Enjoyably

The year is 1755. Captain Ludvig Kahlen (a steely, inscrutable Mads Mikkelsen) has little to his name beyond his reputation as a fine soldier, and his rather threadbare uniform. Now retired, the captain hopes to bring his soldier’s tenacity to a new challenge: the cultivation of the inhospitable Jutland heath, with the aim of founding a settlement and winning the approval of the king of Denmark. But the bleak, wind-lashed Jutland terrain is the least of his problems – he falls foul of the sadistic local landowner,…

You expect that the stunts and fight choreography of a John Wick film will be top tier. The director, former kickboxer Chad Stahelski, got his start in the movie industry as a stuntman after all, serving as Keanu Reeves’s stunt double in The Matrix. Extravagantly showy stunt work is a given, and it’s the main reason to watch these enjoyably pulpy slaughterfests – certainly more so than the plot, which reprises the basic structure of past films, with Wick (Keanu Reeves) slicing his way through the countless henchmen of his…

via Saban Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ventures into comedy have often tended to be hit-or-miss, so it’s a touch on the ironic side that one of his best performances in the genre came as the titular hitman in Killing Gunther, a movie that a lot of people never got around to seeing. Written, directed, produced by, and starring Saturday Night Live veteran Taran Killian, the high concept caper has a fun premise and a talented cast, but even at a brisk 93 minutes, it can never seem to shake the fact that it’s…