#william was remotely capable of being like 'yeah you know what you DO have emotional needs & everything shouldn't be MY way' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thedeviltohisangel · 3 years

Text

Good Days, Bad Days//1//

“You have it,” she whispered after a moment of silence. There was a gentle breeze that wove itself between them as if to capture the agreement they had come to and carry it somewhere they could neve break it. Clara could see in his eyes that he was being serious. That he wanted her to understand that because they wore camo and she didn’t, didn’t mean one was more expendable than the other.

masterlist is my url/writing

accepting requests for these two

She wasn’t sure what she was expecting. Everyone had told her not to think it would be like Jack Ryan when she got there but she couldn’t help it. There was no way to characterize how you would find the desert when you landed there so no one had really tried. They told her what it wouldn’t be, not what it would be. It was quiet. It was lonely. It was twelve hour days and short showers and nothing but the gym to keep her busy. She did her job and she did it well. Using her spotty network connection to research locals and their networks. Developing target packages for the case officers that worked around her and anxiously awaiting her turn to go into the field.

“Did you hear Leo met with the source you found last night?” That perked her up as she was picking over some chicken thighs at her desk.

“Yeah? Get anything good?” Leo was due to rotate out soon. She had been gearing herself up to ask about taking over his assets once he did.

“Don’t know. Debrief in an hour. You should be there.” She didn’t need to be told twice. Forcing a couple more bites into her mouth, she ran back to her housing unit to brush her hair, teeth and reapply deodorant. And after a pep talk to her reflection, she was ready. She stood towards the back of the room and hid partially behind the shoulder of a guy in camo. Her hope was to blend in, not draw any attention to herself. Listen and learn. That was the mode she was in.

“Alright, listen up. Last night we made positive contact with a lower level associate of Asif Ilyas. Through strong execution of tradecraft we are one step closer to taking down one of the most wanted terrorists. I’ll let Leo Davis up here to talk specifics and next steps.” She listened to the mission recap with full attention and smiling when her background work was highlighted as one of the keys to mission success.

“We’ve now encountered a problem. The associate said that one of Ilyas’ wives might be open for recruitment. She will only meet with another woman, only speaks Arabic and can only meet in the tribal areas.” Clara looked around the room and noticed there was an underwhelming amount of women. She assumed even less than them had the language skills and the defense skills that a remote meeting in a hostile environment would require.

“I think Clara fits all those requirements.” She froze as her colleague from before spoke up and everyone turned to look at her. “She did the background work on this op anyways so she’s already up to speed. She got a perfect score on the Arabic language test and the guys at the shooting range said she makes it look natural.” Clara felt like shriveling up and dying. While it was true she didn’t want to be the girl behind the computer for her entire career, she didn’t want to be the center of attention either.

“Is this all true Miss…?”

“Nilsen. And, yes. Sir.”

“Perfect. Problem solved. We start now.”

----

It hurt when she was taken off her desk. Her instincts were telling her to dive into her research and start acquainting herself with the source and what her knowledge pool would be. But her superiors had told her she needed to get better with her self defense and to leave the research to the analysts.

“This is Captain William Miller. He’ll be leading your escort to the tribal regions and his team will be at the ready in case anything goes south.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Ma’am.” She took his hand, which was large and calloused, and took note of his firm grip.

“You as well.” It was hard to keep eye contact with him. His eyes were blue and his jaw was strong and he was looking at her in a way no one had in a long time.

“I want you to train with him and his men until everything else is in place. He’ll keep me updated on your progress and we won’t send you in until he thinks you’re ready. That clear?”

“Yes, sir.” He nodded once and then turned back the way they had come, leaving them to it.

“How comfortable are you around firearms?” Will asked as he started to lead her towards the range.

“Very. I completed all the operational qualifications prior to my arrival here.” He stopped.

“I didn’t ask how well you scored on the exam.”

“Are you asking me if a gun feels like an extension of myself when I fire it?” She continued to wither under his gaze as he kept silent. “The answer is no. But I’m sure you’re capable of fixing that for me.”

“I can. But I need you to know that me and my team are tired of dealing with CIA dipshits who like to run around a warzone like they own it. You all might be used to playing God but it puts our lives on the line when you do it. I need your assurance you’ll keep both your feet on the ground while we are working together.”

“Good. Then let’s get started.”

----

For the next few days, Will didn’t even let her fire a gun. He had her taking them apart and putting them back together and doing it until her hands were cramped. But she learned quickly. She got faster every time. More nimble. More focused. She ignored him when he tried to talk to her while she was doing it. Ignored his teasing whenever she had a misstep. Didn’t buckle under the pressure when others gathered around to watch. On day four, she finished putting it back together and took a step back from the table.

“I need a quick water break. Then I’ll be back at it,” she said as she waited for his permission to go and sit.

“Fire it.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Test how well you put it together. Fire it at that target,” he was pointing towards a metal circle a couple hundred meters away. Clara picked up the weapon with confidence, squared her shoulders and pulled the trigger. It pinged off the center of the target perfectly. “Again.” She did so until it clicked empty, placing the gun back on the table and looking at Will expectantly.

“Satisfied?” His face didn’t show any signs of emotion as he continued to look at her.

“Be quick with the water break. Then we go again.” He walked away from her with his usual saunter that annoyed her to no end. He was broad yet so tight and moved with a grace a man of his size should not be able to possess. Clara did not go into her line of work because she was someone who sought praise. She knew that didn’t come with this territory. But there was something about Will that made her want that. She wanted him to tell her she was progressing. Wanted him to tell her she was doing better than he had given her credit for. That, soon, she would be ready.

“Don’t worry. He’s extra stoic when he’s happy.” Gavin, one of the other guys from the team, was popping grapes into his mouth as he strolled over to her with a bottle of water.

“Thanks,” she took it and drank half, “I don’t care. Just as long as I obtain whatever skills needed for him to sign off on me and this op.”

“I’m sure you’re doing fine. And we’ll be with you the whole time. That's more so what his job is about. Can we trust you to have our back? Not drag us into an ambush.”

“Well if that’s the case, I should be allowed back at my desk to do the work. I feel useless out here when I could be back there, knowing my source and understanding their access to the target.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” She turned to see Will had made his way back. He was standing with his hands on his hips, head tilted in disappointment. “You are the target. That’s why you are here learning how to shoot. How to protect and how to kill.”

“I’m not dense, Captain. I understand they’re the enemy and we are on their turf.” She hopes he wasn’t implying that she was losing sight of what she had come there to do. He could never understand her commitment to the cause. The time she had dedicated to be able to stand before him in that moment. To get her shot at doing something meaningful for her country.

“I don’t think you do. I think-” he abruptly shut his mouth and shook his head as if he was trying to get rid of the thoughts that resided in there. “Forget it. Let’s just get back to what we were doing.”

“No. I want to hear what you think.” She didn’t think she’d be able to carry on it if she didn’t.

“It’s best we just keep things professional from here on out.”

“Fine.” If she imagined his face on the target for the rest of the day, he didn’t need to know that either.

----

Will was looking at the words on the page but he wasn’t reading them. He was thinking about today. How he had lost his cool, if only for a split second, and how he wishes he could shove his words back into a box and shove them under his cot. He doesn’t know if he meant what he said. Doesn’t know because he didn’t want to know her. He didn’t want to get to know Clara and what drove her to do what she did. What made her wake up in the morning. What had inspired her to learn to pull a trigger with such ferocity. It only made the necessary detachment all the harder.

“You wanna talk about what almost happened today?” Will raised one eyebrow and didn’t spare the soldier a glance.

“Just like you said. Almost happened. Nothing to talk about.”

“The point is for there to be numbness between you two. Nothing. Even animosity has the potential to derail this whole thing.” He dropped his book onto his chest with a sigh. It didn’t look like he could avoid this conversation.

“I don’t want to watch her die.” That shut up his interrupter. The past agents that Will had escorted to the tribal regions hadn’t made it back. They stuck out like sore thumbs and asked hard questions up front and kept twitching their hand towards the gun tucked to their side. He didn’t think he could watch it again. Carry her body back to the airfield and know he failed one more time.

“She’s good, man. Maybe tomorrow you start actually looking at how she’s doing instead of trying to ignore her. Might put your fears at ease.” Will felt his hand hit his shoulder in a comforting slap before he was left alone again with his book and his thoughts.

The next day, he tried his best to stay relaxed and focused while Clara worked her way through the tactical course they all trained on. He watched her find the targets easily and hide from their line of sight like it was second nature. But he still couldn’t let his guard down. Complacency was the real enemy out here and he’d been working double time every day to keep it at bay.

“Good job. You were partially exposed on that last choke point but overall don’t think you would’ve gotten yourself killed.” Clara laughed at the way he formed what she thought was his version of a compliment.

“Thanks.” She doesn't know what happened overnight but she was enjoying the new leaf he had turned over. Today he was more vocal. Telling her not only what she was doing wrong but also what she was doing right. He was still a man of mystery but she thinks she had managed to crack him just a little bit. “Are you going to the volleyball game tonight?” she asked after a few moments of silence. She thinks she would have remembered seeing someone as handsome as him at one of the morale events and he didn’t seem like the type but she was going to seize on her opportunity to crack further.

“Wasn’t planning too.”

“Well, you should. It’d be good for you to smile on occasion. Watching these idiots throw themselves around might do that.” He chuckled and looked at her with a smile that melted away all of her confidence.

“You’ll be there?” She hummed affirmatively. “Then save me a seat.”

#will miller #triple frontier #charlie hunnam #will miller fanfiction #triple frontier fanfiction #charlie hunnam fanfiction

25 notes · View notes

weekendwarriorblog · 3 years

Text

The Weekend Warrior 4/30/21: SEPARATION, LIMBO, THE OUTSIDE STORY, WITHOUT REMORSE, ABOUT ENDLESSNESS and More

Everyone recovering from the Oscars? I’m certainly not, but trying hard, especially cause I gotta jump RIGHT into the Emmys cause the nomination process begins in just six weeks… WTF?! Well, if it’s any consolation, I plan on continuing to include my thoughts on box office as things seem to be slowly getting back to some semblance of normalcy.

There aren’t a ton of new wide theatrical releases this week, at least not many particularly high-profile ones. Open Road/Briarcliff, one of the first studios to begin releasing movies during the pandemic with Liam Neeson’s Honest Thief and The Marksman, neither which grossed more than $15 million domestically, is the only studio taking on the 2nd weekends of Mortal Kombat and Demon Slayer.

eThis week, they release William Brent Bell's supernatural thriller SEPARATION (Open Road/Briarcliff), which stars Rupert Friend as Jeff, a failed comic book artist, whose wife Maggie (Mamie Gummer) wants a divorce and is fighting for custody of their daughter Jenny (Violet McGraw) in said divorce, before she's killed in a hit and run. That leaves Jeff and Jenny alone in their brownstone with Maggie’s father (Brian Cox) wanting to take Jenny away, and...oh, yeah, the vengeful ghost of Maggie causing all sorts of trouble.

Before we get to my review, which I wasn’t able to run until Thursday anyway, let’s talk about box office. We’re coming off one of the best weekends at the box office since the pandemic hit with both Mortal Kombat and Demon Slayer opening with over $21 million each. While I don’t expect Separation to have much of an effect on either, there’s no denying that both movies are very likely to be frontloaded, and I would be surprised if either of the movies has less than 55% drop-of from opening, but I think Mortal Kombat may stay ahead for a second weekend at #1 with around $10 million. I’d put Demon Slayer at closer than $9.5 million.

I’m not sure how many theaters Open Road will get for Separation, although theaters chains should be grateful to them for taking a chance on movies back in the fall when New York and L.A. were yet to reopen. I think it may be able to swing close to 2,000 theaters and that should be enough for it to do around $4 million this weekend, which would be better than Screen Gems’ The Unholy a few weeks back. I wouldn’t expect good reviews or a CinemaScore above a C-, so it’ll act like most horror movies and will probably will end up in the $12 million total domestic gross.

So let’s get to that review of Separation, which looks like your typical cliché-ridden horror movie, because guess what? It is!! Bell is a perfectly capable filmmaker, but somehow, he keeps directing complete horror schlock like last year’s very bad Brahms: The Boy 2. I have to assume his Orphan prequel next year isn’t going to be much better. It’s another classic case of white male filmmaker failing upwards, because he keeps getting movies to direct after every bad previous movie.

We meet young Jenny as she's talking to her creepy dolls while her parents fight, and when Jenny falls, it’s the last straw for Maggie who files for divorce with her lawyer father really putting the screws to Jeff. To be honest, Maggie is such a bitch that you don’t really feel much sympathy when she’s suddenly dead. Her father has no sympathy for Jeff and just wants to get Jenny away from him. During this time, Jeff starts getting work as a comic book artist, and while references to the Eisners and Maus are certainly entertaining, there’s another part of the movie that just gets the whole “comic book artist lifestyle” pretty wrong.

The thing is no one will come into Separation for most of that stuff, which is why one wonders why Bell would spend so much time on the family drama aspect of the movie while throwing in a few occasional scares, mostly of the variety we’re used to seeing in “ghost movies” these days, complete with the “bendy bone” apparition, in this case with a creepy clown face.

Even though the cast is good, especially the adorable Violet McGraw, who is constantly stealing scenes from her more experienced co-stars, there is just too much about the movie that makes you laugh, and not deliberately. Besides the odd overall portrayal of the comic book business, there’s also Jeff’s adoring babysitter Samantha (Madeline Brewer from A Handmaid’s Tale), who starts making overtures towards him despite their obvious age difference.

Then every once in a while, we get a creepy scene like Jeff’s experience on a subway or we see a black robed ghost that represents Jeff’s angry wife, and the whole way through this, you can’t help but think, “Boy, Mamie Gummer was lucky to get hit by a car early on, so she wouldn't have to be here for the rest of the movie.”

It all leads to a last act where the movie suddenly starts to get good then throws an absolutely horrible twist at the viewer that just doesn’t work. That and all of the many horror clichés that pervade the movie just makes this an awkward and disjointed mess that never really manages to define itself from dozens of similarly bad horror movies.

Another movie getting some sort of of moderate to wide-ish release is Ben Sharrock’s LIMBO (Focus Features), which was recently nominated for a couple BAFTA film awards. It stars Amir El-Masry as Omar, a Turkish refugee in a dreary Scottish seaside farming village, who is just trying to make his way surrounded by other refugees.

Every once in a while -- like every other movie -- Focus Features releases a movie that I just don’t get why they’re bothering with, and here is one of those quirky movies that I feel will appeal to a very small niche audience. I have no idea how many theaters Focus might get this into, but this would be a platform New York and L.A. platform release at best in the “before times,” so trying to put this into more than 100 theaters is just asking for a lot of near empty rooms. Facts are facts.

I guess I can say a few words about this, even though I don’t have much to say. It’s certainly strange -- not necessarily witty or even laugh-out-loud funny -- and that doesn’t exactly make it very good. The main actor has the charisma of a piece of cardboard, so he struggles to get the audience really behind him. Most of the time he spends interacting with other characters and talking on a remote payphone in the middle of nowhere to his mother and father back in Turkey.

Oddly, this movie reminded me of the movie Lemon for some reason -- maybe the four letters in common?-- and as “luck” would have it, two of the actors appear in ANOTHER movie opening this week -- how’s that for a strange coincidence? It might be due to the couple of Helga and Boris who are teaching the refugees on Western ways, including an opening dance sequence that’s actually a class titled “Sex: Is A Smile An Invitation?” (Spoiler: It’s not.) They are generally more interesting than any of the refugee characters, which probably wasn’t Sharrock’s intention. The refugee performances are just kind of dry and non-dynamic, and that’s a real hindrance in getting the audience to empathize with them.

To Sharrock’s credit, Limbo never goes to some of the more obvious places in terms of putting Omar in a romance, and it only starts paying off in the last act when we get an emotional moment between Omar and his brother, and we finally get to see him playing the “oud” (a Turkish lute, of sorts), which he’s supposed to be a master of. Otherwise, the movie just seems to drive home the obvious, that life sucks for refugees, and that’s about it.

Limbo isn’t a terrible movie, but it’s just so bland and disjointed and even somewhat generic for so much of it that even the eventual payoff doesn’t necessarily win you over.

Also getting a theatrical release this weekend is Chinese auteur Zhang Yimou’s latest film, CLIFF WALKERS (CMC Pictures), which I tried to get a screener for but sadly, too late to review it. It’s a spy thriller about four Chinese special agents who embark on a secret mission to the puppet state of Manchukuo in the ‘30s. It stars Zhang Yi, Yu Hewei, Qin Hailu and Zhu Yawen, and I wouldn’t be surprised if CMC gets this into 200 or 300 screens. With very little promotion here in the States, I don’t expect this to make much of a mark here.

Apparently, Terrence Howard also has a new movie out this week called TRIUMPH, in which he co-stars with RJ Mitte from Breaking Bad and is directed by Brett Leonard. Apparently it’s only in Cinemark Theaters, and it’s inspired by Michael D. Coffey’s true story with Mitte playing a high school senior who tries to be a wrestler despite having cerebral palsy.

Also if you’re looking for something to see in theaters, Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is finally getting its 10th anniversary re-release in theaters this weekend, including Dolby Theaters for the first time. That’s what I’m doing on Sunday with my movie pals, Erica and Mike Streeter.

Another movie getting a limited theatrical release is Roy Andersson’s ABOUT ENDLESSNESS (Magnet), the latest from the auteur king of Swedish existentialism, which will also be available via virtual cinema as well as in those select theaters.

I’m not quite sure what to say about Andersson’s latest, because I’ve never really understood the appeal even as other film critics rave about movies like A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence and You, The Living and others. Like those, Andersson seems to specialize in disparate episodic segments about random characters that seem to have absolutely no connection. In this case, there’s a priest who has lost his faith who is first shown dragging a cross up a hill as onlookers barely batting an eye that turns out to be a nightmare.

If you think the movie is going to spend any time following this priest’s struggle, you obviously don’t know Andersson, because instead, we keep being introduced to different characters from a bored woman’s voice-over, every once in a while cutting to a couple floating over the city for no apparent reason. Every once in a while, a few words are spoken but then we’re off to the next vignette.

Sorry, but I have very little time to watch a movie that doesn’t seem to have any interest in plot or story, two of the most important things for any movie in my book, and believe me, this is not the first time I’ve tried to give Andersson a chance because a few hundred cinephiles can’t be wrong, can they?

Yes, in fact, they can and they are, because the almost-80-year-old Andersson is the type of filmmaker who will continue along with this super-niche audience enjoying his quirky non-sequiturs that I just find super dull and pointless.

The latest movie based on a Tom Clancy novel is TOM CLANCY’S WITHOUT REMORSE, which begins streaming via Amazon Prime Video starting Friday. It stars Michael B. Jordan as Navy Seal John Kelly, who has a mission go South in Aleppo, Syria, and when he comes home, he becomes a target for Russian Nationalist soldiers who end up killing his wife. In order to find those responsible, Kelly is pulled into a mission by CIA Agent Robert Ritter (Jamie Bell) and fellow Seal Karen Greer (Jodie Turner-Smith from Queen and Slim) to go after those responsible for his wife’s death only to discover a plot to try to put America and Russia back at war.

Before you get to my review, you can read my interview with director Stefano Sollima over at Below the Line.

So let’s get in this. I’m by no means any sort of Tom Clancy fan, neither of the books nor the movies, not that I haven’t tried, at least with the movies, as I haven’t read any of the books, nor have I gotten around to watching John Krasinski’s Jack Ryan yet, but other than the Harrison Ford movies, nothing has really gotten me very interested in the “Ryanverse”... so WIthout Remorse and join the list of not-particularly-interesting movies based on Clancy books.

It’s certainly not Michael B. Jordan’s fault, since he’s a great lead, and I even thought Sollima did a decent job particularly with the bigger action set pieces that would have been great to see on the big screen rather than on a television set.

I guess part of it is that I really didn’t have any particular interest in knowing more about the John Clark character from the Clancy movies I have seen to see his origins modernized and pulled out of the ‘80s Cold War in which Clancy very deliberately set them vs. the modern political world with everything happening overseas.

Part of my problem is that I just didn’t really care for Jodie Turner-Smith as a soldier with her beautiful hair shaved off, as I just didn’t think she could pull off the toughness that one expects from a soldier of Greer’s status, especially after seeing her in Queen and Slim. I know I’ve seen Jamie Bell in things I’ve liked and better than he is in this movie, which seems to be him basically phoning it in as a character who should have far more layers.

I guess when it comes down to it, we do have to blame Sollina for not working from a stronger script, even though this movie has been in development for over a decade, but it’s also not too surprising after watching it why Paramount Pictures figured it would make more money selling it off to Amazon than releasing it theatrically.

Essentially, Without Remorse is another action-thriller with lots of bullets and explosions that still comes across as exceedingly dull and bland. Surely, Clancy’s books must be better than this to have built such a fanbase over the years.

Opening digitally and for download is Casimir Nozkowski’s THE OUTSIDE STORY (Samuel Goldwyn Films), starring the great Brian Tyree Henry, recently seen in Godzilla Vs. Kong, as editor and filmmaker Charles Young, who is getting over his break-up with his girlfriend Isha (Sonequa Martin-Greents) when he gets locked out of his apartment building. As he tries to get back in, he (and we) meet all sorts of strange and funny characters who may or may not help him.

I ended up really liking this movie a lot, because as with most of his characters, Henry creates a really likeable hero for us, and Nozkowski gives him a great story to really explore a lot more areas of humor than we get to see him do in most movies. This is pretty much a straight up comedy of errors, but it also offers quite a bit of poignancy through Charles’ interactions with various neighbors and them commenting on how he misses his girlfriend. (He broke up with her because she confessed to making out with another woman.) Oddly, I can relate to a lot of what Charles goes through, which definitely helped me connect more with his character.

Nozkowski’s fun script managed not only to get Henry on board, but also the likes of the great Sunita Mani as a beat cop writing up cars whose meters have expired and Matthew Maher, who you’ve seen in everything. The only real weak link as far as the ensemble was young Olivia Edward, who just isn’t up to the other actors in terms of the humor. I can understand why Nozkowski would want to include a young girl in the movie as one of Charles’ neighbors but that was my least favorite part of the film.

Otherwise, The Outside Story is a wonderful and lovely indie, showing off Brian Tyree Henry’s terrific range as a genuinely likable character, and I guess that makes it my favorite movie of this particular week.

Another movie opening this via streaming this week is Dave Grohl’s WHAT DRIVES US, which will be available via something called “The Coda Collection,” which I really have no idea what that is, and unfortunately, I also didn’t get to see this, because I’m sure I would have liked it as much as Grohl’s previous docs and the HBO series Sonic Highways. If I do find time to watch it, maybe I’ll add a few thoughts in an upcoming column.

Hitting Disney+ on Friday is the Soul prequel short, 22 Vs. EARTH, directed by Pixar editor Kevin Nolting, who I also interviewed. It features Tina Fey voicing her lead character from Soul, 22, and it takes place before she meets Joe Gardner as she’s trying to find a few young souls to help her in her boycott of going to Earth rather than remaining in the Great Before. It’s fun and quick (just six minutes) but it’s cute, and something obviously only meant for those who want to know more about her Soul character.

A movie I missed when it was released back in late February but will be available on DVD this week is Nicholas Jarecki’s CRISIS, a tense ensemble thriller about a different pandemic, the rise in opioid addiction and the huge criminal (and legal pharmaceutical) industry that feeds that addiction to the tune of billions of dollars a year. It features an impressive cast that includes Gary Oldman, Armie Hammer, Greg Kinnear, Evangeline Lilly, Lily-Rose Depp, and Michelle Rodriguez, and it’s a really strong dramatic thriller that reminded me a bit of Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic.

I have a feeling that all the issues Hammer was facing around the time (and still) may have prevented Jarecki’s movie from getting much publicity, but Hammer plays one of the three main characters, so if his presence bothers you, I can’t really do much about that. Hopefully that doesn’t put you off learning about a very serious situation facing many families, and Jarecki takes a tough situation and manages to explore it with a decent and entertaining movie. I also thought Lilly was fantastic as a mother trying to get over her own addiction when her son dies seemingly of an opiate overdose. She doesn’t believe it, so she starts her own investigation.(Hammer's federal agent also deals with a family member addicted to opiates, in this case his sister played by Lily Rose-Depp. Of course, Oldman is always great, and that’s the case here, too. It’s just another intense drama from the director of 2012’s Arbitrage that goes as far and deep into the topic of opioid addiction as that movie did with the stock market.

Also on digital this week is Michael Loven’s dark comedy-thriller MURDER BURY WIN (Gravitas Ventures) about three close friends trying to make a game, and it’s quite witty and entertaining. Also out digitally this week is Michael Parks Randa and Lauren Smitelli’s inclusive summer musical, BEST SUMMER EVER (Freestyle Digital Media), which is also kicking off this week’s ReelAbilities Film Festival on Thursday.

The new Apple TV+ series THE MOSQUITO COAST will also debut on that streamer service on Friday, while the very entertaining animated feature THE MITCHELLS VS. THE MACHINES, which I reviewed last week will stream on Netflix starting on Friday, as well.

This week also sees the start of the 50th Anniversary New Directors New Films at Film and Lincoln Center and MOMA (Museum of Modern Art), which I wrote about a few weeks ago, but unfortunately, there really isn’t much in there that interests me, so I haven’t seen anything.

Movies that I just wasn’t able to get to this week, mostly available digitally:

DUTY FREE (This is actually opening for a one week preview at New York’s reopened IFC Center)

WILDCAT (Saban Films)

THE RESORT (Vertical)

PERCY vs. GOLIATH (Saban Films/Paramount)

THE VIRTUOSO (Lionsgate)

FOUR GOOD DAYS (Vertical Entertainment)

GOLDEN ARM (Utopia Films)

That’s it for this week. I always feel a sigh of relief when I actually get to sit down and write this column, and I’m actually able to finish it. It feels like a bit of a pyrrhic victory, but I’m still not quite up to where I was last year in terms of watching and reviewing. We’ll see if things improve this summer. The next few weeks are absolutely slammed with new movies, too, because even though Black Widow has been delayed until July, there are a ton of movies still being released. Next week, the latest from Guy Ritchies, Wrath of Man, reuniting him with Jason Statham.

#TheWeekendWarrior #Movies #Reviews #Separation #without remorse #the outside story #Limbo #AboutEndlessness

0 notes