rednikki

I'm so surprised that everyone has forgotten David Clarke, the character we expected to be the protagonist but turned out to be the villain. Masterful plot twist as he tried to stab Ashley Bloomfield in the back only to wind up destroying himself! Everyone thought it would be Simon Bridges or Todd Muller, but no!

I see Gerry Brownlee looks to be the villain so far...but will there be another plot twist? Who can say? Not sure how they can top S1 but I will keep watching!

It is so hard to review this movie without giving away some of the plot twists that occur. I liked that rather than leaning on quippiness, the non-action scenes relied on real human emotion. I also liked that it didn't get preachy. The characters use their immortality to try to help people where other folks can't, but they don't give grandiose speeches about it. It's just what they do. Even the unexpected consequences of their actions isn't presented in a preachy way. It's just really cool.

The issues some of the characters experienced are exactly the issues you'd expect an immortal to have. I loved the various ways we saw how the characters pop up in history. (And, for a history buff like me, the way they did it made sense.) The action scenes were a blast too! I loved that the characters used both modern weapons and, in some cases, versions of weapons they'd probably used for centuries. There was enough of a world behind this that I could easily see how you could turn this into a TV series. But if I can't have that I'm on board for a film series.

I lived in Finland briefly, and watching this film made me homesick for my time there. It has an excellent sense of place and effectively evokes both Finnish and Chinese cultures. It's a quiet, thoughtful movie that takes its time. Showing an evolving romance between people from two famously reserved cultures takes special skill, but the tender performances really make it land. There were a couple of places where I felt things could have been heightened a bit, but that may also be because of the culture I'm from. I really enjoyed this, and I'd definitely watch it again.

Last night, I saw the film "Stander" in a sneak preview at the Kendall. It's been tragically mismarketed, and I've heard the distribution company, Newmarket Films, is pulling it from release for the moment.

That's a tragedy. The film is deeply flawed, but even with its flaws, it's a far better film than almost any that I've seen this year. It's the story of Andre Stander, a South African policeman who robbed over 40 banks in the late '70s and early '80s, at least 20 of them while a policeman, just to prove a white man in South Africa could get away with anything. It ratchets between humor and drama in a way that evokes the cognitive dissonance that living in an apartheid state must have caused. The cinematography is very self-consciously '70s; the film is a little washed out and the framing is frequently odd, but this only adds to the effectiveness of the film. Thomas Jane gives an incredible performance; I've seen him in other movies, but I've never seen him be as sexy, as charismatic, as magnetic or as powerful as he was here, and he manages to do so while rarely having sex or anything near it; it's just his presence. (In other words: Sex. On. A. Stick.) He fell into the category of "men who are not my type", and yet I found him incredibly hot.

I saw it for free. If I had paid $10 to see it, I would not have felt ripped off (and that's rare, for me). If you have the opportunity - if it gets re-released, or if it comes out on video - see it. It's a very good film.

This film is one of the finest American B-movies of the 90s. If you're looking for a serious film, look elsewhere. However, if you're looking for some action, a lot of laughs, and a tongue in cheek variation on cops fighting gangsters, this is well worth watching. Everyone chews the scenery a bit, but that's really what the film is all about, and everyone is quite funny. Donald Sutherland and John Lithgow have great chemistry and need to do another film together.