Jeremy_Urquhart

You generally can't go wrong with action movies from Hong Kong, and it's also hard to go wrong with Yuen Woo-Ping. I feel as though I should eventually watch everything he ever directed or did the action choreography for, since the way he does that stuff is always so good. Words kind of fail to express what makes his take on action so good. All I know is that it's really good, and that's all that matters.

With Tiger Cage, it's him doing the kind of movie John Woo is best known for directing. Woo-Ping usually makes action movies with more hand-to-hand combat, but he can do shoot-em-ups, too. Similarly, Woo is best known for the heroic bloodshed films of his, but he also proved himself to be great at more traditional martial arts stuff with the eternally underrated Last Hurrah for Chivalry. John Woo is more well-known than Woo-Ping, and his highs are higher, but I think he's missed a little more often than Woo-Ping seems to have.

Also, to go back to Tiger Cage... well, what can be said? The non-action stuff is serviceable, and that's all it really needs to be. It's about a bunch of young cops taking on criminals and corruption, and it's all very heightened, bombastic, and bloody. The term "heroic bloodshed" is also interesting. These characters are physically impressive, but they do bleed, and sometimes die, more than American heroes from Action movies in that part of the world.

Anyway, Tiger Cage starts at a ridiculously impressive pace that it can't entirely maintain throughout, but the action was just about always very good, and I didn't mind the non-action parts all too much either. It made for a satisfying watch, and if you like Hong Kong action/crime films from around this era, it shouldn't be overlooked.

The most intriguing thing about Phase IV was the fact that it was the only film ever directed by Saul Bass, who was much more famous for doing the titles for various films. His work with Alfred Hitchcock is probably most noteworthy, but he also did the titles for some Martin Scorsese films, too. And if The Night of the Hunter has taught us anything, it's that there can be interesting/weird/novel reasons why someone might have only ever been credited with doing one movie. With that other film, Charles Laughton took a break from acting and made one of the strangest and most distinct films of the 1950s. The same cannot quite be said about Phase IV, and its relation to the 1970s.

But I also found it offbeat enough to kind of keep my attention. It's about scientists having to deal with some really intelligent ants, basically. It plays things kind of straight, and almost makes it work, even if, as a horror movie, it doesn't exactly succeed in being scary. But what you do get is this odd energy throughout the whole thing that's kind of enticing. It's definitely atmospheric. Some of it's dull, but other parts of Phase IV prove weirdly hypnotic.

My mind initially went to Them!, which is a 1950s movie about giant ants being a menace, but in terms of feel/style, Phase IV is probably most reminiscent of the parts of 2001: A Space Odyssey that deal with HAL-9000 going rogue. That's not to say this movie is as good as that one, but the most effective parts in terms of style and atmosphere scratch a sort of similar itch to those parts of 2001. Take that as you will. I don't know what else there is to say about the crazy ant horror movie other than that it is indeed a crazy ant horror movie.

Oh, it's better than as an ant movie than any of the Ant-Man movies. I can add that. That's also not saying a great deal, but it's something!

Probably the best movie of 2025 so far. And if a better horror movie comes out this year, I'd be surprised. Most of the other praise here worth giving will probably sound like hyperbole, but whatever. Ryan Coogler is yet to miss as a filmmaker, and him and Michael B. Jordan as a director/actor duo is on track to be on the level of Scorsese + De Niro (if they make a handful more excellent films together at least). And Coogler makes up for Jordan only being in his last film briefly by having him play the two lead roles here. Jordan playing off himself is so seamlessly done.

Sinners does interesting new things with familiar horror tropes. It really takes its time, and the slowness of the first half might be the only thing that feels like it could be a flaw. Well, that or Sinners biting off a lot for one film to handle. But the slower scenes I feel will be easier to appreciate on a rewatch, and if I need a second watch to digest everything that's being gone for here narratively and thematically, then I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. That I want to see it again at some point in the not too distant future is praise in itself.

As a horror movie, it's eerie in the same way that listening to those old Robert Johnson recordings (also from the 1930s) are eerie. Sinners is such a beautiful and atmospheric film. It wasn't a cheap film by any means, but looks as though it could've cost twice as much as it actually did. They shoot the money and I love it when a film does that. And the music here is phenomenal. It's an early front runner for Best Original Score, though it might be disqualified if lots of the music is repurposed older stuff. Still, the way it uses music is excellent, and music in general is so important to so much of the film.

I mostly loved this movie, and feel it'll be even better a second time around. I think all the hype around this one is justified.