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From: "Ian J. Ball" <ijball@mac.invalid>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-01-31 (Friday)
Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2025 15:24:13 -0800
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On 2/1/25 3:00 PM, Arthur Lipscomb wrote:

> On 2/1/2025 11:06 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:
>
>> Well, at least the first day of classes went relatively smoothly! So, 
>> I ended up tackling a couple of movies, after I got home and watched 
>> soaps:
>>
>> Then I watched a couple of movies off Hulu:
>>
>> Take Cover (Hulu) - A 2024 Scott Adkins... well, it's less an 
>> "actioner" and more of a "thriller" flick.
> 
> "Thriller?" No one wants to see Scott Adkins try to act.  Does he kick 
> people in the face or not?
> 
>>     As Scott Adkins flicks go, I would not put this one in the top 
>> echelon - it takes way too long to get going, and while the hand-to- 
>> hand combat scenes are actually pretty darn good and well 
>> choreographed (no quick cuts!!), 
> 
> OK, so there is face kicking.  I'll add it to the watch list.

Yes there is. And those sequences are good.

There's just probably not enough of them.

>> there aren't that many of them, and much of this film is
>> people hiding and talking.
>>     Gist: Adkins is a top-notch sniper for a (private?) contractor. 
>> Jack Parr (an actor I think I recognize, though not by name) plays his 
>> spotter. In the movie's open, a sniping "goes wrong". This makes 
>> Adkins' sniper want to quit, and so they agree to go on one last 
>> mission. Alice Eve (who doesn't appear onscreen much in this film, and 
>> seems to mostly do voice-over work) is their "supervisor".
>>     You should get suspicious for their "one last mission" when Eve's 
>> character starts giving them top-notch accommodations, like the 
>> hotel's penthouse suite, and a couple of masseuses(/hookers?) show up.
>>     It's not long before all 4 of them are trapped by *another* sniper 
>> team in a building across the way. From here on in, the 4 of them must 
>> avoid the sniper, or be killed by him.
>>     Part of the problem is that it takes way to long to get to this 
>> point. And the other problem is that it mostly isn't interesting 
>> enough once they do.
>>     I did like Romanian actress Madalina Bellariu as the main 
>> masseuse. And Parr was pretty good too.
>>     But, as I said - I would not rate this among the "best" of Adkins 
>> flicks (those probably being "Accident Man" and "One Shot").
>>
>> Acradian (Hulu) - I remember Arthur reviewing this months ago, and 
>> being cagey about it.
> 
> Not me.  I just double checked and I didn't review it.  I don't think 
> I've ever even seen it before.  

If it wasn't you, the only other person I can think of it might have 
been is shawn.

> But it's definitely on my watch list 
> now.  I may even get to this tonight!
> 
>>     This 2024 (horror?) flick opens with Nick Cage running through a 
>> city that is under attack(?) or at war(?) somehow, though Nick is 
>> keeping right away from that action. This sequence ends when Nick gets 
>> to two infant/todder boys.
>>     The film then picks up 15 years later. Apparently, it's now "post- 
>> apocalypse". The boys are now teens, and Nick is a stern task master, 
>> making them do chores through the day. But, at night, they turn their 
>> (farm?) house into a fortress. As there are monsters about! - Real 
>> monsters! Trying to break in!!
>>     As an aside: At this point in the flick, I was hoping they were 
>> going to go with vampires of some sort. But no such luck.
>>     The older son (Maxwell Jenkins) keeps running off after chores, 
>> and we soon find out it's so he can go to a neighboring farm and hang 
>> out with the cute girl (British actress Sadie Soverall, from Netflix's 
>> "Fate: The Winx Saga", and the film "The Last Exit" (aka. "Little Bone 
>> Lodge"), whom they force to use an American accent) there.
>>     This is eventually heading towards a showdown with the monsters", 
>> as you'd expect.
>>     This was OK. But it's one of those films where they never bother 
>> to explain what the "apocalypse" that happened actually was. (I always 
>> take major points off for this!) Or where the "monsters" came from, or 
>> even really what they are.
>>     Presumably set somewhere in America, it's clearly not "filmed" in 
>> the U.S., and indeed the credits confirm that it was filmed in Ireland.