Trashtacular

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.