouldn’t notice.
Opening: Him receiving an MBE, and swearing at the Queen.
Closing: Video footage of the real person. He does actually punch Dottie in the face.
Best Line: The problem is not Tourette’s, the problem is that people don’t know enough about Tourette’s.
Original review here

Nobody 2
Ups: Violent.
Fun.
Sets up future films.
Good soundtrack
Downs: Not as good as the first one.
Some baffling decisions made by characters.
Best Performer: Bob Odenkirk.
Best Moment: The arcade fight.
Worst Moment: As much as I did enjoy it, Lendina killing everyone in the casino. Those are tourists, that would raise attention.
Opening: Hutch has to go on assignments to pay off the debt caused by his actions in the first movie (consequences!), we see how one of them goes.
Closing: A batshit insane Home Alone-style shootout in a fairground. Wonderful.
Best Line: Never bring a machete to fucking Katana duel,
Original review here

Predator: Badlands
Ups: Charming.
Wonderful world-building, the planet truly feels alive.
Ties into the Alien series, but not too obviously.
Downs: We don’t see enough of the Kalisk to make it feel like a genuine threat.
Characterisation snaps back too often, makes it seem like we’re being shown out of order.
Best Performer: Elle Fanning.
Best Moment: The trio taking over the base. So much fun.
Worst Moment: The tooling up sequence. Don’t get me wrong, it is pretty damn great, but it’s also not clear enough what some of the things are.
Opening: Introduces Dek and his brother, only to then kill one of them off. Sets the stakes up, and shows you just how expressive Dek can be.
Closing: Patricide. Really the only way it could end.
Original review here

Queen Of The Ring
Ups: Some GREAT music.
Genuinely fascinating story.
Friendly to newcomers without being insulting to fans.
Downs: Could explain some stuff more.
Skips some parts too quickly.
Best Performer: Emily Bett Rickards
Best Moment: When she wins the title.
Worst Moment: The shoe-horning of Vince McMahon Sr. seems weird.
Opening: Her fighting in Georgia. She’s struggling, in a lot of pain, and her son helps her back.
Closing: The match finishes in a draw, there’s shenanigans. Then text saying what happened to the main characters. “She never got to wrestle in the Garden” is tearjerking.
Best Line: “what we ask our wrestlers to put their bodies through in the ring, is what we ask our fans to put their emotions through in their seats”
Original review here

Superman
Ups: Very much needed at a time like this.
Understands its characters.
Great world building.
It’s nice to have a villain who’s evil. Not “misunderstood”, not “i can fix them”, just someone who is an irrefutable piece of shit.
Downs: Lacks iconic music.
Sets up films which might not happen.
Best Performer: David Corenswet
Best Moment: When Lex shoots Malik. Classic heel move.
Worst Moment: The whole “opening a crack in the earth” plot.
Opening: Quick text summary of metahumans and Superman, then footage of him after he’s had the shit kicked out of him. Brave to start a Superman movie with a shot of him being vulnerable.
Closing: Luthor’s scheme has been uncovered, and the billionaire has been arrested. Bit unrealistic.
Best Line: I am as human as anyone. I love, I-I get scared. I wake up every morning, and despite not knowing what to do, I put one foot in front of the other, and I try to make the best choices that I can. I screw up all the time, but that is being human, and that’s my greatest strength. And someday, I hope, for the sake of the world, you understand that it’s yours too.
Original review here

The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Ups: Nice time capsule.
Different.
Has heart
Never slips visually
The characters genuinely feel close.
Downs: The Natasha Lyonne sub-plot goes nowhere.
Doesn’t make you that excited for Doomsday
Best Performer: Pedro Pascal
Best Moment: The Silver Surfer flashback
Worst Moment: Sue Storm being brought back to life. Mainly because it takes sooooo long to happen, when everybody watching knows not only what will happen, but how it will happen.
Opening: Sue and Reed at home being domestic. I have very specific issues with this opening, the big one being that it’s kind of mundane and dull, especially when there’s a REALLY good introductory scene afterwards of a talk show host explaining the characters background. That would have been a much better opener.
Closing: The five are about to appear on a talk show but have to leave for some unspecified emergency. Would have been nice to see what it was.
Best Line: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
Original review here

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Ups: Great performances.
Good character development of Benoit.
NAILS the closing.
Downs: Not as good as the other two.
The central mystery isn’t that compelling.
Best Performer: Daniel Craig
Best Moment: The ending.
Worst Moment: When Nat stabs the body, doesn’t really work.
Opening: Priest punches someone in the face and reassigned.
Closing: Jud has reopened the church, the jewel being the hidden centrepiece.
Best Line: Here’s what’s gonna happen: Benoit freakin’ Blanc and I are gonna ask you all some questions, and you all are gonna answer them and we’re gonna get to the bottom of who killed Monsignor Wicks and why and then… that’s it!
Original review here

Nobody (2021)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

I went in with relatively high expectations for this. All I had heard is it was John Wick-like, and I loved those movies. So I expected greatness, but I also thought there was a chance it wouldn’t live up to the hype.

Thankfully it does. It takes longer than you’d think to get going, there’s a few moments where you think you’re going to see him being violent but he doesn’t, but he later explains why and it’s perfect. It also means when the inevitable finally does happen, it’s beautifully cathartic, it had been building up to it beautifully. Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t take the entire film to do that, in reality it probably takes about 15-20 minutes so it’s a good length, you don’t get bored waiting around for what you know will happen (like what happens while watching Ma, as you can see in this wonderful review by the smartest and sexiest person alive). The scene where it happens is truly superb, and gives a good indication of the difference between this and John Wick. Whenever you watch a John Wick film, the way he fights seems almost superhuman, so you’re amazed by what that person can do physically. Here, he doesn’t fight like he’s a superhuman god, he just fights smarter. He takes random opportunities to commit violence against them using unexpected ways. It’s not as flashy, but it’s definitely effective. It’s the way someone who’s actually training to fight would fight, not the way someone training to make a fight look good fights.

I’ve got to be honest, I didn’t expect Bob Odenkirk to be able to pull this off, I mainly know him from comedies, and in them he usually has a certain character he plays: someone quite smarmy who you can imagine avoiding physical confrontation. The kind of guy for whom when he’s married his most common phrase seems to be “yes dear” before being forced to do something he doesn’t want to do, the very definition of milquetoast. That characterisation plays into this though, everybody sees him as some meek person who’s incapable of defending himself. To the point where even the police chew him out for not killing someone.

I’m kind of conflicted on that aspect. The film has people say he’s not a real man because he doesn’t fight, but then they respect him when he does. So it’s saying the people are wrong, and that he is a man, but only BECAUSE he fights, if he didn’t do that, he’d still be nothing to them. So while it’s saying stuff about toxic masculinity, it is still weirdly perpetuating the followings of it.

It feels like action movies have moved more towards featuring older leads, especially since the success of Taken. But there are times in some of them where it stretches disbelief to see someone that much older (and sometimes out of shape) easily match fitness levels with groups of professional assassins much younger than them. This manages to make it believable by having him get the crap kicked out of him, but just keep going, and yet not fully recover from the injuries. Also, he makes mistakes while fighting, he misjudges distances slightly and hits his head on things. It makes it seem real. That’s what puts this film over the multitude of other action films, just how real it all feels.

I mean, it does go bombastic when it needs to. The scenes of him and Christopher Lloyd (yeah, he’s in this too) defending their building from a group of invading Russian gangsters (I’ll admit, the plot for this isn’t exactly original, it not only wears it’s influences on its sleeves, but also fashioned a tie out of them) are pretty badass. Actually all the action scenes are fantastic, but it spreads them out REALLY well. It’s not a constant barrage of fight scenes, it places them strategically when they would serve the narrative best, it’s one of the best examples of how to handle writing action movies, the film is not just an excuse to go from one action set-piece to the next, with the rest of the film just being filler. It uses narrative to justify the action as opposed the other way around. It does help that the non-action bits are still really good. They’re funny, interesting, and show great use of characters.

So yeah, go see it. It’s only 90 minutes too, the perfect length.