Movies

What does it mean for a gangster film—not just in Taiwan, but anywhere in the world—to recite all the liturgies of brotherhood, blood, and betrayal, but leave you with nothing more than the memory of flickering shadows on a wall? Joe Lee’s Gatao (2015) is exactly that: a movie that earnestly checks the boxes of triad cinema, hoping to conjure up some of the lurid energy that made Hong Kong’s Young and Dangerous a pop touchstone—but ending up more like a karaoke version sung after midnight, charming in its recognizability, but never threatening to set the night on fire.

We have reached the late capitalist endgame when even a G20 summit—a gathering that, in theory, represents the convulsions and anxieties of a planet teetering on its own ambitions—becomes a stage for pallid, sticky-fingered action pablum. Patricia Riggen’s G20 strains to dress itself in the grandeur of international consequence, as if draping a polyester tablecloth over a card table could suddenly transform it into Versailles. The result, unfortunately, is not grandeur but the cinematic equivalent of a hotel conference coffee: tepid, thin, and bitterly disappointing, despite the prestigious packaging.

The Western—a genre once rooted in unspoken codes and existential sweat, where violence had gravity and redemption came at the price of a soul—has, with Gunslingers, been exhumed and sent staggering, blank-eyed, into the realm of accidental comedy. Brian Skiba, whose résumé reads more like a warning label than a track record, invites us to Redemption (the film’s town, not its trajectory). Make no mistake: there is no redemption here—except, perhaps, for Nicolas Cage, whose presence is less a saving grace than a feverish hallucination trapped in a desert heatwave.

Some movies bleed. Some movies howl. And then there’s The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil, which cannonballs straight into the cesspool of our pretensions about right and wrong and dares us to gulp it down. Lee Won-tae’s pit-fight of a thriller isn’t just a crime movie—it’s a baptism, but the water is curdled with blood, sweat, and the stink of men who mistake punishment for penance. This isn’t filmmaking—it’s a bare-knuckle sermon delivered from the gutter.

Let’s start where the air gets thin and the coliseum fills with water: be honest—did you ever expect Ridley Scott, the master of “muscular history,” to burst gladiatorial combat wide open with the introduction of actual sharks? Gladiator II, for all its sweat-drenched howls of reverence toward the original, is less Maximus’s solemn march to myth than a glittering, full-throttle fever dream—part sequel, part spectacle, and not altogether sure which side it wants to fight for.

Let’s skip the salute and call it what it is: “Greyhound” isn’t here to make you feel safe, or inspired, or even—God forbid—sentimental. No, Aaron Schneider’s relentless, nerve-needling orchestration, with Tom Hanks multitasking as both star and the hand sanding the script, is a straight shot of adrenaline distilled from the brine and gunmetal of war. Forget mothball nostalgia—this is war by way of a stress test, and every ping on the sonar is a test of your pulse-ox.

This is supposed to be the season of goodwill, eggnog, and the kind of joy you’re only ever forced to feel in December. But what do we actually get? Sleigh bells drowned out by sirens, cinnamon-scented pandemonium—yes, Virginia, it’s time for movies that crank the holiday insanity to eleven. If Christmas is a circus, why settle for gentle elephants when you could have rabid reindeer? My Christmas list, this year, is for those who like their tinsel twisted: Gremlins, Violent Night, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and, yes, Terrifier 3. Fasten your seatbelt with a candy cane.

Some movies slip so quietly under the radar that stumbling into them feels like a lucky accident in an age of algorithmic “recommendations.” "The Gentlemen" was my unexpected prize at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box—a happy surprise that reminded me of why Guy Ritchie, at his best, can take the old song-and-dance of criminal enterprise and make it feel like a brisk new tune. Here is a movie that doesn’t seduce you with empty flash; it sits you down in the plush, dangerous lounge of the underworld and dares you to keep up as everyone circles the whisky decanter.