One-Line Review: American Badger (2019), starring Kirk Caouette

American Badger surprises with thoughtful pacing and good fight choreography, but needed another polish, a bigger budget, and way less rape.

One-Line Review: 12 Rounds (2009), starring John Cena and Aiden Gillen

The director of Die Hard 2 wished he'd made Die Hard 3, so he did the same thing but worse, adding more steps, clumsier reveals, and a girlfriend who exists to be a hostage.

One-Line Review: Cop Land (1997), starring Sylvester Stallone and Harvey Keitel

A strong, understated performance from Stallone in the role of a sheriff struggling to overcome his insecurity and his role as a yes-man for corrupt cops makes this a surprise success.

One-Line Review: The Protégé (2021)

Almost excellent, but the ending is a miss, it has a severe dearth of Vietnamese characters for a film set in Vietnam, and it expects us to buy romantic interest between the lead and someone 30 years her elder.

One-Line Review: Peppermint (2018), starring Jennifer Garner

Predictable and badly paced, this film tells viewers that Mexicans are gangsters and that vigilantism keeps people safe.

One-Line Review: The 2nd (2020), starring Ryan Phillippe and Jack Griffo

This one imagines a CIA conspiracy to negate the US’s 2nd Amendment that involves kidnapping, extortion, and lots of guns, which adds stupid to the sins of boring, patriarchical, and very, very white.

One-Line Review: Battle Drone (2018), starring Louis Mandylor and Dominique Swain

Aggressively sexist and passively racist, Battle Drone fails in every respect except inspiring me to rewatch The Losers, the excellent 2010 alternative to the inferior The Expendables.