Nobody 2 (2025)

I had an absolute blast with Nobody when it was released. The fact that I haven't rushed to rewatch it in the intervening years is just a sad reminder of how packed my viewing schedule is for the foreseeable few decades (at the very least). I couldn't bring myself to rush to the cinema to see Nobody 2, but I knew I'd want to give it a whirl when it came to home viewing platforms.

All of the main characters are back, with the main plot concerning Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) trying to enjoy some family holiday time with his wife, Becca (Connie Nielsen), and children (Brady, played by Gage Munroe, and Sammy, played by Paisley Cadorath). The holiday is soon soured, unfortunately, when Hutch stumbles into the middle of the best-laid plans of the dodgy Sheriff Abel (Colin Hanks), who does a lot of dirty work for the powerful and ruthless Lendina (Sharon Stone). As Hutch tries to keep his family safe and aims for a showdown, he once again has to utilise the talents of a couple of family members (played by Christopher Lloyd and RZA). 

With all of the main players returning in front of the camera, it's comforting to see that Derek Kolstad has also returned for the writing duties (joined this time by Aaron Rabin). The only main change is Timo Tjahjanto taking over the directorial duties, and that feels like a big plus, considering the fantastic and savage action that he's delivered throughout his career.

Let's start with the good stuff. Odenkirk and co. are all still great in their roles, and the film feels better for keeping the family all in the loop this time around. RZA and Lloyd still get to shine in third act moments that super-charge their presence, but Nielsen must have been very happy to see that the screenplay made her capable of handling the unexpected pressure, as well as a gun. Hanks is a pretty good villain, John Ortiz is a middle man who could go either way, depending on who he trusts to protect him and his son (played by Lucious Hoyos), and Stone is enjoyably willing to chew some scenery in her few scenes. It's just a shame that she isn't in the film for longer. I would have liked more of her, even if that meant just watching the growing shadow of her character looming over everything from the earliest scenes.

There are decent fights throughout, and the runtime is a zippy 89 minutes. I also quite liked the humour, largely tied to the exasperation of Odenkirk's character when forced to do what he does best.

That's about it for the good stuff though. Tjahjanto really falters when it comes to the fights, disappointing with repeated moves and numerous coincidences ensuring that our lead survives until the big final battle. It also doesn't help that, despite the family holiday premise, Kolstad and Rabin are happy to have written a screenplay that comes very close to just rehashing everything from the first movie. The wrong people get upset, assets are destroyed, and the third act is full of booby traps, even more overwhelming odds, and some vital support from other experienced killers. 

I could watch this again, Odenkirk almost ensures that I could rewatch pretty much anything he's involved with, but I doubt I would ever pick it if it was sitting right alongside the original. That's a much better film, and this suffers in comparison to it. It should have been much better, and it's easy to see where improvements should have been made (giving Stone more screentime, making better use of the amusement park, varying the fights more). There's still some fun to be had with it though.

6/10

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Prime Time: King Solomon's Mines (1985)

If you’re going to make a movie that hopes to cash in on the success of Indiana Jones then you may as well be as blatant as possible about it. King Solomon’s Mines, based on the old adventure stories by H. Rider Haggard (although I couldn’t say how closely the film resembles them), is about as blatant as can be. That doesn’t matter when the stars get to shine. But there are many sequences when things just aren’t as entertaining as they should be.

Richard Chamberlain is rugged adventurer Allan Quatermain, hired by a woman named Jesse (Sharon Stone) to help find her father. The two travel around Africa, being as respectful and culturally sensitive as you might expect (aka not at all), and they end up heading towards the legendary King Solomon’s Mines, hotly pursued by a man named Dogati (John Rhys-Davies) and a German explorer named Colonel Bochner (Herbert Lom).

Directed by veteran J. Lee Thompson, a man with a filmography crammed full of the kind of movies you may have been forced to watch alongside your grandfather on a Sunday afternoon (hey, I love many of them now, despite slightly resenting them back then), King Solomon’s Mines is, in many ways, enjoyable action fare. The script, by Gene Quintano and James R. Silke, neither of whom seem to have specialized experience in this genre, is crude and clumsy, but there are enough set-pieces dotted throughout to guarantee a certain level of fun. It’s just a shame that you can imagine those set-pieces being improved by the main music from the Indians Jones movies. Or even just featuring Indiana Jones in place of Quatermain. That isn’t the big problem here though. The big problem is a lack of any chemistry between the leads, a lack of any decent characterization for anyone, and nothing to really care about. We’re thrown into the plot with a sequence that allows us to assume some of the backstory, the finale is unsatisfying and unbelievable, so it’s really only the middle section that works as well as it should (especially during a fun action sequence set on a train).

Chamberlain is handsome and charming, which is kind of what he brings to almost every role, and Stone is left to look pretty alongside him, sometimes acting more as the damsel in distress and sometimes being a strong and capable asskicker. It could have been a decent role, but the script leaves her as undeveloped as our hero, only interested in putting them in various perilous situations and then developing some kind of love between the two of them that feels even more fantastical than some of the other plot elements. Rhys-Davies and Lom are fun villains, although the former will keep reminding viewers that you could always just switch this off and revisit those Indiana Jones movies. Ken Gampu and June Buthelezi deserve a mention, playing African characters who are generally treated poorly by the script playing up their “primitive ways”.

If you can look past the rear projection work and the stunt double appearances, there’s some genuinely impressive stuff onscreen at times, from that aforementioned train sequence to a face-off between two airplanes in the sky. There is plenty of dynamite thrown around, some booby traps and big beasties, and even some cannibals that want to boil people in a big pot in a way usually only seen in cartoon depictions of cannibalism.

I doubt anyone involved will look back on this as their best work, even the Jerry Goldsmith score is quite forgettable (although not actually bad), but I hope they don’t view it as their worst. It’s very much of the era, and very much a Cannon film, but it certainly tries to stay entertaining from start to finish.

5/10

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Noir-vember: Basic Instinct (1992)

Everyone remembers Basic Instinct for one main scene, a scene that underlines it as the ultimate blend of polish and sleaze in the realm of the erotic thriller. But there’s a lot that is so often forgotten, including the plotting that helps to make it an impressive neo-noir, and even allows it to come close to being a fully-fledged giallo at times.

The opening scene is one of those forgotten elements. It’s a sex scene that ends with a brutal death, which is memorable enough, but the sheer intensity and unflinching look at the carnage prepares viewers for a very different type of film. That la petite mort, or maybe we should call it le grande mort, is the event that leads to the introduction of two cops, Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) and Gus Moran (George Dzundza), and those two cops soon end up questioning a main suspect Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone). It turns out that Tramell is a successful author, and a murder depicted in one of her books was carried out in almost exactly the same way as the murder now under investigation. Tramell seems drawn to Curran, who has a fiery and addictive personality, which is why he has been treated by Dr. Beth Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn), who is also his occasional sexual partner. The mind games begin, and don't ever really stop, and the corpses eventually start to pile up as Curran and Tramell enjoy a fiery liaison that shows they could bring out the best and worst in one another.

Written by Joe Eszterhas and directed by Paul Verhoeven, there's nothing here that should work as well as it does. It's all a messy blend of clichés and ridiculous, but cine-cool, dialogue, with Verhoeven displaying his usual consideration for levels of taste and subtlety. Despite the big names and the polish, this is pure trash, but in all the right ways. And it's self-aware, playing out very much like some late night TV show about a grizzled detective, but with added bloodshed and sweaty sex scenes.

Douglas has never been afraid to play flawed men/anti-heroes/villains, and he does another great job here, portraying someone who can no longer run fast enough to stay ahead of the problems caused by his addictive personality (be it drugs, sex, or just visceral thrills). He's also happy to take on a role of someone potentially being played like a fiddle, and he's basically a strong supporting player in a film that showcases Stone at her best. She's sexy, smart, strong, and definitely has a hint of danger about her. The film made her reputation, and with good reason. It's hard to imagine anyone else taking on the role and doing it so well, although I can easily imagine some getting it horribly wrong. Tripplehorn has arguably the most thankless of the main roles, but she does well with what she's given, Dzundza plays a character so obviously due to reach a certain major plot point that he may as well be in a parody, and you have a cast further fleshed out by the likes of Denis Arndt, Leilani Sarelle, Chelzie Ross, Daniel von Bargen, Wayne Knight, Stephen Tobolowsky, Mitch Pileggi, and Dorothy Malone. Whether their roles are big or small, everyone works well enough with the material, and they're all guided by a director who is, as is so often the case, confident in his way of approaching the material.

There's more to highlight here, from the Jan de Bont cinematography to that lush Jerry Goldsmith score, and dismissing Basic Instinct as glossy smut does a major disservice to just how nicely it manages to maintain such an unusual intensity throughout, barrelling along from one hedonistic pleasure to the next as things build and build to what may be best described as an expectedly messy climax.

9/10

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Sphere (1998)

Although not released at the same time as the big underwater thrillers that battled it out in the late 1980s (those main three titles being Leviathan, DeepStar Six, and The Abyss, of course), but Sphere is nicely in line with those films, and any other underwater thriller that tends to mix horror or sci-fi with our fascination/fear of the deep waters that cover so much of the surface of our planet.

There's an alien spacecraft found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, which understandably requires some investigation. That leads to the standard assembling of a group of smart people who might be able to get to the bottom of things. There's a marine biologist (Beth Halperin, played by Sharon Stone), a psychologist (Norman Goodman, played by Dustin Hoffman), a mathematician (Samuel L. Jackson), an astrophysicist (Ted Fielding, played by Liev Schreiber), and a U.S. Navy Captain (Harold Barnes, played by Peter Coyote). Once at the main site, our assembled team discover a number of strange details, and then a large and impenetrable, perfect sphere. And things are about to get much stranger, putting the group in danger as sanity is worn down and people start to turn on one another.

Michael Crichton has written numerous best-sellers, and his name has been involved with a number of enjoyable blockbuster movies, but he hasn't always been adapted well to the big screen. Sphere is one of the better Crichton adaptations of the past few decades, although it suffers from the fact that the finale probably isn't as satisfying as viewers want it to be. Adapted by Kurt Wimmer, the final screenplay by Stephen Hauser and Paul Attanasio is a decent attempt to mix in some spectacle, thrills and tension, and some solid psychological horror (albeit mild horror). As with so many Crichton tales, there are a number of great ideas, and the script at least executes many of them very well.

Director Barry Levinson also does good work here, making the most of his all-star cast and the chance to provide a number of set-pieces that build and build on the way to the grand finale. The weakness seems to be in the source material, but only in the way that it doesn't feel designed to provide the most obvious type of third act resolution that so many of us are used to from these kinds of movies.

There's nobody here who feels out of place when it comes to the cast. The leads are just superb, all bringing certain qualities to their characters, which is obviously why they were picked. Stone is another strong female here, although one with a vulnerability that ends up being exploited. Hoffman is a bit arrogant with his intelligence, Jackson is more relaxed and open to seeing how things play out, and Schreiber is, well, just fun to have onscreen alongside the others. Coyote is as dependable as ever, and there's even a good little turn from Queen Latifah, playing one of the few other characters to have actual dialogue.

It may not quite do enough to warrant me making a pun like "the only thing you need to fear is Sphere itself", but this is a sorely-neglected blockbuster from the late '90s that tries to weave between entertainingly dumb and entertainingly smart.

8/10

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Nico AKA Above The Law (1988)

A Steven Seagal movie in which the wooden one bumps up against rough bad guys and does his slap-happy chopsocky schtick. No different from any other Steven Seagal movie then. Don’t let that put you off though, this is Seagal’s first movie and, alongside the next four, remains one of his best. It’s actually worth revisiting the man’s early works to remember just how good he once was.

Directed by Andrew Davis, from a script that was developed from a story by Davis and Seagal, the movie is all about tough cop Nico Toscani (Seagal). Nico was a special covert agent in Vietnam but left in disgust as he saw the war being used as a cover for profiteering from drug money. He doesn’t tolerate hypocrisy and doesn’t care who he upsets, until the day when he runs up against a major baddie who targets his family and those around him.

While it’s not the best of Seagal’s first five movies, Nico holds up as a solid action flick with a decent plotline and enough action beats spaced throughout to keep things moving briskly along. The direct, powerful fighting style that Seagal uses helps things feel fresh and a step apart from a hundred and one other, more stylised martial arts movies.

It also helps that the supporting cast includes an on-form Pam Grier, Sharon Stone, Henry Silva, Chelcie Ross and numerous other folk recognisable to viewers of this type of unpretentious entertainment.

 

Davis handles directorial duties well but both director and star would go on to peak elsewhere (Davis with The Fugitive and Seagal with Under Siege). Nico certainly remains an enjoyable option for the action movie fan though.

6/10

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