Combat As Character

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is probably the best movie made under the umbrella of the MCU; only Black Panther can really compete for that title. One of the reasons why is that the Russo Brothers know to their bones how to direct action to convey character. The Russos are not flashy stylist directors. Their […]

30 Seconds of Wick: On Va Voir (11:11-12:25)

Hey. Sorry to be away so long. It’s been an astonishingly bad year for me personally, in the midst of a bad year for the planet in general. I’ll probably post about it soonish — it’s a story that needs to be told — but all the matters right now is I’m back, the blog […]

30 Seconds of Wick Chapter 21: The Last Range is the Ground (1:11:30-1:12:00)

(Author’s Note: I’m going to try to get several chapters posted today, for release once a day for the next while, then move onto my interim one-off post 30 Seconds Without Fear about one of the most interesting fights in the Netflix Daredevil) My title for this chapter is a bit of an inside joke […]

Chapter 7: Shades of Blue and Red 50:00 – 50:30

The Russian Nightclub is the iconic fight of the Wick movies. Not my favourite—that belongs to my lethal lady Perkins—but there isn’t really any way to describe how instant the impact of this section of the movie was. It’s a seamless integration of gun, knife and hand combat, shot in a kinetic, grounded way. It […]

Oh, Captain ….

TW: Suicide  Folks this one is a little harrowing. It was hard to write and I find it hard to reread. I apologize for any typos or format errors. I couldn’t go over it that many times.  I was a lonely child in a house full of living things. Seven siblings, two parents, family friends, […]