Posts by Gino Sassani

"The water taught them peace. The fire will test their soul."

I don't really have to tell you what Avatar is. If you haven't heard of it by now, I have only one question to ask of you: how was that coma? Ever since he cleaned up at the box office with Titanic, James Cameron has been planning this movie series. The only trouble was that the technology to make it did not exist. Most filmmakers would have either tried anyway, or simply waited until the hardware caught up with their imaginations. Not James Cameron. He decided to invent the equipment himself. The result is a 3D filming process that allows for the most realistic images you likely have ever seen on a movie screen. He combined the new process and equipment with new state-of-the-art computer-generated technology. The result is a movie that was truly the first of its kind. It was a huge risk for Cameron. A lot of money went into not only making the film, but the technology development. In many ways Avatar was really an audition film. The technology continued to improve, and two years ago we got the second film, Avatar: The Way Of Water. The film explored more areas of Pandora, and now another two years later, we have Avatar: Fire And Ash.

Just as things started to get intriguing, what happened? The credits rolled. While I’m not completely surprised by the cliffhanger ending, I was mildly annoyed by it. Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy this sequel that somehow managed to walk a fine line between funny and suspenseful. I won’t call it scary, because it’s still a little PG in that regard. However, the story was entertaining, as were the characters, most of which were reprising their roles from the first film. I wasn’t sure that a sequel could break new ground, but given that Five Nights At Freddy’s is both a popular video and book series, I suppose there are many places that the story can go. Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, and Matthew Lillard reprise their roles and are joined by McKenna Grace, Freddy Carter, and Skeet Ulrich, which makes for a surprise Scream reunion. That said, if I am being honest, Ulrich felt criminally underutilized in this project. I expected that he would play a bigger start in the story, and I was really hoping for more interaction between him and Lillard in order to better signify the Scream homage. Well, I suppose there is always the next film, which as stated, is most certainly planned for.

Interesting detail: voicing Chica, the animatronic that Rubio’s Abby was closest to, was Megan Fox. Her involvement in the project was an unexpected surprise. Even more interesting, the return of Corry Williams (aka CoryxKenshin), who made a memorable impression as a cabbie in the first film and reprises that role for the sequel. His appearance this time wasn’t exactly on par with what I remember from the first film, but seeing him added to the continuity and intrigue of the film.

From the moment I saw the trailer for Caught Stealing I immediately was taken back to the late 1990s, when so many films were trying to emulate the success Pulp Fiction had by mixing comedy and violence.  I mean, the kinetic energy of the trailer was giving me the same vibes I got when I first saw Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and The Boondock Saints. This isn’t a bad thing at all; heck, I miss these kinds of films. Lately it seems all the action films now are bad John Wick knockoffs or the woke superhero films that lack anything resembling artistic merit. I had every intention on seeing Caught Stealing in theaters, because this just looked like the kind of film I’d have fun with, but unfortunately this had such a short window at the theaters that it was gone before it had a chance to even find an audience. The quick turnaround with these films moving from theaters to streaming is enough to make your head spin, and the film studios wonder why they are taking losses, and this isn’t even a big-budget film despite having a solid cast and a relatively well-known director at the helm. I’m not saying this is a film that would ever break the bank and be a $100 million runaway hit, but this is a film that has the potential to gain a cult following. In a world where physical media is being killed off by the studios, it’s as though the studios are making it impossible to generate a profit from anything no matter if it finds an audience or not.

OK, enough of my soapbox ramblings, and on to the film …

It is hard to believe it has been nearly a decade since Mel Gibson last directed a film. Hacksaw Ridge remains one of my favorite war films made in the 21^st century, and I thought for sure it signaled the return for Gibson, since he’s been in Hollywood jail since 2006. He’s managed to get some work in some bad direct-to-streaming films, though I feel the last great film we’ve gotten to see him on screen was 2018’s Dragged Across Concrete, which didn’t exactly set the box office ablaze. I’m bummed by this, because really he’s one of the few surviving icons from the 80s and 90s that I believe still has some talent and could give cinema a few more great films, that is if Hollywood could just give him that chance. He’s been attached for years to doing another Lethal Weapon, but I have a hard time believing that will happen, and then he’s been working on his sequel to The Passion of Christ, which in theory could give his career the boost he needs to go on to some bigger and better projects, bur unfortunately I’m just not too optimistic about that. This year Mel Gibson stepped back behind the camera to direct the new thriller Flight Risk, which opened to little fanfare, but is it any good? Well, fasten your seatbelts; we’re about to get into it.

Madolyn (Michelle Dockery) is a US marshall who has travelled to the Alaskan wilderness to track down Winston (Topher Grace), a weaselly fugitive they’d like to use to testify against a mob boss. They charter a plane to escort Winston to bring him in so he can testify, but unfortunately the pilot (Mark Wahlberg) isn’t who he claims to be. It turns out the pilot is an assassin hired to take out Madolyn and her escort, and this turns to a claustrophobic showdown 3000 feet in the air. Even when the US marshal is able to subdue the assassin, she still has to contend with the problem of flying the plane and not knowing how to fly or even where they are located.