kittysaysgo

I'm uncertain how Green Room achieved the acclaim it's generated over the decade or so since its release. While the performances are solid from its young cast, there's just not enough to chew on to make this film much more than a pulpy meat grinder.

We have a scrappy punk band who establish themselves as resourceful early on, siphoning gas from cars to keep their tour bus running, and also desperate, taking on a gig at a known Nazi establishment (hardly engendering sympathy for them in the early stages.) They witness a crime and subsequently spend the next hour and a half of runtime attempting to fight their way out of captivity.

Green Room offers us nothing new here, and while it develops well and holds its tense moments, there's some predictability in the way it offs an array of characters, slasher-style, and a variety of baffling and unnecessary twists muddle what could've been a more grounded plot.

Overall worth a watch on a night you've got nothing else to do, but ultimately a forgettable installment to the genre.

Martin McDonagh has given us a lot to chew here: a tale of dying friendship, depression, conflict, mental illness, and set it against stunning Irish hinterland.

The result is an astoundingly well-performed character piece: Brendan Gleeson plays Colm, who decides to cut ties with his years-long best friend Padraic, played by Colin Farrell, who's a bit daft and can't understand why his mate won't be friends.

It's tragic, it's profound, it's an understated piece of mental health and existentialism. But in the end, while we can't avert our eyes, it's not necessarily because we don't want to, but because we can't. A great work of art, but perhaps lacking in true merit, and thus, ultimately, forgettable.

Condor's Nest promises us a trip across South America on an old-fashioned Nazi-hunting adventure and in spite of some deficiencies it delivers.

We're thrown into war-torn Europe in the film's opening scene, as the story's protagonist, Will Spalding, watches German colonel Martin Bach (Arnold Vosloo, more on that in a moment) gun down his entire platoon. Through an act of cowardice, Will alone survives.

Jump ten years later to Argentina and Will's killing runaway Nazis left and right, all in pursuit of that same Martin Bach. Enter an Israeli spy and a two-faced atomic scientist and things get complicated quick, a shaky alliance between the three culminating in a raid on a neo-Nazi fortress know as the Condor's Nest.

There's a lot of good things about this movie. It's well-paced, visually expansive, and its various arcs are compelling, if uninventive. There's even a few great things about it: its lead ensemble (Jacob Keohane, Al Pagano, Corinne Britti) is an absolute joy to watch, and Arnold Vosloo brings an incredible amount of presence to the role of the heavy. Add to that the movie's many notable character actors, from Michael Ironside to James Urbaniak, who help drive along the plot.

The bad? Well, it just wasn't terribly inventive. It's a stylized thriller that doesn't attempt to break any new ground. It could've been an 80's World War Two movie. And that's not a bad thing - in fact, I believe it's a strength - but if you're looking for something totally original you won't find it here.