Now I sort of liked Atomic Blonde, mainly for the late ‘80s Berlin setting, Charlize Theron’s fantastic performance and the
killer soundtrack, but Leitch’s style took all the fun out of it for me, as the extended fight sequences grew old and the script, with all of its convoluted plot twists, couldn’t get out of its own way. But we discovered that Leitch had a dynamic style, all neon and kinetic, a kind of filmmaking that felt like a shot of adrenaline. The success of Deadpool 2 led to doing a Fast and Furious movie, which also did very well for him. But those were prized franchises with built-in audiences and already-set tones. I was looking forward to seeing what Leitch could do with another Atomic Blonde-type opportunity, a script that was borne from something original, not a sequel or a comic book film.
And along comes Bullet Train.
now what?” Because of production restrictions, full-blown movie sets have only recently come back, so, filmmakers who really wanted to work during the pandemic had to be creative. And thus a new genre was borne, loosely known as “pandemic cinema.” Although it is true that most of the films nominated for Best Picture were also shot during the pandemic (and some, like Belfast, even written during it, too) and could legitimately be called pandemic films, there’s a whole other breed of specialty, specifically unique to the pandemic genre of film that COVID hath spawned, that of the intimate story with just two or three actors, and shot in a single location. Films like Malcolm and Marie, Host and Songbird are just three examples of films that went from script-to-screen in record time, assisted by their minimal production needs. The latest example of this type of film is Windfall, written by Justin Lader and Andrew Kevin Walker, and directed by Charlie McDowell, debuting on Netflix on March 18.
On September 13, 1990, a show premiered that would change the face of television. Law & Order would come to define the police and legal procedural and would spawn a multitude of spinoffs, including Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which, currently in its twenty-third season, is the longest-running primetime U.S. live-action series in the history of television. It is undeniable that the multitude of police and lawyer dramas—not just in the Law & Order universe– that have existed in the past twenty years and continue to exist now owe their existence and success to some degree to L&O creator Dick Wolf’s original vision.
Hold onto your hats, the nominations for the 94th Academy Awards will be announced on Tuesday, and all indications are that everything is up for grabs. Most critics have no idea what’s going to happen, other than Jane Campion walking away with Best Director, so it should be a lot of fun!