Shameless Self Expression

Brad Pitt plays an assassin codenamed Ladybug, who accepts a mission from his handler (Sandra Bullock) to board a Japanese bullet train, grab a briefcase and quickly get off at the next stop. Because this is a movie, that mission comes with a few snags in the form of various killers with various missions and motivations of their own. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brian Tyree Henry play chatty cockney assassins, Joey King is another assassin with a revenge plan to carry out, Andrew Koji and Hiroyuki Sanada play father and son, and Michael Shannon is the   Russian crime lord referred to as ‘The White Death’.     A lot of people seemed to really like this 2022 David Leitch ( “Atomic Blonde” , producer of “John Wick” ) assassin action/comedy. Hi, I’m not a lot of people. I don’t know how people managed to sit through two hours of this annoying chatterbox without complaint, 85 minutes was far more than enough I felt. Hiroyuki Sanada and an uncredited Channing Tatum are good, bu...

  Miner Harry Belafonte survives and escapes a cave-in only to find when he emerges that the world around him is barren and seemingly unpopulated. Where has everybody gone? What happened?   A sorely underrated post-apocalyptic drama with a social message, this 1959 film from writer-director Ranald MacDougall (writer of “We’re No Angels” ) needs more love and more eyes on it. Harry Belafonte (a co-producer of the film) gives one of his best performances here, which is important because there’s only three actors in the film. So everybody needed to bring their A-game. Belafonte’s terrific and only has himself for company for a fair chunk of the film. For my money the first act is the film’s best as Belafonte slowly comes to understand that something catastrophic has happened and he may be all alone in the world or at least America. It’s quite bold for an American film from 1959 to basically have only one person on screen for the first act. Impressively shot in B&W by Haro...