It was only a year ago that we reviewed Cold Pursuit here at borg, which star Liam Neeson revealed to be his final movie. So what’s with the new movie Honest Thief? Not that we’re complaining–Neeson is back again in revenge mode just as we like him best, plus he’s bringing a fun group of some of our favorite action genre stars. The plot? Neeson plays a man in love, a man in love who is a thief. But he wants to turn over a new leaf. But circumstances keep pulling him back in… into Taken and The Commuter’s vengeance Liam Neeson.
Tag Archive: Liam Neeson
Review by C.J. Bunce
Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones established the franchise with their original story of sci-fi agents tracking down aliens among us in Men in Black. But who knew the franchise could be as fun as Men in Black III, bringing in Josh Brolin to create a memorable young version of Jones’ Agent K? That was until this year’s Men in Black: International, pulling in the look and feel of the past films all under the capable leadership of Emma Thompson′s Agent O. This time we meet the head of the London office, High T, played by Liam Neeson. And the lead agents are just as much fun as Agents K and J.
From the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor and Valkyrie actors Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson are reunited on the big, and now small, screen, as Men in Black: International makes its way to home streaming services. Thompson is Molly, who as a little girl observes her parents being nebulized by Men in Black agents after a sighting of a curious fuzzy alien. Molly helps keep the alien out of sight of the agents, and he leaves, thanking her with an alien salutation she never forgets. In fact she becomes obsessed with the alien and aliens, and commits her entire life toward making her way into the Men in Black where she, too, can save the world and learn about all of the life in existence “out there.”
She applies to both the CIA and FBI, but no such luck, they think she is crazy–as does everyone else. So she uses her smarts to track down the apprehension of an alien, and makes her way into the U.S. branch, where she meets Agent O. From there she gets provisional status, as Agent M, and is sent to partner with the London’s top agent, Hemsworth’s Agent H. Agent H couldn’t be cockier, and he and High T go way back, having saved the world before together. Agent M and H’s first mission: Protect an alien–an old friend of Agent H–on holiday on Earth. Sounds simple enough, until everything goes wrong. At the center of it all is a previously hidden use of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Review by C.J. Bunce
This is what I was hoping for in Jonas Åkerlund’s movie Polar, the brutal Mads Mikkelsen dark action movie that was more wannabe Zack Snyder than anything interesting, fun, or thought-provoking. Cold Pursuit is something like Polar. You’ll feel the cold, sure. But director Hans Petter Molland′s take on dark comedy is a little more subtle, less “look at me and all the carnage I can fit on a screen and have my characters laugh about.” But Cold Pursuit is also not the Coen Brothers’ Fargo. And that’s a good thing if you don’t worship Coen Brothers movies. It’s also a good thing if you like Fargo only a little bit.
What the heck am I talking about? Unlike a lot of films that go direct to streaming services, this was a theatrical release. You can tell the difference. So it beats out most direct-to-Netflix, Amazon, etc. fare. But Cold Pursuit was marketed and billed more like a dark comedy. Only it’s not very funny. But it’s an enjoyable, satisfying revenge flick. So blame the marketing. Cold Pursuit is a steady, measured drama about a resourceful snowplow driver near Denver, played by Liam Neeson (sporting a Han Solo at Hoth parka), who is successful at his job, but less successful with his family relationships, including communicating with his wife, played rather blandly by Laura Dern (it’s the part, not the performer). When their son is murdered by a low-level member of the local drug community, Neeson’s character, Nels Coxman, first tries to kill himself. When he learns his kid wasn’t really involved in drugs he begins relentlessly pursuing everyone involved in the world that killed his son, aiming for the top, which reaches back to an anal-retentive, self-absorbed, young, wealthy kingpin called Viking back in the city, played expertly vile by Tom Bateman (Murder on the Orient Express). This is when the movie takes the action turn. Bateman plays that villain you love to hate and really want to see get a comeuppance.
Dozens of named characters get killed in different ways throughout the picture (I thought about counting the bodies but didn’t). Each cleverly gets their own pre-sound era cinema “tombstone” as they are marked off the list (including their religion–oddly irrelevant but humorous). Even if it’s a little spoliery (yes, that’s the correct spelling) to know it, if it helps get people to see the movie then it’s worth knowing that Neeson’s character is not a criminal type or tough guy, but calls forth that familiar guy from the Taken movies to open ample six-packs (several) of whoop-ass on the bad guys.
It’s not so much that Disney and Lucasfilm put together a movie based on every kid in the 1980s’ favorite background character, because George Lucas already made a movie about that guy, his dad, and a whole army of lookalikes. It’s hard to find a cooler character than Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back, until Lucas delivered on the fan service and inserted him into the original, special edition of Star Wars. It’s not only that. Or that, like Solo: A Star Wars Story, it’s clearly a full-fledged space Western. Or that fans get to see familiar elements of the franchise again, like carbon freezing, speeder bikes, scout walkers, patrol dewbacks, familiar bounty hunters, and Imperial bunkers hidden in the forest. And it’s not that the lead is played by its rising young actors known for badass characters, Pedro Pascal and co-star Gina Carano. Or that the series features a story by genre favorite Jon Favreau, with a host of episode directors like Thor: Ragnarok’s Taika Waititi, or noted Star Wars animaster Dave Filoni, or Solo director Ron’s daughter, actor Bryce Dallas Howard.
Well, it’s that, but not only that.
It’s that added gravitas that Star Wars is better at than possibly any other franchise. It’s adding those dynamic, major character actors in supporting roles who make the magic happen sometimes even from the corner of the screen, from the likes of Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, Christopher Lee, Terence Stamp, Brian Blessed, Liam Neeson, Samuel L. Jackson, Linda Hunt, Mads Mikkelsen, Forest Whitaker, Max von Sydow. Would Star Wars be Star Wars without the characters these actors brought to life? Definitely not.
For the latest trailer for the new streaming series The Mandalorian, that means Carl Weathers–who we saw in April’s “sizzle reel” at the annual Star Wars convention (yet to be posted by Lucasfilm, but check out a watchable version below), with a first look at Giancarlo Esposito, and that toughest of older tough guys in movies, director and Jack Reacher villain Werner Herzog. Not seen in this trailer, but expected to be added to the list, is Nick Nolte, who we can imagine could get us to that similar kind of character as Woody Harrelson or Paul Bettany in Solo.
So check it out–your next look at The Mandalorian:
If you agree 2017’s Marvel movie Thor: Ragnarok was the best of the bunch, and you don’t get enough of Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson this month in Avengers: Endgame, just wait a little longer. In June, Men in Black International arrives, and the next trailer for that fourth film in the Men in Black franchise is here. Check it out below. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones first created the fun alien invasion series with their Agents J and K in the three films, only to be eclipsed by the man who would be Thanos–Josh Brolin–as a young Agent K in Men in Black III. Also in that movie Emma Thompson joined the agency as Agent O, taking over the role Rip Torn played as the character Zed in the earlier films.
Although we rarely hear about the other 00 agents in the James Bond movies, the Men in Black are branching out. Chris Hemsworth arrives as Agent H–“one of the best ever” to wear the suit, joined by Tessa Thompson as new recruit Agent M. They both join Emma Thompson who is back again as Agent O. And if that wasn’t perfect casting enough, Liam Neeson joins the series as the London-based leader of the UK branch of MIB.
And of course, there are aliens, because that’s what the MIB is all about. Sony released two great first trailers back in December for Men in Black International (check ’em out here). Here’s the next:
No one could have predicted when the original Star Wars won six of ten Academy Awards in 1978 that a new Star Wars film would be nominated 41 years later. At the end of 2019 all will be known–with Episode IX to be released in December the entirety of George Lucas’s nine-part Star Wars saga will be complete. Although the Skywalker family and its legacy is done, Disney and Lucasfilm will be sure that Star Wars is very far from over. But expect this year to be full of nostalgic products looking back over the course of the four decades since we first saw the words, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away…” Two movie souvenir compilation books will take Star Wars fans across the film franchise. Solo: A Star Wars Story Ultimate Guide presents interviews and photographs behind and in front of the camera from Ron Howard’s film. And today Star Wars: The Saga Begins arrives in book stores, taking a rare look back at the Star Wars prequel trilogy. We have previews of both books for you to check out below.
In Star Wars: The Saga Begins readers will find articles collected from Star Wars Insider, the magazine that has provided fans with the latest fandom and news since 1994. In September 1997 with Issue #35, fans got their first glimpses at what would follow the original trilogy, as publisher and fan club president Dan Madsen provided updates in each issue with producer Rick McCallum. Unfolding until 2005 and beyond, Star Wars Insider provided first looks at new prequel ships, characters, and locations. Interviews explained what was happening behind the scenes of The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith from the likes of director George Lucas, actors Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Ian McDiarmid, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Temuera Morrison, Daniel Logan, Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Daniels, and Brian Blessed, plus concept artists Ralph McQuarrie and Doug Chiang, composer John Williams, costume designer Trisha Biggar, sound designer Ben Burtt and many more. Star Wars: The Saga Begins is packed with concept artwork and prototypes of creatures and props, plus storyboards and costume designs. And it has hundreds of photographs.
A similarly designed look at Solo: A Star Wars Story can be found in Solo: A Star Wars Story Ultimate Guide. Readers will find Star Wars Insider interviews and profiles from director Ron Howard, writers Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan, actors Alden Ehrenreich, Joonas Suotamo, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Woody Harrelson, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Paul Bettany, Jon Favreau, and Thandie Newton, plus composer John Powell, creature maker Neal Scanlan, and costume designers David Crossman and Glyn Dillon. The Ultimate Guide is full of good detail shots of the Millennium Falcon and sections featuring the newly designed Imperial armor and ships created for the film.
Here are previews from each book, courtesy of Titan:
Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones created a fun alien invasion series with their Agents J and K in the first three films in the Men in Black series. But they were eclipsed by an even funnier performance by Josh Brolin as a young Agent K in Men in Black III. Also in that movie Emma Thompson joined the agency as Agent O, taking over the role Rip Torn played as the character Zed in the earlier films. Although we rarely hear about the other 00 agents in the James Bond movies, the Men in Black are branching out, with new agents for the fourth movie in the franchise coming your way next year, Men in Black International.
Thor: Ragnarok star Chris Hemsworth arrives as Agent H–“one of the best ever” to wear the suit, joined by Tessa Thompson as new recruit Agent M. They both join Emma Thompson who is back again as Agent O. And if that wasn’t perfect casting enough, Liam Neeson joins the series as the London-based leader of the UK branch of MIB.
And of course, there are aliens, because that’s what the MIB is all about. Sony released two great first trailers this week for Men in Black International. Which do you like best? One features Agent M already as an agent, the other U.S. version shows her joining the agency. Take a look:
Review by C.J. Bunce
Although the first chapter in the anthology film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs will have you thinking the new straight-to-Netflix movie is more of the same from the Coen Brothers, the subsequent chapters may have you think again. It just may be the most thought-provoking, subdued, and effective film from the entire catalog of Coen Brothers films, and it may even eclipse Bone Tomahawk and the Coens’ own True Grit as this century’s best Westerns–at least in parts (and it’s a leap ahead of Quentin Tarentino’s past two efforts). Netflix’s Mudbound was nominated this year in major categories (but didn’t win) and the studio brought in one documentary Oscar, but can this new Coens release bring Oscar home to Netflix for a major, large-scale production?
The common thread of the film is classic Americana: 19th century settlers possessed a kind of unique grit, and they paid a steep price, in unique and unglamorous ways, to build a nation. The film chronicles six fictional fails and near fails that might have happened (mostly), presented as chapters of an anthology dime novel. The first chapter follows the title character, a goofy but sure-shootin’ singing cowboy played by Tim Blake Nelson, in a story that will have many thinking this movie is another Western parody like 1985’s Rustler’s Rhapsody (it is not). The next chapter follows a determined thief (James Franco) unsuccessfully robbing a bank in an era before the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment (in a mash-up inspired by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”). Another story finds a young woman (Zoe Kazan of the famed film dynasty in a masterful performance) on a frontier wagon train just trying to make it to the next town. The least of the tales comes off more as a one-note Aesop’s Fable, as Liam Neeson‘s character carts a young limbless orator (played eloquently by well-known Harry Potter actor Harry Melling) from town to town carnival style for money. To round off the anthology, Brendan Gleeson, Saul Rubinek, and Tyne Daly star in a John Ford-inspired stagecoach bit that would be good source material for a stage play.
But the best of the chapters is an adaptation of a Jack London story about an old gold prospector, a character study starring Tom Waits. His performance could be seamlessly spliced into any of the best classic Westerns. And it’s the kind of acting achievement that should earn Waits a supporting Oscar nod, if the Academy gets in lock-step with Netflix as a legitimate moviemaking studio. The other performance worth Oscar contention is Chelcie Ross‘s trapper in the stagecoach segment. His rambling story and delivery is laugh-out-loud funny, and you can almost see in the eyes of Rubinek and Daly a real struggle to hold back laughs.