by Mattie Lucas
Cinema from a Decidedly Queer Perspective
Red One | 2024
Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons) gets kidnapped by a vengeful witch (Kiernan Shipka) hellbent on punishing the naughty in Jake Kasdan's Red One, a Christmas-themed action comedy that doesn't seem to be made for anyone. Dwayne Johnson stars as Santa's stalwart bodyguard, a tough-minded soldier who's grown weary of all the naughtiness in the world, who is tasked with tracking Santa down, along with a hacker (Chris Evans) and Level 4 naughty-lister who uses the internet to track people down for a living.
There's something agreeably no-nonsense about Alex Parkinson's Last Breath, a straight-down-the-middle, meat-and-potatoes true-life rescue thriller we rarely see anymore. Perhaps I'm looking at the past through rose-colored glasses, but there once was a time when mid-budget actioners like this were multiplex staples. Nowadays, you're more likely to see movies like this relegated to streaming rather than playing on a big screen.