Michelle Rodriguez

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

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Edgin and crew prepare to do battle

One of the big surprises of late 2023 was Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves making it onto so many “Best of…” lists for the year. Even more surprising, it actually deserves to be there (usual caveats apply). It’s a big sword-and-sorcery quest movie, with all the stuff you’d expect – spells, elves, shapeshifters, a medieval setting, capes, subterranean realms, undead creatures and, yes, dungeons and dragons. “Wizards and shit”, as one critic once termed it (I suspect it might have been Nathan Rabin, who also gave us the Manic Pixie Dream Girl as a concept). What you might not expect is the tone. It’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the medieval … Read more

The Assignment

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Frank Kitchen before gender re-assignment

Hardboiled graphic-novel pastiche is the big idea behind The Assignment, which stars Michelle Rodriguez as Frank Kitchen, a hitman who becomes a hitwoman after his enemies perform some non-elective gender re-assignment (Re-Assignment was a working title, as was Tomboy) on him/her. As you might expect, revenge is served hot and cold, warm and wet. Walter Hill directs. Yes, the same Walter Hill of 1980s hits like Southern Comfort, 48 Hrs and Brewster’s Millions, still in the game, still knocking out remarkably varied movies, still happy to get down and slum it, as he’s doing here – the film was made for very little money and Hill was well into his 70s when it … Read more

Fast and Furious 9

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Vin Diesel and John Cena face off

Call it what you like, Fast & Furious 9 – or F9, or F9: The Fast Saga – is no good, a terrible disappointment in a franchise that in a 20-year run has managed to be one of the most reliable suppliers of screen fun, banter and action. However, F&F has proved to be totally bombproof thus far, having survived the permanent loss of franchise mainstays (Paul Walker), temporary absences (Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster), a reverse takeover by Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham (who have now been shunted off to their own spinoff, the Hobbs & Shaw franchise). It even survived the loss of director Justin Lin, who picked up the … Read more

The Breed

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Taryn Manning and Michelle Rodriguez in The Breed

Five horny college kids head off to an idyllic island for a weekend of booze and death in this tiredly formulaic horror film which subjects the isolated 20somethings to violent interaction with dogs – German shepherds, to be precise. To spend more time on the plot than is strictly necessary, it seems that someone has genetically fiddled with the dogs’ minds, making them super-intelligent and super-angry. Though not, it would seem, constantly so. Which gives our buff crew time to get drunk, have a laugh, and get into their bikinis (not the boys, obviously). After wondering when the black guy (Hill Harper) is going to die, you might also ask yourself what function exactly … Read more