The Long Kiss Goodnight review
I continue my reviews of unconventional Christmas movies with the yuletide classic, “The Long Kiss Goodnight”, in which you get scenes that mix automatic weapons, Christmas lights, yummy treats, bad beats, pies in the face, mistletoe and bombs that blow. Geena Davis plays Samantha Caine who can’t remember most anything past 8 years ago but steadily is getting memories back. Meanwhile, the covert American government agency she, unbeknownst to her, was an assassin for, thought she was dead but now they know she’s alive and they want to reverse that. Samuel L. Jackson plays Mitch Hennessey, a low-rent private eye, trying to help Samantha remember who she was. He gets caught in the crossfire as naughty government elves come to take Samantha’s Christmas spirit away AKA put her in the ground. All the while, in the background, this movie drops the needle on some great Christmas tunes, which just makes this a bullet-riddled Christmas classic all the more. “The Long Kiss Goodnight” also stars Craig Bierko, David Morse, Brian Cox, Yvonne Zima, Patrick Malahide, Tom Amandes, Melina Kanakaredes, Joseph McKenna, Dan Warry-Smith, Rex Linn and Edwin Hodge.
Ballerina review
You know the John Wick movies are successful when they’re making spin-off TV series and movies off of that franchise. This week we get the first, and most assuredly, not the last John Wick spin-off movie, “Ballerina.” Ana De Armas takes the starring role in this as another assassin who, like John Wick, was trained to kill by the Ruska Roma criminal organization. Perhaps she’s even more lethal than Wick because no one expects her to be an assassin. We saw a preview of De Armas kicking butt as an agent in the Bond film “No Time To Die.” Here she gets a whole movie to showcase her killer talents. In this, her main objective is to use her particular set of skills to find her parent’s killers and no one better get in her way. Is it worth checking out this action at the theater? Check out this episode to find out. “Ballerina” also stars Keanu Reeves, Ian McShane, Angelica Huston, Gabriel Byrne, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Ava Joyce McCarthy, Juliet Doherty, Norman Reedus, Lance Reddick, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, David Castaneda, Victoria Comte and Robert Maaser.