In Absolution, Liam Neeson marks a kind of swan song

Liam Neeson portrays, in perhaps his last appearance in an action film, a gangster trying to make amends. We review that film, “Absolution,” as well as a new animated film featuring the work of “Bloom County’s” Berkeley Breathed.

They are all against the new courtroom thriller from Clint Eastwood, starring Nicholas Hoult.

Here is our collection.

“Absolution”: Piles of tired clichés litter Hans Petter Moland’s bleak, reflective crime drama about a gangster with a deteriorating mind trying to atone for past crimes and years of familial neglect. The beat-by-beat familiarity of it all clouds a committed performance from Liam Neeson, who has unfortunately not found success with his string of action films of late, and has said he will retire from the genre in 2025. While Moland and his team and supporting cast manage to make the most of the recycled material – from the film’s gritty, bleak visual look to the beaten-down, spat-out attitudes of the characters and the dilapidated places they inhabit – there is nothing so new here. You can always sense what’s around the corner in the plot, and that obvious one is deadly, diluting the power of “Absolution’s” redeeming qualities. Details: 2 stars out of 4; in cinemas from November 1.

“Hangdog”: Anxious and unemployed, Walt (Desmin Borges) moves with his girlfriend Wendy (Kelly O’Sullivan) to her quaint little hometown in Maine, where he encounters a collection of eccentric residents. Not too thrilled about moving from a big city, Walt tries not to fit in at all until his girlfriend’s pampered dog, Tony (appealingly portrayed by Mr. Tibbs), is stolen while she is attending a seminar in New York City. In between drinking beers with his salty lesbian neighbor and taking up some not-so-great pet detective work of his own, Walt – endearingly played by Borges, also a producer – finds solace, even insight, from various eccentrics and learns how to let go of what held him. Written with sympathetic perception by Jen Cordery and directed with a smooth touch by Matt Cascella in his feature debut, many in the audience should be wagging their tails approvingly. It’s a pleasure. Details: 3 stars; now for rent.

“HitPig!”: Considering that 2024 has produced groundbreaking animated knockouts like ‘The Wild Robot’, the more mature-themed ‘Memoir of a Snail’ and ‘Inside Out 2’, this animated story, suitable for the little ones, is especially notable for two reasons. : That “Bloom County’s” Berkeley Breathed is dually credited (as character designer and for crafting the story) and for its ensemble cast (Jason Sudeikis, Rainn Wilson, Hannah Gadsby, RuPaul and more). But this is a small, bouncy story (it’s barely 80 minutes long) about a bounty-hunting pig who rescues a lovable elephant (Lilly Singh) from the clutches of a big Vegas pretender (Wilson), which follows a pro-forma animated playbook . There are too many scenes supplemented with anthems from the likes of Billy Idol, Gloria Estefan, etc., and too many flatulence jokes. The animation is solid and the little ones will indeed enjoy the loud antics and the pratfalls, while the older ones in the audience may groan at the overuse of puns. Yet directors David Feiss and Cinzia Angelini know how to give the kids what they want: a caffeinated sugar with a high animation content. Details: 2½ stars; in cinemas from November 1.

“Don’t move”: Watchable but downright ridiculous, Netflix’s thriller is a toss-up from the streaming giant – another original film built around a decent idea that requires further marination before being hit on the grill. As it is, directors Brian Netto and Adam Schindler serve up a minor league guilty pleasure about dapper American psychopath Richard (American Horror Story’s Finn Wittrock) who plays suicidal, grieving mother Iris (Yellowstone’s Kelsey Asbille) in the near Big torments. Sur (not the Big Sur most of us know, as much of this seems to have been filmed in Bulgaria). Talkative charmer Richard pricks her with a needle full of a paralytic drug and then carts her around to different locations and in different vehicles. Asbille gives it her all and portrays a character without any capacity to express himself (hence the title), while Wittrock goes so deep that you can’t help but laugh. Sam Raimi produced this fast-paced psycho thriller and, true to form, things get bloody. Now that there have been so many good, even great, horror films out there, you might want to move on to something better. But if you want a tight guilty pleasure, this will do the trick. Details: 2½ stars; now available on Netflix.

“Time saving”: Merging a time travel film with a teen slasher film isn’t exactly daring or new (last year’s ‘It’s a Wonderful Knife’ is one such example). And that’s the problem with director/co-writer Hannah Macpherson’s passable Netflix thriller: it pretends to be something new and daring. While it has good moments, it’s not scary enough or distinctive enough with its back-to-the-future 2000s theme. It’s a good thing, then, that the characters and cast are compelling, especially Madison Bailey as NASA-savvy teen Lucy Field. She stumbles upon a time machine that takes her back to a time when a serial killer murdered her sister Summer (Antonia Gentry) and other classmates. Lucy’s crash course with her sister’s past leads to a revelation about why she feels so distant from her parents these days, and while the screenplay pushes the film in interesting directions, the time travel and slasher elements aren’t developed enough. . Too bad, because “Time Cut” had the potential to top it all. Details: 2 stars; available on Netflix.

Contact Randy Myers at [email protected].

Originally published: October 30, 2024 at 12:50 PDT