Ah, now that the worst week of the year is over, we here at Cinema Romantico can truly look ahead, even if we are about to spend the next month or two looking back given how we just watched about 117 movies in the last month (that I will write about as ongoing brain fog permits), the Golden Globes are tomorrow, and the Oscars are in two months. Still, it’s 2023, at least that’s what the position of the Earth tells me, and we want our faithful frustrated readers ready for what is cinematically to come in the New Year. Not ready for the latest superhero movies, of course, there is literally every other movie site in the world for that, or even the contenders for the 2024 Oscars when we don’t even know what the contenders for the 2023 Oscars will be, the awards bloggers will get you up to speed, but thrillers, only thrillers, mindless, middling, majestic, all three or just one, it makes no difference to us.
(Releases are, of course, ranked on the Runaway Jury Scale, measuring each new thriller’s potential for glorious middlingness, 1 being the lowest and 5 the highest.)
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre. Hark, what’s this? Guy Ritchie’s thriller appeared on Cinema Romantico’s THRILLERS ONLY 2022 preview but had its release date pushed back to January 2023. And honestly, when we gave it 3 Runaway Juries last year, we didn’t even realize that it was about an MI6 Agent named Orson Fortune (!!!) and his team of operatives recruiting Hollywood’s biggest star. New Year, New Ranking. We give it...4 Runaway Juries
Misanthrope. The actual synopsis: “A cop is recruited by the FBI to help track down a murderer.” I mean, I about fell out of my chair when I saw it starred Shailene Woodley and Ben Mendelsohn. Shouldn’t this star, like, Michael Dudikoff and Yasmine Bleeth? ...... Wait. Hold on. [Taps earpiece.] Cinema Romantico is getting word that Misanthrope” was also on last year’s THRILLERS ONLY 2022 preview. How could a movie with a synopsis like that get bumped? Whether this gets bumped to 2024 will keep me in suspense all year. New Year, Worse Ranking. We give it...Zero Runaway Juries
Plane. What I like most here is the title’s deceptive simplicity opening up into what the trailer suggests is a nesting doll thriller; what else can happen? After all, as Captain Ron himself once astutely observed, “There’s guerrillas in these woods.” We give it...4 Runaway Juries
“Anybody seen a bear on cocaine around here?” |
Cocaine Bear. It doesn’t sound real, but it is, of course, based on a true story if necessarily exaggerated for the screen, and it’s obviously 5 Runaway Juries worth except we have to dock it 2 Runaway Juries for failing to cast Michael Shannon and Abbi Jacobson which should have been a no-brainer. We give it...3 Runaway Juries
65. No, not a thriller of Sammy Sosa’s less-heralded 65 home runs the same year Mark McGwire more famously bashed 70, but a Sci-Fi Thriller in which an astronaut played by Adam Driver discovers he is stranded on Earth...65 million years ago. And while it’s a great dramatic pause pitch, I dunno man, all the “Jurassic World” crap has left me feeling like the brief beau with the bad back of Elaine Benes’s indifferent attitude toward stuffed crust pizza; it’s just more dinosaurs. We give it...2 Runaway Juries
The Loch Ness Monster. Indeed, I have grown less fond of dinosaurs as I have aged and more fond of Nessie, a completely mythical creature that I totally believe exists. But. “The Loch Ness Monster” starring Tony Todd? That sounds conspicuously Syfy-y to me. We give it...2 Runaway Juries
Static Codes. “Fire in the Sky” meets “The Bone Collector.” I like where this one’s head is at. We give it...3 Runaway Juries
Tip of the cap for “The Mother” finding a way to get JLo in a tank top despite the snowy, mountainous setting. |
The Mother. Assassins can be mothers too. We give it...3 Runaway Juries
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. This is too high class to include here, I know, the ’65 Moet among a bunch of Pizza-Blasted Pringles®, but man, the previous two, as I have stated repeatedly, were the twin peaks of twenty-tens pop moviemaking and I just don’t get this excited for many movies anymore. We give it...8 Operating Thetan Levels
Havoc. Tom Hardy battling his way through the criminal underworld sounds thrilling enough, but mostly this makes me want to imagine an alternate universe where Tom Hardy has an “Adaptation”-style twin brother named George Hardy who is the king of middling thrillers much to his sibling’s chagrin. We give it...2 Runaway Juries
Fast Charlie. It appears that Liam Neeson, master of the modern middling thriller, does not have a 2023 middling thriller lined up, and so I appreciate Pierce Brosnan as a mafia hitman on the outs with his betters taking up the slack. We give it...3 Runaway Juries.
Marlowe. Hold the phone! Liam Neeson does have a 2023 thriller! It’s a 2022 holdover middling thriller being released on February 23! And the master of the modern middling thriller is playing...Philip Marlowe, the archetypal non-middling detective? I feel confused. We give it... 2 ½ Kenneth Branagh Hercule Poirots
Heart of Stone. IMDb indicates the plot is under wraps, and though there is half a trailer on YouTube, it doesn’t really explain anything (is this the new Netflix strategy? Mystery box thrillers?), leaving it to Gal Gadot who helpfully describes it as an “extremely epic...super grounded, long action thriller.” As for Runaway Juries, then, I guess...the sky’s the limit?
Night Train. “A single mom struggling to make ends meet as a Hollywood teamster evades capture by a ruthless FBI Agent while running black market medical supplies in her legendary souped-up pickup truck.” This pitch is that Vince McMahon glowing eyes meme come to life. We give it...5 Runaway Juries
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