One Shot (2021) Review

rating: ****

the story: A suddenly high value terrorist suspect is the subject of a highly coordinated extraction.

review: The concept of a film being, or appearing to be, one continuous tracking shot has apparently now reached the point where it can be taken for granted.  The likes of Birdman, 1917, Russian Ark, and Crazy Samurai have been joined by One Shot, which if it has been greeted at all, then as a glorified cinematic first-person-shooter experience, and yet the results are as thrilling as any other attempt of the technique yet attempted.

Part of the problem is that it stars Scott Adkins, best known as a stuntman or as the lead in direct-to-video releases, the bargain basement of the medium.  As far as I know, this is my first Adkins film, and I found him to be a riveting action hero, very much akin to Cole Hauser's performances in the TV series Yellowstone, the new "alpha male" template of popular entertainment, though Adkins achieves it mostly by surviving against all odds, being the de facto lead character, and engaging in at least one brawl that calls on his stunt experience.

Supporting him are Ashley Greene (billed here with her married name Ashley Greene Khoury) and Ryan Phillippe, a long way away from his potential as a new leading man some twenty years back, and not even getting to play a particularly heroic part (a glorified bureaucrat who stands in Adkins' way to get the job done).

The story is compelling and the odds are long.  The alleged terrorist in sympathetic in apparently the same way as the lead in The Mauritanian, claiming innocence deep into the film.  It doesn't even particularly matter to the actual terrorists arriving in a horde to break him free if he's what he appears to be.  They need him; it's that simple.  And so they throw their massive numbers (don't spend too much time worrying about how they amassed so many without anyone noticing), and it becomes a Black Hawk Down war incident.  Of course we'll route Adkins on!  We haven't had a guy like him in ages, and he's as close to an everyman there's ever been, although he's never less than compelling.

Bonus material insists there are points in which the footage breaks tracking, and yet it's virtually impossible to tell with the results.  If that's the only reason you choose to watch, fine, because it's impressive filmmaking by default, all the more given the constant fighting that necessitates constant choreography without ever bogging down.  Details lost in narrative are picked up everywhere else.

This is not a B movie.  In a different time it would've been a massive hit.  It should develop a following eventually.  It deserves one.

The Contractor (2022) Review

rating: ****

the story: A Green Beret is drummed out of the service, but ends up right back in the thick of it anyway.

review: Quite unexpectedly, a spiritual sequel to Hell or High Water.  Chris Pine stars as the Green Beret, who ends up drafted into a black ops outfit, although the results are less military maneuvering and more a spy game, in which Pine discovers he can't trust the outfit that recruited him.  Along the way, he's got to figure out if he can trust a colleague played by Ben Foster, his costar in High Water, which ought to be considered one of the key selling points of The Contractor.

Pine's charisma was a little long in coming to be recognized by filmmakers, but eventually, with his casting as Kirk in the J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot, he at last became a movie star, and yet it ended up becoming a recurring problem: directors still had a hard time figuring out what to do with him.  Hell or High Water found a perfect fit, the rare antihero (a bank robber) who was actually sympathetic, a response to the Great Recession that cast the whole idea back to the feel of the Great Depression, or even Robin Hood.  Foster was the unambiguously less sympathetic cohort then, and he is again here, although he has a better shot at redeeming himself this time around.  Less so Kiefer Sutherland, in a rare bid to reclaim some of the shine he himself earned somewhat belatedly in the TV series 24, cast squarely as the villain.  Eddie Marsan, whose career often veers between such roles, has one of his welcome turns among the angels, although it's an unfortunately brief one, while Gillian Jacobs has a similarly thankless nod as Pine's wife.

But the compromise is worth it, as The Contractor works best as an atmospheric tour of Pine's troubles, spending little time worrying about things like dialogue, as he struggles along the labyrinth of doubt, accented frequently by the bum knee he needs to periodically inject just to keep functioning.  This is an aging action hero, after all, forced to control uncomfortable realities at every turn.

I think, given time, the results will garner greater interest, if only as a companion to Pine and Foster's previous work together.  At the moment it needs struggle against a shifting market, between a box office that is increasingly geared almost exclusively to big budget blockbusters and streaming services either desperately competing for the same aesthetic or proudly boasting the opposite, with everything else in between being ignored, such as the notion that movie stars exist and can carry their own material, same as they ever did.  

And Chris Pine, despite every adversity, is still standing, thank you.

Lincoln (2012) Review

rating: ***

the story: Lincoln pushes for the 13th Amendment.

the review: Gosh, so I spent a decade fearing I wouldn't like this one.  Sometimes, or perhaps very often, when you think you're going to have a certain reaction, whether good or bad, you end up having it regardless of the material.  In this instance, I ended up with exactly the reaction I always thought I would to Steven Spielberg's Lincoln.

Chalk this up to star Daniel Day-Lewis.  Beloved of Hollywood insiders but rarely outside of it, my first exposure to him was his Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York, which was a wildly entertaining performance.  Then it was There Will Be Blood, a film I thought I would greatly enjoy, and was one of my most anticipated experiences of 2007, which instead became perhaps my greatest disappointment that year, when my impression of Day-Lewis greatly soured.  He's the kind of actor who immerses himself in his work, who reinvents himself with every performance, or so the story goes, and yet the disappointment of Blood was how much obvious connective tissue there was to Gangs, and none of it positive.  It was as if he dialed in on the villainous tones but lost all intonation.  Where his Bill chewed all scenery in delicious fashion, his Daniel Plainview was a lethargic inverse whose total dominance of Blood was unearned, with no chance at being checked.  He was among the antiheroes who came to dominate critical taste in the last few decades not because he deserved to, but because critics had fixated on the idea and wouldn't let go.

Lincoln is certainly no antihero, today.  Although in his time he was.  Which is perhaps one of the reasons Day-Lewis ended up playing him.  Spielberg's take is a riff on the popular history book Team of Rivals, which centers on Lincoln's political acumen, which the subsequent film zeroes in on as he desperately seeks approval for the amendment that will guarantee freedom for slaves.  He stoops to all available levels in the process, which is not to say his cause was not worthy nor his tactics justified, but nowhere is the inherent mythic nobility on display, and yes, that clip shown at the Oscars in which Lincoln exhorts his cabinet in an impassioned demand to fulfill the vision "Now! Now! Now!" really the central lasting impression...

In choosing such a narrow focus, and perhaps in selecting (there was much development of the project along the way, and so it really was a choice) playwright Tony Kushner over, say, Aaron Sorkin, who had made politics a truly operatic affair in The West Wing and would later become as well known a screenwriter in film, there is no chance to discover the man even as the myth is gently exploded, so that man nor myth, as the man lunges in one direction or another, receives proper focus.  At times it seems Day-Lewis is up to the challenge, when Spielberg, Kushner, and the actor are up to the challenge of the folksy charm of the man, but in their efforts to wring drama from him, they lose sight of it, and the wrinkly profiles they find of Day-Lewis, which are so often fixated on, are subsequently lost to clearer gazes, late in the film, in which Day-Lewis instead looks like, well, Day-Lewis.

Surrounding this is a host of incredible talent, from Tommy Lee Jones perhaps for the first time sinking into his aging gravitas, Sally Field asking no quarter as Mary Todd Lincoln, David Strathairn doing all the heavy lifting, James Spader playful in all the right ways for a change, Hal Holbrook, and a trio of young actors on the cusp of greatness, if film would let them: Joseph Gordon Levitt, the acknowledged preferential favorite; Lee Pace, so versatile and yet forever taken for granted; and Adam Driver in a thankless glorified cameo, years before anyone truly recognized his talent.

And there are others, curiously the black actors (Gloria Reuban, David Oyelowo) in roles Spielberg has no earthly idea what to do with among them, worth picking out.

The whole affair comes off as more a companion piece to Spielberg's earlier and far more triumphant Amistad, with far less historic grandeur to its credit and yet so much more power and cinematic achievement...This was the point where Spielberg really started to worry about his continued standing in Hollywood royalty, where he stopped trusting himself and instead just started doing what he thought his peers wanted to see, all the more bizarre from a director who had previously made his name on things audiences seemingly demanded...So much of modern film ignores the American heritage so passionately embraced in the past, it's all the more a shame that the most famous recent example has no idea what it's really trying to accomplish, other than demonstrate saintly Lincoln in his last desperate push for history, above and beyond, y'know, ending the pesky war around it.

And yet Spielberg's peers have been so driven to distraction concerning political maneuvering, I suppose, in the grand scheme, it's only fitting that such are the results of the effort.

The Irishman (2019) Review

rating: ****

the story: An aging Frank Sheeran reflects on his life highlighted, among other things, by a close association with Jimmy Hoffa.

review: Martin Scorsese ignited a firestorm of controversy when he lamented the current state of filmmaking while releasing The Irishman, which was done on the streaming platform Netflix rather than exclusively in theaters.  Scorsese is a filmmaking master, so the fact that he had to use Netflix at all is either high praise for Netflix or faint praise, and an indictment of current pop culture's appreciation for talent on the level of Scorsese.  Much of the initial reception of The Irishman centered either on this or the de-aging CGI work stars Robert De Niro and Al Pacino experience to tell the stories of Sheeran and Hoffa.

To get that other point out of the way, the de-aging only matters if you really think it has to.  Because it shouldn't.  It should have no relevance to your appreciation of the results.

The results of the film itself have often been described as an elegiac response to Scorsese's career, often exploring the life of mob figures, in pop culture most famously in Goodfellas, which for me has long been the least interesting of his films, the most obvious, least nuanced, which should otherwise not be words associated with a filmmaker of his caliber.

It's a long film, but it doesn't really feel like it is.  I had previously read the book upon which it's based, which is sometimes itself considered somewhat a work of fiction, as it ultimately turns on whether or not you believe Sheeran's confessions, about being responsible for Hoffa's disappearance (by being his assassin) or even the suggestion that he played a role in JFK's assassination (by helping ship the weapons responsible).  The latter is heavily downplayed in the movie, but the Hoffa angle is clearly the focus, other than Sheeran's relationship with Russell Bufalino, a mob figure who ages along with him, whose aging is itself the most visible element of the film's true message, a meditation on aging, on the rare instance of Hollywood allowing the elderly to be the point of a drama without necessary fixating on the inevitable death, but rather the decline itself.

Bufalino is played by Joe Pesci, a familiar figure from the Scorsese catalog, playing well against type as a restrained figure, possibly because he's the one most reflecting that element, a figure being chauffeured on his final rounds in a road trip that helps begin the film's journey.  Some critics have focused on the significant lingering shots that begin and end the film, but I think it's inside the car with Pesci, Robert De Niro, and the actresses playing their wives, as Pesci asserts his no-smoking policy that's just as promptly ignored, and Pesci doesn't pitch his usual fit...

De Niro is the star, and oddly, when we see him at his oldest he looks his least convincing.  I don't even understand how that's possible.  He's the obvious target for criticizing the de-aging effects, but the scene where his younger self stomps someone, which some say looks least convincing, is most important as the moment Sheeran's daughter realizes she wants nothing to do with him.  

Pacino doesn't sell Jimmy Hoffa so much as deliver another Al Pacino performance, and since it's been so long since we've gotten one of those, who's to really argue about this?  The idea of Hoffa, now, means the mystery of the disappearance, which is what the film features, because his image as the ultimate union boss is no longer relevant.  

Arguably, the real draw here is of course getting to see De Niro and Pacino act together.  After decades of being described as the best actors of their generation, they shared the screen in Heat, which ended up being better known for the wide ensemble around them, and then Righteous Kill, which no one counts.  Here it's almost all De Niro and Pacino, delivering their signature performances.

Which is not to say there isn't plenty of talent around them.  Besides Pesci there's Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin, Harvey Keitel (another Scorsese veteran, his De Niro before De Niro), Jesse Plemons, and Jack Huston, playing and sounding like Bobby Kennedy but otherwise recognizable.  Someday he'll be considered a major selling point all his own, given the opportunities.  

So much of the past fifty years has been chasing The Godfather, and arguably Scorsese has been doing exactly that for much of his career, and The Irishman is probably the closest he'll ever come, with a story that follows real events and therefore carrying more than just great acting and mob intrigue, and on that score weighing nicely against the iconic Marlon Brando performance, the breakthrough Pacino.  

It's too early to say for certain.  But it's another great film from Scorsese.  Not his best.  For me those are Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Departed, Silence.  But darn close.  In the conversation.  The one that matters.

Space Jam (1996) Review

rating: ***

the story: Michael Jordan ends up playing basketball with the animated cast of Looney Tunes.

review: I didn't actually get around to watching this until this year.  Given how much my family enjoyed Looney Tunes, this seems a little absurd.  Given how much at least one member of the family was into basketball in the '90s, it's doubly absurd.  As it turns out, Space Jam is great as a time capsule for that '90s basketball era, as it's pretty entertaining otherwise.

If you honestly expect more than that, you're asking too much.  Michael Jordan was one of the cultural touchstones of the era, when athlete celebrities were all over the pop landscape.  You would be equally foolish to expect great acting from him.  That would be well beside the point.  Something I didn't know until watching it is that Space Jam also acts as a reprise of the old commercials Jordan and Larry Bird made back then.  Playing third fiddle to them, as always, is Charles Barkley (but don't tell my brother that), and a host of other recognizable players populate what's left after you add in Bugs Bunny and most of his well-known cartoon associates, as well as the aliens led a stooge voiced by Danny DeVito.

The result isn't high, or even close to it, but for sheer nostalgia's sake, it's good enough.  Normally nostalgia is about remembering a specific thing or elements of an era, but Space Jam achieves it by evoking and borrowing elements, which is a special kind of distinction.  I don't know if the filmmakers could possibly have been banking on this, and very likely it was the furthest thing from their minds, because in Hollywood, as in life, usually the next possible moment is the most important one, to capture immediate attention.  If something becomes a classic it's usually because it was instantly massively popular.  Space Jam wasn't a huge success, but it certainly had people talking, and it's become a kind of cult classic, which belatedly spawned a sequel (which, of course, I haven't seen yet, but soon!), which only time can tell if it evokes its era as successfully.

The other big surprise, for me, was Bill Murray.  In 1996, Murray was in the midst of a career transition.  He'd made his most popular '90s films already, and was years away from a critical revival.  You won't often see him as a selling point for Space Jam, in other words, because at the time, it just didn't seem relevant anymore.  But for me, in 2022, seeing him pop up in a supporting role can only be described as sheer pleasure, and the needed element in turning Space Jam from mere nostalgia to a repeatable experience.  

It's also interesting that the whole movie pivots around Michael Jordan's real life attempt to switch sports from basketball to baseball, which was quickly reversed with little help from cartoon shenanigans.  In hindsight it makes the results all the more relevant.  Bugs, meanwhile, was struggling, too, with whether it was still important that there was a Bugs Bunny anymore.  On TV, there was a new generation of his ilk in Tiny Toons, while The Animaniacs was busy making the argument that even they weren't headlining the conversation.  While Disney constantly reshuffles Mickey, Bugs at one point had such a radical redesign, around this time, you wouldn't even have known it was him without being told.  He and his friends now existed, if at all, in hybrid movies like this, or in the classic cartoons.  One thing Mickey never got was a movie like this, though.

Space Jam should never be confused for great filmmaking, but it's a rewarding curiosity, on a number of levels.

2015 Capsule Reviews

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens

rating: *****

review: For me the sequels started out with a significant bang.  Admittedly, I'm not exactly square with a lot of mainstream opinion, particularly about the Star Wars saga.  I loved the prequels, and I loved the rest of the sequels, too, but didn't much care for Rogue One, which is the only recent entry fans actually did like.  I loved the new characters instantly, but what really seals it for me is that thing that made everyone instantly love the trailer: Harrison Ford's return as Han Solo.  I thought even his death was handled perfectly.  Too many people accept the simplest way of describing a thing to be the only way to view it, and of course Force Awakens has parallels with A New Hope.  But the results are very different.  I'm a huge admirer of J.J. Abrams as it is, so the fact that he got this assignment at all was absolutely best case scenario.

The Hateful Eight

rating: *****

review: Quentin Tarantino has been able to assemble absolute dream casts throughout his career while also pursuing talent he himself sought out that was otherwise being ignored.  Eight is as close to an all-star Tarantino cast as he's gotten, led by Samuel L. Jackson, whose breakthrough film was Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, and Kurt Russell, star of what too many dismiss as a minor Tarantino flick, Death Proof.  Famously, Tarantino initially thought to shelve this script when it leaked, but thankfully he thought better.  Unlike other period films he's pursued this one doesn't much worry about its place in history, but simply allows Tarantino to settle into the characters he's created, and there are few writers in any medium who creates as vivid characters as he does.  An underrated pick for best film he's yet directed.

Self/Less

rating: ****

review: Tarsem caught everyone else's attention with The Cell, a visual spectacle starring Jennifer Lopez just before she became Jennifer Lopez, but it was The Fall that continually captivates me, and I have been following his lamentably sporadic career ever since.  Self/Less also has the virtue of starring Ryan Reynolds, whose career instincts generally seem to intersect with my viewing interests.  Reynolds often chooses roles in which the person he's playing is someone other than he actually is, for a variety of reasons.  This one is a richly textured role in a truly impossible situation where he's trying to reclaim his life, bringing forth his perennially underrated dramatic chops.

Aloha

rating: ****

review: There are a few hallmarks of reaching the ridiculous culture we currently inhabit, and one of them is the rejection of this film on the basis of "Emma Stone isn't Hawaiian!!!"  Which anyone actually watching the movie couldn't possibly have had an honest problem with.  But, as I said, such are the times we live in, and now Cameron Crowe can't be taken seriously anymore.

The Age of Adaline

rating: ****

review: For a brief moment, it seemed as if Blake Lively was going to become a bona fide movie star.  It was during this period she got to star in what's probably going to remain her most interesting role, an ageless woman who finally gets to come to grips with how she reached this state.  Narrated, as with The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, brilliantly by Hugh Ross.

The Martian

rating: ****

review: I honestly thought we were going to enter a golden age of Matt Damon as a movie star, as in him becoming a reliable top box office attraction, after this one.  That didn't really happen, but the results are still pretty magnetic in this adaptation of one of the viral literary hits from that time.

The Revenant

rating: ****

review: Everyone now thinks of this as the one where Leonardo DiCaprio has that encounter with the bear, but it's also the role that finally snagged him the Oscar, and gave Tom Hardy his closest shot at mainstream legitimacy, which of course he accepted in one of his most unrecognizable appearances ever.

Legend

rating: ****

review: If you remember, Hardy had that shot for a movie we'll reach a little later in this chronicle, but there was also this gangster flick in which he plays brothers, which ended up being dismissed "because we'd seen that movie before."  Which is crazy, because no, nobody had.  But this was also the point at which everyone seemed to conspire in dismantling the old Hollywood system of, y'know, movie stars.

Tomorrowland

rating: ****

review: If you want the poster child of modern Disney, you only have to look at the inexplicable rejection of this movie, the most recent attempt by the studio to create something of its own.  And, I guess, the last time Geoege Clooney was a movie star.

Ant-Man

rating: ****

review: I honestly don't believe any movie in the MCU has nailed the MCU formula better than this introduction of Paul Rudd's Scott Lang.  Except maybe the sequel.

Joy

rating: ****

review: David O. Russell had finally built himself into one of Hollywood's most significant directors when he chose this project as a star vehicle for Jennifer Lawrence.  The result is everything it should have been, except a project that let him keep that spot.

Pan

rating: ***

review: Instantly considered a ridiculous bomb, once I got around to watching it I of course loved the results.  Hugh Jackman gets to do what he wants, but more importantly this is the first time I actually enjoyed a Garrett Hedlund performance.  He seems to be having the time of his life as a youthful Hook.

The Peanuts Movie

rating: ***

review: Sometimes these things will be filled with movies I really just need to watch again (and somehow I didn't even manage that when I was spending recent months wading through that back catalog).  But I suspect doing so would improve my opinion of these particular results.

Ex Machina

rating: ***

review: One of the prototypical modern cult classics, propelled by a fresh cast including Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson, and Alicia Vikander.

Jupiter Ascending

rating: ***

review: I still find it baffling how the Wachowskis became such pariahs after essentially becoming the patron saints of modern film lore.  This was obviously an attempt to craft a space opera out of the same basic premise of reality not matching up with perception as The Matrix, but as with Force Awakens, perception was instead chosen to eclipse reality.  

Sicario

rating: ***

review: This one became a full-blown phenomenon, and further propelled Denis Villeneuve to Hollywood royalty, and yet its ambiguities are such that the apparent lead character is overshadowed by two characters even the sequel (not directed by Villeneuve) is uncertain that we should cheer them on, even when one of them is Benicio del Toro in a role worthy of his talents.

Home

rating: ***

review: I've long struggled over this one.  On the one hand it has deep personal meaning that goes beyond the actual movie.  On the other, and while I very much enjoy it, I don't know...Either way I'll always be fond of it.

Terminator: Genisys

rating: ***

review: It's the popular thing to dislike every new Terminator movie past the second one, to find some reason to utterly dismiss it, so it really doesn't matter what you've heard or personally think of this one, it's already obvious.  But popular opinion isn't always right.  Another entertaining entry in the series.

Spectre

rating: ***

review: The third Daniel Craig entry in the Bond series left me cold, and circumstances left a considerable gap in my viewing of this fourth one, and so I'm probably still processing it.  But for me, there's little question that his are the entries that will, at least to this point, best stand the test of time, once we stop worrying so much about protecting older material.

Ted 2

rating: ***

review: I've developed this weird thing about seeing sequels without having seen the original, and this is one of them.  It's pretty much exactly what you would expect.

The Visit

rating: ***

review: M. Night Shyamalan redeemed some of his credentials with this one, but it's never going to be one of my favorites.

Furious 7

rating: ***

review: I've gotta be honest, I love this series, but a thorough rewatch is gonna be necessary.  This one is Paul Walker's final appearance, and is best remembered for that, including how they include a subtle nod to "retiring" his character at the end.  But at the moment it's the only thing I remember about it.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

rating: ***

review: It's more popular to think of it as the one where Rebecca Ferguson joins the ensemble, but I tend to lament it as the one where Jeremy Renner takes a huge step back after having briefly threatened to take over in Ghost Protocol.

Fantastic Four

rating: ***

review: "There's never been a good film version!!!" is what you're always going to hear, but of the three that've been released to date, I like 'em all, including this effort to give the team a more youthful appearance.  The only problem with Miles Teller's Reed Richards is that he necessarily takes a passive role in the proceedings, since the rest of the team has to catch up with him eventually, even though the movie clearly pivots around him.

Mad Max: Fury Road

rating: ***

review: This is the one everyone went absolutely crazy about, and so of course it features as minimal a role for Tom Hardy as possible, surely the only Mad Max film yet produced, with his name right there in the title, to be able to say that.

In the Heart of the Sea

rating: ***

review: Based on the true story that inspired Moby-Dick, this is one I unabashedly just need to watch again.

Strange Magic

rating: ***

review: I absolutely adored this when I first saw it, a kind of fond creative farewell from George Lucas, but the visual results are so far below current popular standards it's not surprising that it's completely slipped out of the popular consciousness.  But even if he'd attempted a live action rather than animated approach, I doubt the result would be different.  This was just about the time when audiences started expecting the expected (and yet still mostly grumbling about it).

Minions

rating: ***

review: Hey, the Minions are the Minions.  Either you enjoy their hijinks or you don't.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

rating: ***

review: Hugely ironically, because I'm no big fan of his, but Joss Whedon did exactly what Joss Whedon always does with this one.  I honestly think the only reason it's not popular is because audiences were disappointed not to find Thanos in it.  But it proved integral to later developments in the MCU anyway.  Eventually fans will just view it as another entry in the series.  For me it's just par for the course.

War Room

rating: ***

review: This is exactly par for the course in the kind of movie it wants to be.

The Divergent Series: Insurgent

rating: ***

review: I'm not currently able to be overly objective about this series, either.  Eventually, while watching it, I began to view it as posing even more of a model's stance at blockbuster filmmaking than the Hunger Games movies it clearly wanted to be, which themselves just as clearly wanted badly to be Twilight, which badly wanted to be Harry Potter.  In the process, the biggest victim in all of this was Shailene Woodley, who before everyone realized what was going on was poised to become a reliable movie star.

2021 Movies Viewed/Ranked

 Viewed/Ranked

1. The Last Duel
2. The French Dispatch
3. The Courier
4. The Green Knight
5. No Time to Die
6. Boss Level
7. Snake Eyes
8. Die in a Gunfight
9. Last Night in Soho
10. Settlers
11. Needle in a Timestack
12. Judas and the Black Messiah
13. The Mauritanian
14. Belfast
15. Dune
16. Pig
17. Zola
18. Copshop
19. Death of a Telemarketer 
20. Chaos Walking
21. Venom: Let There Be Carnage
22. Old
23. Every Breath You Take
24. The Little Things
25. House of Gucci
26. King Richard
27. Our Friend
28. City of Lies
29. F9
30. The Matrix Resurrections
31. Spider-Man: No Way Home
32. Mortal Kombat
33. Profile
34. Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard
35. Voyagers
36. Nomadland
37. Wrath of Man
38. Naked Singularity
39. Reminiscence
40. State Like Sleep
41. Spiral
42. The Virtuoso
43. Ghostbusters: Afterlife
44. The Suicide Squad
45. Lansky
46. Till Death
47. Those Who Wish Me Dead
48. Godzilla vs. Kong
49. Midnight in the Switchgrass
50. Lady of the Manor
51. Crisis
52. French Exit
53. Twist
54. The Card Counter
55. Zone 414
56. Cosmic Sin
57. Dangerous

Other Notable Releases

• A Quiet Place Part II
• American Underdog
• Black Widow
• C'mon C'mon
• Cruella
• Encanto
• Eternals
• The Eyes of Tammy Faye
• Free Guy
• In the Heights
• Licorice Pizza
• Jungle Cruise
• Nightmare Alley
• Shangi-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
• Sing 2
• Space Jam: A New Legacy
• West Side Story