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Film: Sisu

John Wick meets 3 Kings in WW2 Finland. Like a lot of these types of films, better in concept and trailer that movie-going experience. Definitely fun, worth the theater watch, etc. The main character doesn't speak for the entire film until the last line...I think. But it runs into the same type of flaw that John Wick does (at least for me) - that the genre expectations and movie-ness aren't grounded quite enough in human reality. At times, only a certain number of bad guys show up to deal with our main character - just enough so he might dispatch them. At other times, bad guys deliberately don't kill our main guy out of some indecipherable code or whim that is so clearly the filmmakers having dug themself a plot hole they couldn't get out of. Maybe I'm misreading these films in a way...but I'm of the generation who raised on at least semi-grounded action films. Even the campy, spoofy action films like Commando, Blood Sport, and later, The Rock felt superficially to belong to the physical universe we inhabit. At the end of this film, the main character (a gold miner), drives a motorcycle at a plane and stabs his pick axe into the bottom of the plane and holds onto the plan as it takes off. Is this less believable than Arnold Schwarzenegger climbing out of from the wheels in the plane and jumping into a Florida marsh before take off in Commando? Yes, I think it is.

Of note - strikes me a lot of this genre evolution has to do with the influence of action action flicks which come from a less grounded in physical reality space - basically action with fantasy elements mixed in. Historically, the martial arts films but you can feel the influence of Jackie Chan, John Woo, etc. 

Film: Border (2018) 

Super interesting film. Maybe not great, but highly compelling, original, strange. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but for those who like their films challenging, weird, different...a must see.

TV: Succession S4 E7

Am I the only one who cringes when there's a Tom-Shiv scene?