Up first this week is Deep Water. With such a generic name you don’t expect a movie starring Aaron Eckhart and Ben Kingsley and directed by Renny Harlin. Unfortunately the movie is as generic as its title. Have we seen shark survival movies before? Yes. Have we seen plane crash survival movies before? Yes. But, have we seen plane crash survival movies that turn into shark survival movies before? Yes we have already. No Way Up did the same exact thing in 2024. That’s the biggest issue with the film, there isn’t a lick of originality in it. I can ignore Kingsley being way too old to be an active pilot. I can look beyond the one dimensional characters. I can laugh at the absolutely terrible CGI effects if the movie was doing something new and trying to be groundbreaking. I wanted to like the film because I do like both leads and Harlin has made some fantastic action flicks in the past, but I sat there laughing at the sharks, the plane crash and special effects. I sat there wanting the rude American guy killed immediately. I barely cheered on anyone to survive because I didn’t care about any of them. An e-sport team clashes with a real sport team. A couple leave their kids to join the mile high club. None of it matters or means anything to the audience when the entire movie lacks any bit of originality. I hope both leads got paid well or they shot the film in a cool exotic location because this is beneath everyone involved.
Speaking of movies from famous directors, The Christophers comes from Steven Soderbergh. I only know this because that’s what the credits told me. I certainly wouldn’t have guessed that while watching it because it’s the least “Steven Soderbergh” film he’s ever made. Ian McKellen plays a reclusive artist whose son and daughter want to make money off of before he dies. They hire a woman to pretend to be his assistant so she can sneak out a set of paintings he started, but never finished. They want her to finish them so they can sell them. They are portraits of an old boyfriend named Christopher he did through the decades, but has never finished nor wants to. McKellen is great in the role and probably had a ball being snarky and old. Unfortunately the movie itself didn’t do a whole lot for me. Soderbergh is more hit than miss for me usually, but this is one I don’t see myself revisiting. None of the other characters felt fleshed out and despite being older and dying, McKellen’s character was the only one that seemed to have any life in him. It didn’t have a lot of style which is shocking coming from the likes of Soderbergh. Obviously being about art there is plenty of color which is a Soderbergh trademark. I was actually bummed at how lackluster this was.
We here at The Nerds Templar have seen every Ip Man movie Donnie Yen has done. We’ve seen The Grandmaster and all kinds of other takes on the martial arts legend. Yen doesn’t star in Ip Man: Kung Fu Legend, but the story feels like an Ip Man story he’d have done. This time around Ip Man takes on foreigners buying up land around the docks and martial arts studios where he’s trying to open his own club. He gets set up and finds himself arrested for murder. This is a follow up to 2019’s Ip Man: Kung Fu Master with both the lead and director returning. The action is solid and the final fight sequence is cool. It may not reinvent the genre, but if you are a fan of movies about the Wing Chun master then this will be right up your alley. It looks great on 4K.
Red Sun gets a 4K release from Arrow Video this week. Charles Bronson is an underrated star in my book and this finds him robbing a train, getting double-crossed and joining a samurai in retrieving a gold sword that is a gift from the Japanese for the US president. Ursula Andress and Alain Delon also star. I don’t know if I had ever seen the full movie before, but I mentioned it to both my parents and they were familiar with it. Bronson is great in the role opposite the fish-out-of-water samurai dealing with Indians and cowboys. The action is solid and westerns make for great revenge stories. The movie looks great on 4K and the bonus features have some great archival behind-the-scenes features and more.
Last we have NCIS: Tony & Ziva: Season One. If you’ve read me for years you know NCIS is a show I only watched when review copies come my way. It’s not something I ever watched when it aired, but it has always been one of my mom’s favorite shows. She’s soured on it of late when Mark Harmon left and most of her favorite characters left as well. Two of her favorites were Tony and Ziva so I actually knew this show existed because of her. Michael Weatherly returns as Anthony DiNozzo with Cote de Pablo back as Ziva David. Season One begins where their character left NCIS. They are in Paris, Tony working private security and Ziva running a language school. They aren’t together romantically, but are raising their daughter. Flashbacks throughout the season explain what happened in their personal lives. Season One involves Tony being set up as someone stole Interpol money and makes it look like he did it. They team up with a hacker to try to clear their names. Season One is ten episodes and features guests like Sean Pertwee and James D’Arcy. If you like NCIS, especially the original cast, then this is definitely for you. I actually didn’t mind it because it’s more of a spy thriller than NCIS tends to be. I don’t know if I’ll start watching it when it airs, but I’ll definitely continue watching it as the seasons come my way on physical media.
The Nerds Templar 