While a film is often judged by the way that it is received during the Awards season there are times when the best feeling in the world is to sit down and watch a film that is never going to be even m
Kill Zone
Donnie Yen December: Week 3
Hello, everyone, and welcome once again to the internets movie review column that has never been in a brutal, alleyway knife fight with, well, anyone, The Gratuitous B-Movie Column, and I am your host Bryan Kristopowitz. In this issue, issue number five hundred and eighty-one, Donnie Yen December continues with the crime flick
Kill Zone, which, as far as I can tell, hit home video in the United States in earlyish September 2006.
Kill Zone
Kill Zone, also known as
SPL: Kill Zone and directed and co-written by Yip Wai Shun/Wilson Yip, is an oddly compelling crime movie that, I guess, has some serious badass action scenes in it because it stars Donnie Yen, Sammo Hung, Simon Yam, and Jing Wu. If those guys weren’t in the movie (well, Simon Yam doesn’t engage in the same kind of action as the other three in the movie so maybe I shouldn’t include him in this),
Me, I ve barely touched a joystick in anger since they took the last
Galaga stand-up out of the Aro Street Fish and Chip shop. But, I watch and read enough to know that gaming is still home to some of the most talented, creative and driven writers and directors working in any entertainment industry. Which, maybe, is the crux of the problem. Every video game is designed to tell the same story in a hundred different ways. The more unpredictable and difficult to master a game is, the more it will attract a following. But movies are pretty much the opposite. By the time you ve sat through the 90-second trailer of any action movie, you basically know the entire plot and nothing will surprise you too much.
Here s what s playing â JAN. 1-7 â at movie theaters and on virtual cinemas in the Berkshires and environs. Where films have been reviewed, the capsules include the name of film critic and the day the full review was posted on berkshireeagle.com. All reviews are by Associated Press critics.
76 DAYS
On January 23rd, 2020, China locked down Wuhan, a city of 11 million, to combat the emerging COVID-19 outbreak. Set deep inside the frontlines of the crisis, this documentary tells indelible human stories at the center of this pandemicâfrom a woman begging in vain to bid a final farewell to her father, a grandpa with dementia searching for his way home, a couple anxious to meet their newborn, to a nurse determined to return personal items to families of the deceased. These raw and intimate stories bear witness to the death and rebirth of a city under a 76-day lockdown, and to the human resilience that persists in times of profound tragedy. 1:33. VC
Twenty-twenty has been a year of disappointment for all of us except for Jeff Bezos, who gets to make money during a pandemic by exploiting his workers and avoiding taxes. Much has been said about the state of cinema this year and just how much of a disaster releases have been, what with arthouses and multiplexes alike having to close down for the safety of their workers and audiences alike. But this isn’t to say that there hasn’t been a lot of beauty in the world of film amid all the garbage we’ve faced.
With all of us stuck at home and new streaming options like the glorious HBO Max and the disastrous Quibi, the lines between what cinema actually is and isn t have started to blur together. Is watching a miniseries the same as watching a movie if you binge it all and there are no plans for a bad expansion? (See