Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey
dir. Pete Hewitt (1991)
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure was not a film that demanded a sequel. Bogus Journey squanders what little charm the original had (the fleeting highpoint being Keanu Reeves and Hal Landon Jr. combining to play dead Ted possessing Ted’s father). Genuinely heinous.
John Wick
dir. Chad Stahelski (2014)
The Matrix meets Games of Thrones meets Kurosawa. Understated action-noir, relentless in drive but coloured almost Nordic in visual desaturation. Keanu Reeves sits like Yertle the Turtle at the precarious limit of his emotional range, wobbling first-billed and steepled atop his co-stars.