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.

“You should be so proud of her.”

Shelby Oaks is something special when you look at it objectively; it’s a film that was crowd funded by the YouTuber Chris Stuckmann, who wanted to take a shot at making a movie of his very own. The original goal was to raise $600,000, but by the time his Kickstarter was closed, he was able to raise over 1.4 million to make his film. Before he’d even begun filming, this is already an impressive achievement considering how many established filmmakers struggle to get funds together to make their own films. For Shelby Oaks, over 14,000 people contributed to funding the dream for this directorial debut, so again, in my book Chris Stuckmann already won for being able to pull this off. Now the film has a producing credit from Mike Flanagam attached as an executive producer and Neon in charge of the films distribution … so needless to say, there is a great deal of hype around this film. Two films immediately come to mind when I think about this kind of hype before a film even reaches audiences, The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity … both films that innovated the found-footage genre but also had some clever marketing once acquired for distribution.  Does Shelby Oaks live up to the hype? Well, from my experience, this is a pretty divisive film.