On the Run

As much as I fancy myself a cinephile, I have plenty of blind spots, and Hong Kong cinema is one of them. Sure, I’ve seen a few John Woo films and whatnot, but I mainly know these guys more from when they ventured into Hollywood to work with Van Damme (like Tsui Hark’s Knock Off, which I’ll be writing about soon). So more obscure titles like Alfred Cheung’s On the Run (which just got a new Blu-ray release from 88 Films) definitely flew under my radar, but I’m glad I’m getting a chance to check them out now.

I associate Hong Kong action films with constant action and blood squibs. On the Run has plenty of both, but I was surprised by the brutality of the film, and I don’t just mean the constant head shots. The story is a typical police corruption tale. Hsiang Ming is a miserable cop. He’s separated from his wife, a fellow police officer. Just as he’s asking her to take him with her when she emigrates to Canada with their daughter, she is assassinated. Hsiang tries to solve her murder, uncovering massive police corruption and endangering literally everyone in his life. 

What sets On the Run apart, aside from the shocking severity of it, is the spectre of the 1997 transition of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule. The film takes place in 1988, but it’s at the forefront of every character’s mind. Hong Kong is viewed in almost apocalyptic terms. The uncertain future of the country has people desperate to leave, and that requires money. This makes the villains of the film, though thoroughly despicable, at least understandable. Greed is fine as a motivation for villains, but when it’s about getting enough money to leave a country before it changes, it makes a little more sense. To be clear, the villains in this movie are absolute inhuman shit sacks, but at least they have a goal. 

Aside from that dark undertone, this is an entertaining kinetic experience. The characters are never given time to sit and grieve, and the film is better for it. Instead, it’s almost like a war movie in which it’s sad that your allies are dead, but if you’re alive all you can do is keep moving. 

I need to get into SPOILERS for my final thoughts.

The brutality I keep referencing above isn’t about the depiction of violence. Yeah, there’s blood and head shots, and what have you, but this film took things to a darker level when Hsiang’s daughter is killed. I’m so used to action movies sparing children that it really shocked me when she died. I suppose I should have expected it, though, because it seemed like everyone was fair game once the grandma was killed. It just solidified that Hong Kong had become a land of death to these characters. And then at the end when it seems like there might be a bittersweet ending with Hsiang and his wife’s killer (it’s complicated) escaping to Thailand, we’re hit with a chyron stating they were captured and are now in jail with no hope for release. Fuck! I went into this expecting some violent fun, and those last fifteen minutes fucked me up. I’m looking forward to checking out more obscure titles from Hong Kong, but I’m hoping for a little more fun.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Trilogy - The Arrow 4K Set

I’ve owned the first two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies in different formats since they were first released on VHS in the early ‘90s. I’ve upgraded to DVD, then Blu-ray, and now, with Arrow’s new release of the trilogy: 4K UHD. There’s no doubt that yet another format will come along one day, but for now this new release should last for many years as the best way to own these three movies. 

Before I get into the special features and whatnot, I wanted to get into the movies themselves and what they’ve meant to me over the years. The trilogy of live action TMNT movies serves as a kind of metaphor for my fandom over the years. I was a huge fan of the Turtles growing up, and watching the first film in theaters at age six is one of my earliest memories in a movie theater. I remember loving it, but it was only after the second one came out just a year later that I realized how dark that first film truly was.

Perhaps “dark” is the wrong word, but compared to the much sillier Secret of the Ooze, the first film is downright brooding. At the time, though, I loved them both. When I got the VHS tapes, I tended to pick the second film to watch over the first. The second one is simply more kid-friendly, intentionally so. The Turtles use their weapons sparingly, there’s a lot more pizza-eating, it’s brighter, and there are no overly sad or frightening moments.

The first film, by contrast, is literally darker, and the main focus is Shredder’s Foot Clan recruiting New York City’s youth into a crime syndicate, luring them in with the promise of videogames, gambling, skateboard ramps, and cigarettes (“regular or menthol” as offered by Sam Rockwell in an early role). The city is in turmoil, and when the Turtles get involved, people get hurt. Splinter is captured, and Raphael is beaten so badly, it seems like he might die for a long chunk of the film. This makes for a better movie overall, but when you’re six or seven, the fun one is an easier watch. But even back then I knew this was a higher quality film, even if it had slower moments. 

As for the third film, I think it’s absolute trash for two reasons. First, it just is. Second, it came out two years after Secret of the Ooze, and I was nine and starting to move on from the Turtles. I didn’t even watch this one in the theater. And when I eventually watched it on VHS, it was one of the first movies to make me realize that movies could be bad, which is a devastating thing to learn when you’re little. 

Some people defend the third film, but I can only assume it’s a Hook situation, and they just happened to be the right age at the right time to enjoy such garbage. As for me, I have tried to watch it a couple times as an adult, and it just gets worse each time. In fact, I only watched five minutes of it this time so I could check the transfer quality, and I turned it off as soon as I could.

I still enjoy the first two films, though I will admit that the first one is the only one I could seriously call “good.” The second one is nostalgic fun for me, and I do believe it is objectively better than the third film, but had I only watched the second film as an adult, I would probably not care for it much. 

And this brings me to the full circle moment with these films. My kids are now old enough to be fans of the franchise (the latest animated Turtles film was a big hit with all of us), so I’ve gladly introduced these films to them, especially my son, who has taken more of a liking to the franchise. Just like me as a child, I can tell he likes the first one well enough, but it’s the second one that keeps his attention. As he gets older, I look forward to watching the first one again with him to see if he likes it more. And as for the third one, I’m going to do my best to convince him that it doesn’t exist.

The Transfer

I’m relatively new to 4K physical media, so I’m not the best judge of what a good transfer is. In fact, I’m still dealing with the fact that most of these new 4K releases are meant to restore the film to how it looked theatrically rather than making them all superficially crisp, as a lot of Blu-ray releases have done over the years. In other words, a lot of 4K stuff is grainier than previous releases, and the first two Turtles movies are no exception. It’s not overly grainy, but if you’re expecting a pristine look, then you should stick with the Blu-ray or streaming releases. 

But the grain is actually a benefit with this series. Since the films, especially the first one, feature a lot of underground and shadowy scenes with actors in rubber suits. Grain can keep things realistic. The third film is perfect evidence of this. It’s the crispest transfer of the three, but the suits are comically worse than the first two films. Without a little grain, it is distractingly obvious that the suit budget was slashed for the third movie. In the first two films, it’s easy to accept Splinter and the Turtles as real characters. In the third film, they all look like animatronics from a theme park. Little kids probably won’t mind, but for an adult dork like me it made an already crappy movie practically unwatchable. 

Special Features

There are plenty of cool collectible items included in this set like a Roy’s Pizza loyalty card, some posters, a booklet with new articles about the films, etc. If you’re into that stuff, it’s great. There’s not much to say about it, so I’ll focus more on the special features included on the actual discs.

Most of the new stuff consists of interviews with the cast and filmmakers of each film. The first film gets the most material, and it descends from there with the third film, rightfully so, receiving the least attention.

The interviews for the first film from Judith Hoag, Steve Barron, and Brian Henson are the most enlightening. I had no idea that the film was pretty much taken away from Barron in the editing process. But I kind of get why. Barron himself admits in his interview to taking the film to Disney in the hopes they would give him more money for reshoots in return, I assume, for distribution rights. I can imagine Golden Harvest, the studio that made the film, was not happy with this. It’s honestly a wild thing for Barron to try to do, but it doesn’t seem like they had the best relationship even before this as Henson claims that both he and Barron were fired from the film more than once.

There’s also an alternate ending that is worth watching just to hear the stunt guys doing the voicework. 

Both of the first films have special features dealing with the whole “ninja” controversy of the series. There are alternate cuts that retitle the film Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, and apparently nunchuks were a real problem in the UK in the ‘90s, as there are edits of all the films toning down any nunchuk use.

The archival 1991 doc is nice just to see how popular the series was back then. And it features an interview with Eastman and Laird. There's plenty of behind the scenes stuff from the second film. I can't tell who this was made for, though. It seems promotional, but it kind of gives away everything that happens in the second film. The narration has the tone of something aimed at kids, but I’m not sure how kids would have come across this back then. I don't remember ever seeing this, and I was definitely the target audience back then.

There are also plenty of commentaries that I’m sure go into much more detail than the interviews, but I had to draw the line somewhere so I could finally write this, so I have not listened to them. But come on, you’re either a commentary person or you’re not at this point; nothing I say will change that.

This is certainly the definitive version of this trilogy to own, and I can’t imagine that will change any time soon.

The Tragedy of MacBeth - Settling for Great

It’s been a common theme with a lot of the later Coen films that I don’t have much to write about them. They are all fine, and I like them, but I don’t know what to say. They developed such a unique film language that by the time you get to something like Hail, Caesar!, it’s par for the course. But par for the Coens is a double bogey for most filmmakers (if you’ll excuse my baffling golf metaphor). And when excellence becomes expected and standard, what else is there to say or do? If you're the Coens, it might mean it’s time to split up. 

“Split up” sounds like a relationship ending, but from what I’ve read that is not the case. Ethan felt burnt out after Scruggs (take all this with the biggest grain of salt you can find because I have not done any actual research about this, and I’m just trusting that the dudes on the Blank Check podcast had good research when they said all this stuff I’m using), and he simply wanted a break. Joel didn’t. (I’ll get into the Ethan side of things when I cover his two solo efforts at some point, hopefully soon, but no promises.) Apparently, if there was anything goofy or fun in their filmography, it was from Ethan, because Joel decided to make a pitch black (and white) adaptation of MacBeth. 

When this project was first announced, I was very excited. As a former teacher, teaching MacBeth was one of the highlights of my year (yes, I know how sad that sounds). I always enjoyed showing my students the most unique adaptations of Shakespeare’s work (like Mean Girls for Julius Caesar or the Ethan Hawke Hamlet, etc.). So I assumed Joel Coen would make something more like Scotland, PA (my favorite adaptation of the play), and less like the Orson Welles version. Imagine my surprise when the first trailer was released, and it looked like a straight up remake of the Welles adaptation.

This is a bare bones, stark, bleak, brutal take on the play. Aside from casting Kathryn Hunter as all of the witches, this is about as traditional as you can get. Which is fine, by the way. If I was still teaching (I took a factory job ten years ago because the low pay finally got to me), this would replace the Welles version my students slept through immediately (I would have loved to use Scotland, PA but it was way too R-rated for a school viewing, even with seniors). But I couldn’t help feeling a bit disappointed. O Brother is the Coen version of The Odyssey, but this is what we get for MacBeth?

Once I get past that self-imposed hurdle, it’s easy to like this film. Washington is great, and the supporting cast is great. McDormand is okay as Lady MacBeth, and I did like the portrayal of the MacBeths as an older couple, as it accentuates the pointlessness of it all since they have no heirs, or possible future heirs, to inherit their ill-gotten gains. 

MacBeth is one of Shakespeare’s darkest, most miserable plays, and the stark style that Welles and Coen used is apt. Scotland in this film feels like a post-apocalyptic hellscape. It adds to the theme of the film: what does it mean to be king when this is your kingdom? This obsession for power that only took the slightest bit of suggestion from the witches is so blindingly stupid it’s hard to believe anyone would be this evil for it. Adaptations like this make you long for a prequel. What was MacBeth like before the witches planted the idea of being king in his head? Was he normal? Happy? It’s clear he was trusted, but someone who can turn on a dime like that and become viciously evil must be giving off weird vibes throughout their life. 

This is my problem with the play, in general. MacBeth has to be this stupid shell of a man who only goes down this evil path because of witches and his wife’s ambitions. It almost seems like no decisions are actually made by him because everything he does is either at the urging of someone else or because a prophecy claims it will happen. Being an evil pawn in life breaks MacBeth mentally (“full of scorpions” and all..). Once you accept that you are simply an instrument of the world, then evil is just a side effect of your actions.

MacBeth is one of those annoying people who thinks the world is conspiring against them. He’s a fucking loser that cannot take responsibility for anything. Don’t get me wrong, luck plays a big factor in life, and a lot of people end up with shitty lives through no fault of their own. But when you start actively doing terrible shit and turn around and blame the world for it, then you can go fuck yourself. MacBeth might be the character I hate the most in Shakespeare’s canon, and that’s saying something because he wrote about plenty of scumbags. 

None of this has much to do with this particular movie, though, aside from doing a great job of exposing the annoying evil of MacBeth. In that regard, The Tragedy of MacBeth is a success. And stylistically it’s beautiful. But it’s not a film I enjoy, exactly. It is a film that is great for sparking thoughts about the source material, however. So a great movie to show a classroom of kids that will inevitably be disappointed by the black and white choice. 

This is all fine, but when it comes to Coens, single or together, I expect something special. Because of that, this adaptation doesn’t rate very high for me in their filmography. But that is a testament to their greatness. An adaptation like this would be a decent achievement for most directors. For Joel Coen, it’s an already mostly forgotten oddity. Here’s hoping Jack of Spades, the upcoming Joel movie I know almost nothing about, is a more unique film. I’ll settle for something just great, though.

Top Ten and Then Some of 2025

I usually hate it when people talk about “good” and “bad” movie years because it’s all subjective, and somebody’s bad movie year is somebody else’s good year. And there are always good and bad movies; it’s just a stupid thing to say. That written, this was a fucking great movie year. All jokes aside, this top ten wasn’t that hard to come up with, but picking the order of the top five has been in the back of my mind for weeks. Rewatchability is a big deal to me, and there are multiple movies in my top ten that I watched multiple times already. I watched Sinners five times, and I watched Bugonia and Superman four times each. This might be weird to the casual filmgoer, but this means these films created a world I wanted to keep coming back to, and if that doesn’t make it one of the best of the year, then I don’t know what does.

And by “best,” I mean “my favorite.” Once again, all this shit is subjective. These are not the ten best movies of the year; they are my top ten favorite movies of the year. Anyway, I’ll get to it. And this year, I’m adding some randomness after the list to acknowledge the stuff that made an impact on me, but didn’t make the list.

1. Sinners

This has been making plenty of top ten lists, and it won the top prize in my own critics group. So I didn’t want to put it at the top of my list because sometimes I can be a stupid contrarian. But after watching it a couple more times in the last two weeks, I couldn’t deny it: this is my favorite film of the year. As with all of my top five, click the title for a full article about the film. To keep things short, this is one of those great films that can be simply enjoyed or deeply analyzed. And it’s one I plan on revisiting many more times in the future.

2. Bugonia

Yorgos Lanthimos is my kind of director. He can make something like Bugonia, which should be a tough watch, extremely rewatchable. There’s nothing about the world of this film that is inviting, yet I never want to leave it. It’s the performances, the tone, the score, the camerawork, and the willingness to go anywhere with the story. Any other year, and this is my top pick. 

3. Marty Supreme

The funniest and craziest movie of the year. Much like other Safdie films, it never lets up, but it isn’t a constant nerve-wracking experience. Instead, it’s mostly fun even though you’re following a piece of shit. But Chalamet makes Marty a likeable piece of shit. Maybe “likeable” isn’t the word, but he makes it believable that others would do crazy shit for him, and that’s impressive. 

4. One Battle After Another

As soon as this ended after I watched it in IMAX, I thought this would be my favorite overall. But a few viewings of Sinners and a couple other crazy movies later, this somehow ended up being my fourth favorite. I still love this movie and everything PTA does. I may have liked a few films more than this, but I’ll be okay if this is what finally gets him some Oscars.

5. Eddington

Ari Aster makes films that are tough to watch once, much less multiple times. So when I found out his newest film was going to take place during the heart of the pandemic, I debated ever watching it all (not really, but you know, it doesn’t like a good time at all). He captured the feeling of the moment and also made it entertaining. The dialogue in this film, which often feels like a constant barrage of half arguments drifting into other ideas and back again, is like modern, frustrating poetry. I think that’s a compliment. Anyway, what I assumed would be my least favorite film in his filmography turned out to be the opposite.

6. The Secret Agent

This film is a fantastic slow burn about a point in history that is unfortunately very timely. That alone makes it a great film worth watching. But Wagner Moura elevates it exponentially. He conveys so much with his eyes in this film. It’s a heartbreaking performance that is my favorite of the year.

7. No Other Choice

Last year, I watched every Park Chan-wook film, so I knew this was going to be special. This take on the dehumanizing world of capitalism is so much more than “money makes people do bad stuff.” It’s about the need to be a provider no matter what, and how we see other people when we feel like that is being threatened. In true Park Chan-wook fashion, it’s also still very funny at times.

8. Train Dreams

I love The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, therefore, I also love this movie. It’s beautiful and poetic, and it sucks that I saw this on Netflix instead of a theater, but as the film bittersweetly conveys, things change with time. Also, I want Will Patton to narrate my life.

9. Superman

Comic book movies have left me feeling exhausted the last few years. This one gives me hope. I was considering bumping it from my top ten until I rewatched it one more time. That ending always leaves me smiling. How could I not count it among my favorites?

10. The Tenderness Tour

I watched a lot of documentaries for awards consideration this year, and it bummed me the fuck out. A lot of the “important” docs focused on how shitty things are right now, and I didn’t find much hope in them. The Tenderness Tour addresses medical debt, which is obviously a depressing and maddening subject, but it doesn’t wallow in it. Instead, it shows us people that are working to make things better. It shows people persevering. Most importantly, instead of showing us a terrible situation and saying, “Look how shitty this is,” it tells us there is hope, and everyone can do something. 

On Any Other Day, These Might Have Made the List:

Weapons - Equal parts creepy and hilarious. Just a great time if you don’t get too hung up on the mystery and whatnot.

Wake Up Dead Man - Easily my favorite of the series, probably because Blanc takes a bit of a backseat for most of it. I like the character, but the accent gets to me after a while. Amazing supporting cast.

The Naked Gun - Time will tell on this one. I found it consistently funny, but I can’t put it alongside the originals (yes, even the third one; fuck you, I like it). But it has definitely been added to my rotation of silly ass movies to fall asleep to. 

Splitsville - This movie had my favorite car stunt and fight scene. It’s also a romantic comedy.

Bring Her Back - The scene with the knife will never leave my memory.

The Life of Chuck - Man, I am hearing all kinds of hate from folks on podcasts and shit about this movie all of a sudden, but I really liked it. Maybe it’s the Stephen King fan in me. Anyway, I meant to watch it again and just didn’t find the time. 

Liked, but Didn’t Love, So Here Are My Letterboxd Posts About Them:*

Avatar: Fire and Ash - I kind of loved this? Still too much whale stuff, and a lot of character shit leftover from The Way of Water is still annoying (Jake Sully, just listen to your kids!). But overall, I dug this maybe the most of the entire series. When you stop and think of it, the shit with Spider and Quaritch is absolutely fucking wild. If therapy exists on Pandora, Spider is going to need some.

Ultimately, I came away feeling the same way I did after Water: if Cameron just wants to make these for the rest of his life, I'll keep watching them.

Grand Theft Hamlet -  This is the kind of wonderful shit Jim Carrey promised would happen in his speech on the satellite dish in The Cable Guy.

Cloud -  This was a wild one. I had no idea where it was going from scene to scene, and every character seemed legitimately insane. It's a nightmare scenario in which everything you've done to be rude or screw people over, no matter how minor or impersonal, is taken deathly seriously. And somehow, it's kind of fun, too? This was a wild one.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning - I have to admit that I zoned out every time this got lost in exposition mode explaining a plan or whatever the Entity was doing, but I don't care. There are big set pieces and crazy shit throughout as you'd expect. And it has the most stacked cast of the franchise. It's also nice that they became self aware at the end and admitted these people are simply action heroes and nothing more. They fight to save the whole planet yet they don't have any personal relationships beyond the team. There's nothing wrong with that; I'm just glad they flat out said it.

Jay Kelly - This worked for me because I've seen plenty of movies about characters like this that need a team of handlers to take care of every aspect of their lives, but rarely do they stop and wonder if they even had a life in the end. This film is focused not only on whether or not the star being tended had a life, but if the handlers had a life, either.

As a father, it absolutely floors me when characters like this let down their children over and over again. So I was glad to see some realistic repercussions here.

Predator: Badlands - I'm okay with Trachtenberg just dicking around with Predator for his entire career.

The Plague - Dance like no one's...staring at your blood-stained shirt.

An intentionally tough watch that works so well because all the young actors in this are almost too good. At times, it felt like a fucked up documentary, and that's a compliment.

And I know part of the point of this is the lack of adult supervision or ability to see the bigger issues going on, but I couldn't help but think about this whole film from Joel Edgerton's perspective. Every couple days he must've been thinking, "What the fuck is happening here?"

Sister Midnight - Wasn't expecting to hear perhaps my favorite cinematic insult of the year ("Go fuck a shovel!") in this, but I didn’t know what to expect at all going in to this, and I imagine that's the best way to watch it.

It does seem to spin its wheels a bit in the last half hour, but I was certainly never bored with it.

I like the sound the goats make.

The Shrouds - At first, I was surprised by the ending. Surprised because I thought there must be at least twenty minutes left to wrap up the multiple questions the film posed. Then I remembered this was a film about grief, not a detective story. Grief has no definitive answer, and neither does this movie.

But that doesn’t make for a totally compelling watch. I was interested throughout, but this is a very sleepy movie.

Bonus half star for the bits of dark humor, like the digital assistant becoming a koala, Cassel taking a first date to his wife's grave, etc.

Sentimental Value - Skarsgård's character was pretty unlikeable at first, but he won me over when he gave his grandson copies of Irreversible and The Piano Teacher for his ninth birthday.

The Testament of Ann Lee - I knew Amanda Seyfried was destined for more than just predicting the weather with her breasts.

Also, imagine your wife disliking sex with you so much that she starts a religion in which the first and most important rule is to never have sex again.

Bob Trevino Likes It - This destroyed me.

And French Stewart from out of nowhere as a total shitbag. I like it.

Frankenstein - If some dudes could just admit they're not cut out to be fathers early on it would save people a lot of trouble.

Oh, and in this film's case, if dudes could just accept their syphilis diagnosis, then it would save people a lot of trouble.

The Baltimorons - This put a smile on my face.

 

Die My Love - I know this is more about post-partum, but if my partner had brought home a mangy, constantly barking nightmare of a dog without talking to me about it while we had a newborn, I would go insane, too.

Friendship - I love you, Toad Boy.

Highest 2 Lowest - Bonus half star for making a "Mayhem" reference in a movie with Dean Winters.

 

28 Years Later - This could've been six or seven different movies: coming of age realization about a parent, post-apocalyptic secluded community and how it all works, zombies!, giant zombie cock! (just joking, but it's a legal requirement to mention the dicks in this movie), zombie baby!, old doctor's bone farm, the Swedish soldiers getting stuck in the quarantine zone, accepting death of a loved one, Jimmy Savile look-alike zombie-fighting squad, etc.

If it had solely been any of those movies, I probably wouldn't have liked this all that much. But since it's all of them, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

I've missed classic Boyle frenetic energy.

The Phoenician Scheme - Some of these really work for me, while others are just okay, and I have no idea why. But everything is always interesting to watch, and I'll watch them all as long as he keeps making them.

Mickey 17 - Not since Upgrayedd from Idiocracy has a character been so determined to get their money.

Sketch - This was the first time my son brought a movie to my attention. As a kid who has been in a little trouble for his artwork at school, the premise spoke to him, I guess.

A bigger budget could have made this a lot more fun, but for a low budget effects-driven family film about dealing with the grief of a dead parent, it was fine. It did a good job of toeing the line between sappy and wacky.

Minus half star for some wonky (I'm assuming AI-assisted) effects (there's a spray can flamethrower moment that looks quite bad) and the shameless mid-credits ad for the film's tie-in app.

Roofman - The surprise of the year for me just because I completely forgot it existed until a few days ago. A lot of fun and perfectly rides the line between drama and comedy.

*I hope the five or six of you who have made it this far appreciate how long it took me to copy and paste all my Letterboxd shit. 

Yeah, I get it, that’s a lot of movies, but as I said, this was a great year for movies for me. In fact, I could have added a few more, but it started to feel ridiculous, and I’m tired of typing this. And yes, there were some movies I didn’t like, but I usually skip shit I know is not for me, so I’m not making a “worst of” list or anything like that. I want to like movies, so I try to focus on shit I like. And hey, if you want to keep up with absolutely everything I watch, just follow me on Letterboxd.