Tag: Action

K-POP DEMON HUNTERS (2025)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTORS: Chris Appelhans, Maggie Kang
CAST: Arden Cho, May Hong, Ji-young Yoo, Ayn Hyo-seop, Ken Jeong, Lee Byung-hun
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 91% Certified Fresh [plus a resounding 99% on the new “Popcornmeter”, but who’s counting…]

PLOT: A world-renowned K-Pop girl group balance their lives in the spotlight with their secret identities as demon hunters.


For those living under a rock, K-Pop Demon Hunters is the movie that accomplished what no other movie has ever done: have four of its original songs in Billboard’s Top 10 rankings simultaneously.  (Even Saturday Night Fever had only three.)  Three hundred twenty-five million views on Netflix within 91 days.  The first Netflix film to open at #1 at the box office.  Recent winner of the Oscar for Best Animated Film.  Clearly, this is a movie with its finger on the pulse of the enormous global K-pop mania, and despite my general apathy towards K-pop in general (I can’t name one song by BTS, let alone a member – but I do know one of them was in Ready Player One), I figured it was time to give this phenomenon a day in court.

While it has not turned me into a K-pop “deokhu” – I had to look that up – K-Pop Demon Hunters was still great fun.  There were some questions that remained unanswered when the credits rolled, but I’m betting those will be addressed in the inevitable sequel.

The plot sounds preposterous because, well, it kind of is.  Rumi, Mira, and Zoey are members of a wildly successful K-pop girl group called Huntr/x…when they’re not busy hunting and killing the demons that constantly prowl the city’s population looking for souls to capture for their dark master, Gwi-ma, an amorphous soul-devouring demon voiced by Lee Byung-hun, star of No Other Choice and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, which I actually liked, but moving on.

The story, interrupted only occasionally, but effectively, by musical numbers, involves a shield – I’m just going to call it a “demon shield” – that blankets the city, protecting its inhabitants from the nefarious demons as long as the girls of Huntr/x can use their voices to strengthen/power it.  If some demon butt-kicking is needed, they have that covered, too, showing off some cool-ass weapons and moves that would make certain radioactive reptiles green, or green-ER, with envy.  Jinu, an enterprising and musically-oriented demon in the underworld, comes up with a plan to defeat Huntr/x indirectly…through their fans.  And how do you sway fans of a kick-ass K-pop girl group?  Why, with an even more kick-ass K-pop BOY group, obviously.

But really, this is all just a clothesline from which to hang some truly creative visual stylings that owe their existence to the success of the recent Spider-Verse animated films.  Demon Hunters builds on that already-unique style by bringing in some even more unique Korean aeni (the Korean version of “anime”) flourishes.  The girls’ faces reflect intense emotions by turning into almost literal emojis.  When angry, their faces turn into something out of Dragon Ball Z.  When sad, their eyes turn huge and watery, the ultimate puppy-dog eyes.  When they see a hunky guy, their eyes first turn into cartoon hearts, then into, ahem, ears of corn when they behold the hunk’s washboard abs.  (The corn later turns into popcorn.)

Out of context (such as it is), this must all sound absurdly infantile, but, after a few minutes of culture shock, I found myself caving in to the absurdity.  And there is a deeper message to be found here, concerning concepts of self-worth vs. self-deprecation, and how self-doubt only wins when you cut yourself off from people who love you.  (I’m simplifying; the movie does a much better job of fleshing it out.)  While it’s not really a movie made for my generation, I nevertheless had a lot of fun with it.

And…yes, dammit, the songs are really catchy.  Even the “Soda Pop” one.

That’s right.  I said it.

TRON: ARES (2025)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Joachim Rønning
CAST: Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Jeff Bridges, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, Gillian Anderson
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 56%

PLOT: A highly sophisticated AI program goes rogue against its programmers to defend a scientist who may hold the key to something called “permanence.”


For those who are not fans of the original Tron (1982) or its high-tech sequel Tron: Legacy (2010), let’s clear the air right away: Tron: Ares is not likely to convert you.  Period.  I see you and I understand you.  No hard feelings.  Heck, I’m a fan of both movies, and I heard the terrible advance buzz for Ares and saw the low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb and thought, well, the franchise had a good run.  If it’s gonna suck, it might as well suck on the biggest screen I can find, in Dolby 3D, sixth-row center, to make the most of that Nine Inch Nails soundtrack/score and the slick CGI.

And…I gotta be honest.  Tron: Ares surprised me.  Admittedly, my opinion may be slightly influenced by the Dolby sound system that turned the synth- and bass-heavy score into a near-religious experience.  But Ares seems to have learned from the mistakes of its predecessors (earlier builds?), even going back to the original film.

First, the story is not nearly as cluttered as Tron: Legacy.  The first sequel threw in metaphysical content about spontaneously generated AI programs (the so-called ISOs), long conversations about the responsibilities of a creator/father to his creation/children, and duplicitous club owners (yep), and so on.  Tron: Ares, by comparison, is as straightforward as they come.  A MacGuffin is established early, as are the ground rules for how and why computer programs can exist as tangible entities in the real world, the bad guys are clearly identified (not all of them are in red), and once the pieces are set in motion, the movie only pauses the action when absolutely necessary.  It’s not Shakespeare, but it’s efficient.

Second, Tron: Ares makes a significant departure by moving the story between the “grid” and the real world multiple times.  The first two films, as you may remember, started with an expositional prologue in the real world, after which the hero is zapped into the grid for most of the rest of the film.  Ares starts in the grid, moves to the real world, gets its human hero into the grid, gets her AND Ares back out, then goes back into the grid again, and so on.  It introduced a rhythm that was missing from the first two films, and it broke up the visual palette so that neither one became boring.  Pretty slick.

Third…and this is something I just wrote about Brian Blessed’s character in Flash Gordon (1980)…Tron: Ares reintroduces an element from the first film that was virtually absent from the second film: a sense of fun.  It doesn’t introduce a wise-ass Kevin Flynn character or anything like that, but Jared Leto as Ares is given some genuinely funny dialogue that brought some much-needed laughs to the film.  Particularly when it comes to his preference for ‘80s synth-pop with catchy hooks.  Note: I’m not claiming it’s a laugh riot.  But the humor is very welcome when it arrives.

Another big factor in this movie’s favor is the huge Easter Egg that has not even been hinted at in the trailers, and thank God for that.  No, I’m not talking about the presence of Jeff Bridges, smart guy.  It’s so big (in my opinion) that the less said about it the better.  But I’m here to tell you, I haven’t geeked out that much in a movie theater since Ready Player One (2018).  Moving on…

And the score…!  I learned that Disney apparently insisted that the score be credited to “Nine Inch Nails” instead of “Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.”  Good choice.  Their booming bass and synthesized soundscapes are the equal to the other two films in every way, if not superior.  (And I LOVED the Daft Punk music from Legacy.)  There’s even a song or two with vocals from Reznor!  What?!  Not content with nostalgia bombing us with random easter eggs from 40 years ago, Ares throws in a musical bomb from 30 years ago.  And it really, really fits the story.  Hand to God.

Overall, there is a nostalgic sheen to Tron: Ares that made it feel like I was watching a souped-up version of a really good ‘80s film.  That might be the highest praise I can give it.

If you’re a sucker for well-crafted nostalgia, you could do a lot worse than picking up a ticket for this movie before it gets pushed out of the cineplex by the Wicked sequel, if not sooner.  Bad buzz?  Whatever.  I had a good time.

NOVOCAINE (2025)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTORS: Dan Berk, Robert Olsen
CAST: Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson, Jacob Batalon
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 82% Certified Fresh

PLOT: When the girl of his dreams is kidnapped, a man incapable of feeling physical pain turns his rare condition into an unexpected advantage in the fight to rescue her.


Just when I thought the John Wick franchise had shown me everything there was to see in terms of modern action films, along comes Novocaine.  If there are philosophical rumblings at the heart of the screenplay, I didn’t see them.  There is a brief scene where a character says probably the deepest line in the film, something along the lines of, “We all have something to hide.  Maybe we’re just looking for someone to show it to.”  Apart from that, though, this movie is a machine designed for one thing: thrill you and make you laugh and cringe all at the same time.  That’s three things, but you get the point.

Because this machine has only one purpose, any criticisms accusing it of not doing something it wasn’t designed for are moot.  You don’t eat a cheeseburger and then complain it didn’t taste like chateaubriand.  I got what the movie’s goals were after 10-15 minutes – or, actually, even after just watching the red-band trailers.  I went in with eyes wide open, and I was not disappointed.  My only real complaint is that those same trailers gave away a little too much of the very best fight scenes in the film, ruining two of the best gags (the deep fryer and the ball-and-chain).  But I forgive the trailer editors because the rest of the movie was so freaking entertaining.

Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid, whose father’s famous smile will haunt his face for the rest of his life) is an assistant bank manager living with a very real genetic disorder called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain, or CIP.  He literally cannot feel pain, to the degree that he can’t even chew solid food because he could theoretically chew off bits of his tongue and not realize it.  His obligatory meet-cute with the love interest, Sherry (Amber Midthunder), involves him spilling scalding hot coffee on his hands, but of course he doesn’t feel a thing.  One thing leads to another, and they spend the night together.  Apparently, Nate can’t feel pain, but pleasure is another story.  (I thought that scene might include a homage to Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis’s love scene in Some Like It Hot [1959], but alas.)

Next day, as is revealed in the trailers, three robbers dressed as Santa Claus rob his bank, kill his boss, and take Sherry hostage.  On impulse, he takes off after them in a stolen police car, which of course leads authorities to believe he’s in on the case.  This also leads to the first of several jaw-dropping fight scenes, not because they’re insanely choreographed like a Jackie Chan movie, but because the physical violence shown on screen goes beyond anything I can remember seeing before in a fight scene.  Maybe Oldboy (2003) comes close.

Fair warning: if you are squeamish, this movie is simply not for you.  Just in the first fight scene alone, we see Nate get kicked, punched, seared by a scalding hot frying pan, and burned horrifically, which results in him wearing a bandage (and a disturbingly realistic prosthetic) on his hand for the rest of the movie.  The comedy comes from equal parts watching as Nate gets injured and simply powers through it, and from cringing and cursing and covering your face as those injuries occur.

I won’t give anything else away.  The movie does include an intriguing story development that I did not see coming.  My fellow Cinemaniac, Anthony, also made an interesting observation.  It was unusual to see a clearly comic film featuring so many actual deaths: multiple cops murdered after the bank robbery, a death inside the bank itself, and the body count keeps adding up as Nate gets closer and closer to rescuing Sherry.  Nate himself contributes (minimally) to the body count, but it’s mostly the bad guys killing anyone who gets in their way.  Is it possibly to balance almost slapstick physical comedy with so many, almost gratuitous deaths?

For myself, I didn’t think so.  I look at a movie like Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), with umpteen deaths, but it’s a movie that’s clearly having fun with the kung-fu genre, which requires lots of death.  Novocaine felt to me like a riff on the John Wick movies.  John Wick mows through LEGIONS of bad guys, getting punched and shot and sometimes falling from four-story buildings onto vans and just getting up, brushing himself off, and moving to the next fight scene.  Nathan Caine does the same thing, just not with legions of bad guys, but you’re constantly aware that he could be killed at any minute.  That kept the stakes raised, so I didn’t feel like I was watching a video game come to life.

Novocaine might be the most fun I’ve had at the movies in 2025 so far.  I laughed a lot, I CRINGED a lot (usually while I was laughing), and uttered more curse words at the screen than I have in a long time (usually “JEEEsus!” or “Oh SHIT”).  The story doesn’t quite reinvent the wheel, but the execution is superb.  Just to restate my warning from earlier: if you don’t like graphic onscreen violence, stay away.  Everyone else, enjoy!

TRANSPORTER 2 (2005)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Louis Leterrier
Cast: Jason Statham, Alessandro Gassman, Amber Valletta
My Rating: 6/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 51%

PLOT: An extremely skilled mercenary driver (Statham) is implicated in the kidnapping of the young son of a powerful USA drug official.


When an action film includes a shot of the good guy flipping his car off a ramp so a dangling crane hook can clip off a bomb stuck underneath the car mere SECONDS before it goes off…you either laugh and roll with it or scoff and leave the theater.  I laughed.

Transporter 2 is an example of a movie not really intended for American audiences.  From top to bottom, this is a European action movie, made in the States with the kind of budget unknown in foreign studios.  It was produced by none other than Luc Besson, director of cult classics like Léon: The Professional and The Fifth Element.  Here he farms out directing duties to Louis Leterrier, a genre specialist known for Jet Li’s Unleashed, the original Transporter, and, later on, an honest-to-God entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Incredible Hulk.

This movie is utter junk food.  It aspires to the kind of delirious cartoonish heights that would later be achieved by Shoot ‘Em Up (2007), but it fails due to too many breaks in the action.  And if you have too many breaks in a movie that’s barely 80 minutes long, something has gone wrong at the screenplay level.  In a movie like this, adding depth of character just gets in the way of the action.

The action itself, while mildly stunning visually, is too sparse.  There’s an extended fight scene in a basement that’s imaginative and well done, making creative use of a fire hose.  There’s a one-sided gun battle in a doctor’s office.  The lone car chase in the film sees the infamous building-to-building car jump from Lethal Weapon 2 and raises it.  And, of course, the bomb-removing flip to a crane.  (I can’t even discuss the finale aboard a plummeting private jet without wincing.)

Other than that, not much here, folks.  For me, this is an all-too-obvious guilty pleasure, something to toss into the player and jack the volume up so the gun battles rattle the walls.  The absurdity of the action allows the movie to flirt with camp classic status, but I usually just fast-forward to the parts where stuff gets blowed up real good.