This might be the softest, tough guy crime movie I’ve encountered in a while. 

What it’s meant to be is a pressure cooker flick where salty fishermen keep diving into trouble, first with the law and then with real criminals until the story reaches its murderous conclusion. 

But what actually happens is a bunch of knuckleheads keep doing knucklehead things until they get bailed out at the end. 

Then it ends on a supposedly happy note (with maybe one of the most cringey things I’ve seen in a while) and the guys go back to fishing. 

And of course given what the movie shows me about these guys you just know they are all gonna be fried like the scallops not long after the credits roll. 

I will say that the movie kept me engaged and I really enjoyed Tommy Lee Jones slipping comfortably into another one of his salt of the earth/sorry I was a terrible father roles. 

Ben Foster is also respectable as a grizzled captain of men / older brother. And I thought Clayne Crawford was a firecracker as the heavy. 

But it’s soooo blunt and heavy handed. 

The movie takes great pains to explain what “finest kind” means in the vernacular of this fishing community. It’s kind of cool and they never should have explained it. Or if they were going to it should not have been explained in such a way that it was basically like a spotlight pointed at the audience going, “See, see this is it. Pay attention!”

Another is when the characters take one phrase of wisdom from Jones’ character and repeats it until you just want to sink. 

However, I liked a lot of this and can see why everyone thought it could work. It’s a movie they would have made in the 1990s that probably would have been a mid level hit at the theater. 

And when I say soft consider this: the characters need $100,000 to get a boat back from seizure. At the end of the movie one of the characters borrows it from his dad, who wants him to become a lawyer and stop fishing. 

The dad has a sudden change of heart and comes up with the money.

The movie also spends some of its resources pointing out that Jenna Ortega’s Mabel is from the wrong side of the tracks. 

In the end she is welcome into her new boyfriend’s family by his loving mom who grew up in those some bad neighborhoods. 

Sofffttt. The movie is soft. 

But, I gotta say I thought most of it worked really work well. It wasn’t until the obvious twists in the second half and the easy resolutions to the everyone’s problems that I really thought this thing lost its way. 

And then there is that ending. Woof.

The great Quentin Tarantino once again became the talk of the internet when it was announced that his upcoming movie, The Movie Critic, was cancelled and that he will instead find another project to be his 10th and final film.

Twitter was full of comments from movie fans who were, like me, disappointed. And they were full of what I can only describe as fannish nonsense.

The first line of attack was on the idea that Tarantino has said for years that he would stop at 10 films and retire as a movie director. Tarantino has already written one (very good) book of film criticism and he has also joked that he could always direct a limited series for television.

This collection of wit and wisdom came from a number of people, famous, infamous and somewhere in between. I have paraphrased a general collection of this:

“You don’t have to follow a stupid rule you made up.”

“Martin, Steven and Ridley are still making bangers in their 80s!”

“He psyched himself out because it’s his last movie but he doesn’t have to stop. He could make 10 more after this.”

These are the bleatings of incredibly entitled and incredibly boorish fans.

Writer Neil Gaiman said all this better than me when answering a fan question about George R.R. Martin’s final novels in the Song of Fire and Ice series: “George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.”

Pretty simple right?

Tarantino made a bunch of movies you like and he’s maybe going to make one more but after working toward getting The Movie Critic together he decided (for some unknown reason) that this wasn’t it.

Be sad about that? Sure. Join me in the traditional rending of garments and sitting in ashes. I weep with you that we shall probably not get a new Tarantino next year.

Go online and whine that a guy who can do anything he wants with his life is choosing to do something else? How about no. Be better than that.

Also, suggesting that Tarantino psyched himself out is pitiful stuff. You don’t know why he does anything anymore than I do. Maybe an actor he wanted turned it down. Maybe he looked at the script again and saw something he couldn’t fix on set. Maybe a trusted reader looked at it and felt it wasn’t there and Tarantino got spooked.

Maybe he wants to summer in France. Maybe he wants to catch up on The Simpsons.

Quentin Tarantino does not owe you a movie and he can do what he wants with his life.

Longtime Tarantino fans ought to know better. There was supposed to be a movie about the Vega brothers (which would have existed in the same universe as his early movies). And he talked a lot about Kill Bill 3 which would center on the daughter of one of The Bride’s victims.

And, ultimately, we got bupkis.

That’s the way it goes creatively. Having a cool idea is not the same thing and making a multi-million dollar movie. We all have cool ideas, few of us can successfully turn them into novels, tv shows, or movies.

Finally, this idea that Tarantino imposing a 10 movie rule on himself is a bad idea comes from people with no skin in the game who have not considered the full ramifications of a creative life.

The idea seems to be, “Just keep making them and everything will be fine.”

Except, that’s absolutely not true. Directors and writers get thrown out of the business or thrown into director jail all the time.

Ask Coppola about life after Godfather Part 3. That’s a perfect example of a movie everyone thought they wanted until it actually came out.

Brian DePalma, one of the greats, was out after his flops in the 1990s. Same goes for William Friedkin.

And, today, it can happen not because of a flop but simply because the vocal online audience turns on someone. I’ll be interested to see if Taika Waititi gets another shot at a big Hollywood production.

Same goes for the Game of Thrones producers who delivered an (admittedly) bad final season of a great show and are now permanently shunned.

You are only as good as your last one. And all of these “fans” who are upset that Tarantino isn’t delivering the next thrillotainment will toss him to the wolves the very second he screens a dog instead of classic.

Hey, I would take 10 more Tarantino movies too. But I hope I have enough respect for the man and the process to live with whatever he decides to do with his one life.

I think we should start with a song. 

Have you ever heard Common People? Originally by the band Pulp I first heard a cover by the great William Shatner and it struck a deep chord. 

The song is about a rich girl who wants to sleep with a poor boy because she thinks he’s fashionable and dangerous. The boy rejects her. She can’t really live in his world. 

Rent a flat above a shop
Cut your hair and get a job
Smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school
But still you’ll never get it right
‘Cause when you’re laid in bed at night
Watching roaches climb the wall
If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah

The men and women in La Chimera are not exactly common people but they are strikingly poor and they have a fine plan to make themselves rich. 

They’re graverobbers. 

Despite making decent money from their illegal activities, poverty abounds. The movie suggests that most of them are poor because they refuse regular jobs. Arthur, the protagonist, does this early on. 

In their poverty though, everyone seems to live for the moment. I’m not sure I would trade places with these people but Arthur’s group is the life of the party. Anytime they get together and drink or dance or even when they are stealing from the dead it looks like they’re having a hell of a good time. 

Even Arthur, who is hung up on an old girlfriend and beaten down by life and has the mood of a whipped dog sometimes seems to find joy. He has a sweet romance with a young mom and tries to maintain friendships with his neer-do-well friends and a woman who is essentially his ex-mother-in-law.

If crime and romance were the sum total of the La Chimera that would be enough. 

There’s bits of an intriguing crime story here that plays out throughout the flick and reaches a sensible conclusion. The romance too, rises and falls and finds a comfortable ending. 

And then there is the spirituality that also flows through the movie. 

One character wakes another up while he was sleeping. “Now you will never know how the dream ends,” he chuckles. 

At another point the group of grave robbers encounters an honest woman who curses them. 

And Arthur has a spiritual connection with a statue that the group finds in a grave. 

“Human eyes were not meant to see this,” he says. 

There is also an otherworldly encounter that I am doing my best not to spoil. But when it happened it took me from amusement into another realm. 

I knew I was in good hands early on after Arthur has a fight on a train and is watched closely by a row of travelers who then disappear into their cabins when he turns to look at them. 

And then this encounter later turned the screw. 

The movie ends with a scene that has deep meaning. Not just for Arthur but for us. 

Josh O’Connor is impossibly cool as Arthur, you will want to run away with Carol Duarte’s Italia and Vincenzo Nemolato immediately made me want to be his best friend. Even if he was, perhaps, a beast. 

And, Isabella Rossellini, is pitch perfect as an Italian grandmother who wants to ditch her daughters and adopt Arthur and Italia. No surprise there, Rossellini is a screen legend, but she can still grab you with just a look. 

Director Alice Rohrwacher and writers Carmela Covino and Marco Pettenello have delivered a low key masterpiece here. 

Haunting, lyrical and full of mystery.

Every film geek you know is gonna have this high on their lists at the end of the year. But, they are not wrong.

(Spoilers)

There is much talk of roots in this flick and these particular roots are not hard to spot. 

John Wick, certainly. There is more than one John Wick joke in the film and its visual sensibility sometimes match those bombastic action classics. 

But there is also a host of Kung Fu DNA in this, along with exploitation cinema, Batman/Daredevil super-hero stories, Indian philosophy, politics, mythology and the classic Jungian hero’s journey. 

Anytime you see your hero die and go in the water only to be saved/reborn so that he can finish his story just know you are in classic hero territory.

Also, this is a movie where one of the main bad guy decides to settle things with a fist fight instead of, you know, shooting our hero when he gets off an elevator. 

This is also a movie where we get a solid training montage, a wise mentor, a rigged fight club and a street dog that can be trained to be a critical part of an assasination plot. 

Are these cliches? I would argue that they are only cliches if you are bored. They’re only cliches if they don’t work. If you get upset at sports movie cliches when you went to a sports movie the problem most likely is not the movie. 

In the first act an all too human Dev Patel executes a plan that (spoilers) completely fails. 

He is rescued by a group of outcasts who train his body, his mind and his heart to become the hero India needs. Hmmm, hero may not be the right word. Instrument of vengeance? Yeah, this is a flick where the main character is an instrument of vengeance. 

Any story where the wise mentor gives the hero an LCD kind of drug that would kill a normal man and says, “the pain will last until it is done teaching you” is my kind of grimy, glorious entertainment.

(I didn’t take notes and I can’t find the specific quote but that’s close enough.)

Anyway, as you can tell this was the right movie at the right time for me. It’s got its flaws, particularly in the editing and some of the direction. 

There were spots where I wanted to yell, “just stop cutting and shaking the camera!”

Trust your shot, let it breathe and let me enjoy the furious movie violence. 

And a car is introduced in the movie for no particular reason except that the characters will need to use it in a chase a few scenes later in the movie. 

But the annoyances were small and everytime the movie started to go astray it did something else that made me deliriously happy. 

That car chase bit redeems itself by having that particular vehicle equipped with a turbo burst. Dumb? Absolutely. Fun? You bet!

An elevator knife fight is one kind of highlight and Dev opening up his chest and showing you his cosmic heart is another. 

I want to see another one of these.

The story lends itself to a singular kind of trilogy. you can do anything you want with it. And it might still work.

Let’s cast Keanu as the bad guy. Or set it in the ancient past.

The ending might suggest that a direct sequel is not possible. But the heroes of myth never really die. 

A western for people who don’t like westerns. 

McCabe is a slick operator who, with the help of a woman who is too good for him, builds a brothel and becomes one of the leading men in a town that is slowly establishing itself in the frigid wilderness. 

Except for McCabe being an unapologetic pimp I was amused at how much of the structure of this closely matched any traditional western. 

The difference, perhaps, is in how poor and rough everything looks. You can feel the squalor and desperation in the west. You know, if that’s your kink. 

The film takes plenty of time to let its characters interact with each other and play little slice of life scenes. It’s fun if not particularly action packed. 

The movie picks up when Mrs. Miller comes on the scene and becomes the brains behind McCabe’s business. Here again the movie is satisfied just to give you character work. 

McCabe’s ego is as puffed up as the giant coat he wears. Miller has dreams that are too big for the society in which she lives. 

When he foolishly tries to bargain with the mining company trouble comes calling. 

This is the set up for a fairly traditional western. And, in some ways that’s exactly what it is.

Folks, Warren Beatty gives the 70s mumbly version of a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do speech to Miller in this thing. 

And (Spoilers) he takes a gun and goes to confront the bad guys. One of the bad guys kills an innocent man for no reason so that you know he’s bad. 

Meanwhile, like most Altman movies there are whole worlds happening at the edge of the frame. 

I like how the movie establishes through two vignettes that this is a lawless society. At one point McCabe meets with a lawyer to get some help for his troubles. 

The lawyer offers him a fine speech about justice, the law and America. And it’s all hokem for the rubes. This is cinema from the 70s man and we’re all on our own. 

Anyway, I thought it looked good. I was annoyed as I almost always am by Altman’s decisions around sound. And there was entirely too much Leonard Cohen in this. 

But, but, but those are just minor complaints , this is still clearly a classic and fine filmmaking. If it’s not a revelation in 2024 that may only be because Deadwood explored every theme here in depth over three seasons and movie. 

But Altman and company got there first.

We must first come to recognize the brilliance of writer Frank Herbert who created a new world with his words.

His story was so powerful that it influenced George Lucas’s Star Wars (which also owes a deep dept to the films of Akira Kurosawa) and it captured the imaginations of filmmakers for decades.

His dialogue so vivid that it could be written on stone tablets. It’s been 30 years or so since I first read Dune but the phrase Fear is the Mindkiller along with the whole wonderful speech lives with me still.

Filmmakers have attempted to ride the sandworms of Dune since the novel was released. Alejandro Jodorwsky’s adaptation failed to manifest in the 1970s. Instead we have a brilliant documentary about what might have been.

David Lynch succeeded in the 1980s and that movie has its fans though I and Lynch himself are not among them.

John Harrison made a miniseries of it in 2000 for the SciFi channel. It is a faithful adaptation and used cutting edge technology known as CGI to create the fantastic images required by the story.

And now with two films Director Denis Villeneuve has given us a perfect vision of Herbert’s masterpiece.

Paired with a strong writer, as he was with Sicario, and Villeneuve can work wonders. But he also wrapped himself up so thouroughly in his visuals that he gave us the muddled and boring mess that was Blade Runner 2049.

The thing about creative people is that in order to do the great work in front of them they must believe that they are the most important part of the process.

If the director doesn’t know that in his soul then it will show in the work. The same goes for every other man and woman in the process from the actors, to the costumers to the writers.

As a movie fan you can believe whatever you wish, I think the auteur theory is nonsense, but I understand why a director needs it to be true.

So, this version of Dune is filtered through Villeneuve particular interests. I suspect he loves Stanley Kubrick and Michael Mann a lot.

Each scene is visually striking and lovingly crafted and combined with the music and Herbert’s story you get a classic of science fiction storytelling and Hollywood myth making.

Timothy Chalemet makes his bones with this one. I thought he was too slight physically to make Paul work but I was wrong. He’s everything his biggest fans said he was and maybe more.

The rest of the cast pulls off the impossible, turning bold and, at times, ridiculously evil characters into fantastic and compelling humans.

Villeneuve can get what he needs from all of them with just a look.

And we must credit Villeneuve for embracing the weirdness at the heart of Dune.

Not just the sandworms and the religious ceremonies but choosing to have a fetus telepathically speak to her mother. Or letting the fate of the universe be decided in a knife fight only after a long military campaign.

These things are ridiculous but they completely work in the film. The fetus conversations are strange, terrifying and funny all at once.

And it mostly leaves the book’s fundamental critiques of organized religion and facism intact.

Dune, the novel, was so successful that it spawned 28 follow up books written first by Frank Herbert and then by his son and author Kevin J. Anderson.

When Dune Part Two ends the conclusion is satisfying and open to a sequel. Sometimes this can be frustrating, I threw my popcorn at the screen when John Wick 3 ended that way.

But that’s not the case here. Here it is the promise of another wonderful film.

It left me looking forward to at least one more trip to the desert and to the stars with Villeneuve.

Some great movies understand their characters and story so well they can get the job done with speed and joy. 

Blackberry never takes a breath, moving from one crisis to the next and then to the end like an express train trying to make up time. But it’s a movie that understands what it wants to do, hits the target, and then bows out perfectly. 

Sometimes it is a very good sign when your director is also one of the screenwriters. This feels like a script where everything, from the opening moments to the final seconds was both well thought out and carefully considered. 

It’s also a movie and a script that killed all the distractions and blind alleys that can bog down a story. 

For instance, the main characters are always at work, they are always moving from one challenge to the next and the elements of the downfall of Research in Motion are seeded in the opening moments. 

We never see any wives, girlfriends or anything close to a personal conflict for the entire flick.

Instead, we get the spectacular Glenn Howerton, of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, playing corporate rage monster, Jim Basillie. The Harvard educated (just ask him!) executive spotted a way to the top by hitching himself to an engineer who was about to invent the future of cell phones. 

Jay Baruchel plays the meek man, Mike Lazaridus, who had the talent but maybe not the ambition or the cunning to turn RIM into the corporate behemoth that created the Blackberry. 

Writer/Director Matt Johnson plays the goofy best friend who tried to protect Baruchel and stand up and speak for him even years after he should know Baruchel doesn’t need the help. 

So this is a classic case of watching a scrappy company come together, overcome obstacles and rise to the top of the corporate heap. And then, spoilers, flame out.

Again, it’s hard to explain just how good this movie is at showing how the characters have changed or stayed the same over time. You know everything you need to about Lazaridus in the latter days by seeing his new hairstyle. And the movie is smart enough not to gild the lily. 

No one ever says, “you’ve changed man,” but we know it. 

What’s especially fun though, is watching this group of guys who thought they were killers react to the asteroid that was the iPhone. 

Laziridus has nothing but denial and hubris. I loved watching him fume to Verizon about being the guy who invented the whole category and that he knows what’s best. 

Basillie is already checked out, trying to maneuver a deal with the National Hockey League, and the movie gives you a choice in a private plane that shows just how distracted the Co-CEO was. 

It’s rare that something comes along that just kills everyone else in the product category. But the iPhone was to computer and phone and camera salesman what the automobile was to horseman. The end of all things. 

The screenplay suggests that in the beginning Laziridus was the kind of engineer who would never accept crummy work. He was actually offended by the phrase ‘good enough.’

In its last days, BlackBerry’s mantra among the engineers was, ‘good enough, let’s ship this.’ The movie even calls back an issue from the opening scene to show just how far the company fell.

The secret of movies like these is not whether or not they are true (a movie can’t compress the complexities of any true story much less a true story that takes place over a decade) but whether it feels true. 

Despite a few scenes with Basille late in the flick that I didn’t buy the rest of this felt like the gospel. 

From The Creation to Armageddon.

As Okja unfolded I kept thinking of the comics I read in my youth. American comics were always bigger than superheroes with plenty of crime, autobiography and horror out there to please genre fans. 

This reminded me of manga. That’s not a perfect analogy as there are all kinds of comics from Japan in an infinite number of styles. But there are sensibilities that tend come from particulars parts of the world given their creators and audiences. England and France tend toward strange science fiction and fantasy. The manga I drifted toward was either giant robots or samurai epics

But Okja has that Manga sensibility with their slice of life and childhood adventure work. It’s in the rhythm of it, the colors and the outlandish characters. 

Director and writer Bong Joon-ho is joined by Jon Ronson to tell a story about a mountain girl, Mika (Ahn Seo-hyun) who raises and loves a superpig. 

The pig is bound for a slaughterhouse but Mika won’t accept that and a high adventure ensues as she tries to rescue her friend. 

It’s a wild, scary and ridiculous story. Okja is the kind of movie that lets Tilda Swinton play both her familiar pathetic insecure corporate ceo and, later, she gets to be pure capitalist evil. 

Paul Dano is a very calm animal rights terrorist who might be lying to himself about his commitment to nonviolence. 

And Jake Gyllenhaal is a tv personality / mad scientist in a role that reminded me of Nic Cage at his wildest. One more scene with him in this flick would have been too much but he takes every chance he gets to drive the acting to an 11. 

Bong Joon-ho long ago earned his stripes as a director. I love telling the kids that I watched his first breakthrough movie, Memories of Murder, on DVD 20 years ago. 

And his adaptation of an actual manga, Snowpiercer, is another fave. 

There was a lot to like here but what I enjoyed the most was how sly this movie is. Watch how the animal rights activists introduce themselves. 

And when all his corporate characters need to watch something on a computer screen Bong recreates the famous Pete Souza photograph of the White House situation room from the night special forces took down Osama Bin Laden. 

A lesser director would have really drawn attention to it. But Bong does it and moves on. If you caught it you will cackle. But if you blink you might miss it. 

And he also uses his powers to move you. In one scene a group of characters are leaving a building. As they do we can hear what’s happening behind them again and again and again. 

Bong’s work fell off the map for me until he resurfaced in America with the brilliant Parasite and rightfully won an Oscar for best picture. That left this, Mother and The Host in a blind spot for me.

I probably need to quit procrastinating. Everything this guy makes is somewhere close to perfect.

This may be the most metal movie ever made. 

I want a van with The Kurgan killing Ramirez painted on one side and the final sword fight under the neon red Silverado sign on the other. 

That would be most awesome. 

Ok. let’s back up and talk about all the ways this movie is a heavy metal song brought to life. 

With a mix of present day scenes and flashbacks, the first half of the movie introduces us to Connor MacLeod, born in the highlands of Scotland in 1518 and he is still alive. 

Connor is presented as a mystery and a dangerous, deadly man. He’s is played in a sort of grimy glory by Christopher Lambert. That sense of danger is missing in most of the sequels and the TV show. But the movie really does suggest that an immortal warrior might cut off your head if you push him too far. 

There’s a scene where he has enough of some cops questioning him and tosses them around in a holding cell. Everybody in the station cheers. 

Anyway, the movie shifts to the past and every one of these scenes are magic. 

1) Connor dies in battle (killed by the flick’s big bad looking like a Frank Frazetta painting come to life) but he’s immortal so he comes back to life. 

2) The people in his village won’t have none of this obvious devilment in their town and they want to burn him alive but a town elder takes pity on him and settles for banishing him. And how amazing is it that the movie recognizes that anyone who is different is either going to get killed by small town folk or at the very least run out of town. 

3) Connor starts a small farm and marries a woman and lives away from people and enjoys his young marriage. He lives forever, she grows old and he loves her to her last day. It’s incredibly romantic in a movie that is mostly concerns with sweaty guys trying to decapitate each other. 

4) Sean (by God) Connery shows up wearing the most ostentatious outfit you have ever seen and announces that he is Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez and is the Chief Metallurgist to King Charles V of Spain. 

Ok this is taking too long. Let’s skip to the chorus. Short version Sean Connery mentors Connor, explains that they are both immortals and that there are rules. 

If your head comes away from your body you are dead. When you die there is a quickening which involves a bunch of lightning and screaming about power and is as sexual as it sounds. 

And eventually there will be a gathering of immortals in which everyone will have to fight and only one will remain. He will be given unlimited power. The movie is never too clear on how this part works even when it explains it in the final few minutes of the film. 

In the end, There Can Be Only One. 

So let’s point out a couple of things. 

First this movie does all of this, explains the rules, has plots involving multiple characters in the past and the present and hits nearly every moment in one hour and 50 minutes. 

And it just absolutely wails. No false notes, nothing that stands out as wrong even as I’m watching it decades later. 

Like, the movie takes the time to show you what happens when an immortal gets drunk and loses a duel … and then gets back up and loses again. 

It takes time to at least suggest that Connor is a good guy down through the ages. In a deleted scene that is in the movie depending on which version you watch he saves a little girl from The Nazi’s. In 1985 she’s his friend and working as his secretary. 

It probably shouldn’t necessarily spend as much time with the cops who are trying to arrest Connor for murder as it does. Buttttt, the movie just stops for a beat and has a guy at a newspaper stand just absolutely destroy them in one of the funniest 60 seconds I think I have seen this year. 

(I always forget that moment and it always makes me cackle when it shows up.) 

A lot of this would be cut out of a modern movie. There are all these shaggy subplots that wouldn’t make it today. They don’t really add much but they don’t hurt the movie either. Such is the power of a good idea mixed with a good cast. And don’t forget, it’s a movie that gives you an amazing tagline built into the script. 

How many times have two guys shouted “There can be only one!” at each other over the last 40 years. A line that must be up there with “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya,” and “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse,” in the diologue Mount Rushmore. 

And then there’s the Kurgan. You know how most modern movies spend a lot of time explaining how the villian has “very important reasons” for doing whatever it is they are doing. To the point where people will say, actually I think the hero was wrong. 

Highlander will have none of that. Thank you very much. According to Ramírez The Kurgan comes from a tribe of Russians who threw babies to hungry dogs for fun. 

FOR FUN! 

Every time you see him in the movie you will absolutely believe that is true. This guy makes nuns cry and runs over pedestrians for a laugh. 

In the past he’s a monstrous death dealer. In the present he wears a leather jacket and is basically what your mom was scared of during that childhood vacation in New York City. 

Also, the film is from the 1980s so NYC is presented as the ninth circle of hell. 

Anyway, the Kurgan is evil. The Kurgan is crazy. If the Kurgan is the last man standing when all the other immortals are dead it will doom humanity to an eternity of darkness. You know, for reasons. 

And the Kurgan gets to be crazy and loud and obnoxious to Connor in a church (immortals don’t fight each other on Holy ground). 

And every bit of it works so well because by the end of this thing you just know Connor is gonna end this guy. 

The final fight fulfills the movies promise. The soundtrack is all by Queen. It’s Epic. 

Anyway, this is a nearly perfect movie. 

I’m sure they must have made a bajillion sequels, even though the movie’s plot demands that you can’t really make a sequel. 

But I’m sure the sequels were great. I mean given how much of this is picture perfect, how well thought out all the rules are … well there’s just no way they can screw this up. 

Right?

Exceptional filmmaking from Director Danny Boyle that does a lot of things very well. 

Before we get there let’s note that the book was written by Vikas Swarup, the script came from Simon Beaufoy and the movie credits a co-director Loveleen Tandan

First it shows the horrible conditions of India’s slums. Then it makes a game show one of the most tense things you have ever seen. 

And it handles a flash back story deftly while also keeping a pair of star crossed lovers apart so that we will be thrilled when they finally kiss. 

This is a movie that gives itself a highlight reel at the end showing all the things the main character overcame to get his sweet fairy tale ending. That shouldn’t work, and it completely does. 

Honestly, the only director who ever did ending montages successfully (meaning I didn’t throw things at the screen) was Sylvester Stallone in the Rocky flicks. 

As Slumdog Millionaire hit its second hour I thought it dragged a bit and then Jamal (Dev Patel) answered a question in a unique way and I was back in it. After it happened the movie just sailed all the way home to its happy ending. Then they give us a dance number too. 

Boyle broke through with Trainspotting (it came out when I was in high school) and really made good with 28 Days Later. 

He’s now in the sequel era of a four decade career making another Trainspotting in 2017 and planning a third sequel that will begin it’s own trilogy for 28 Days Later.

I certainly don’t begrudge him any of that. Very few filmmakers can turn down sequels especially if there seems to be a willing audience for the work. 

Still, I would take another one of these too. I hope there is a great book out there that Danny is just now picking up off the stands.