Sicario: Day of the Soldado is not so much a sequel to 2015’s megahit Sicario that you must know what happened in the first one to appreciate the second as it is its standalone movie. The only thing you need to know to go into the 2018 movie fresh is that (spoiler) the drug war in Mexico has escalated to the point where the United States government is forced to use questionable tactics that force some of its operatives to question the morality of what they are doing and that the US is aided mystifying man with a unique set of skills but a checkered past named Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro – The Hunted, Traffic) whose family is killed after an order by a Mexican Cartel Kingpin named Carlos Reyes. That’s it. This man’s men kill Alejandro’s family, and he wants revenge. If you accidentally read that brief spoiler, shame on you for going at least three years without yet seeing the phenomenal Sicario. And just because I gave a brief spoiler doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check it out if you have not already.
Category Archives: Catherine Keener
Get Out (2017)
Jordan Peele’s debut feature film, Get Out, was a film that I originally wasn’t going to review. I liked the movie well enough, but it wasn’t one that I felt comfortable writing about. I only do so now because it will likely be nominated for Best Picture and could get as many as ten nominations. This is kind of crazy for a movie released in February. It certainly isn’t unheard of, but it is rare. Its Academy Award nominations, 99% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and $175+ million in box office revenue off a $5 million budget confirm that this is one of the most surprising and successful movies ever. It may be THE most successful horror movie of all time if you measure it by those four factors alone. It’s a movie that keeps you engaged and entertained from its very first scene (think a toned and shorter version of the first scene in Scream), powers its way through a unique plot that you’ve never seen on film before, and keeps you on the edge of your seat through its bold and unpredictable final act.
Enough Said (2013)
It is unfortunate that director Nicole Holofcener (Friends With Money, Lovely and Amazing) Enough Said was the last film that James Gandolfini (television’s The Sopranos, The Last Castle) completed before his untimely death, but what a lasting impression he will leave with the mass public in the most real and honest movie of 2013. Gandolfini has frightened us on the big and small screens for the last 20 years. He has played some of the vilest characters and some of the meanest. Like me, you might go into this movie thinking Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus in a romantic dramedy. There’s A) No chance it will be good, and B) Even if the critics somehow give it a positive review, there is no way I will give it a chance because it will be so unbelievable. Just like with Gandolfini as some mobster, hard military man, or hitman, we think of Louis-Dreyfus as the queen of goofy television comedies like Seinfeld, Veep, and The New Adventures of Old Christine. There is no way this movie could ever work in the world, right? Well, I will say unequivocally that this assumption is wrong. This movie is not just good. It is great. The chemistry between Gandolfini and Louis-Dreyfus is not something that just gets by. It is something that works effortlessly.
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