New in Home Entertainment
Week of May 17, 2021
Those Who Wish Me Dead
Rated R for strong violence/language throughout
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 62%
In Theaters and on HBO Max
From one of the hottest writer/directors in Hollywood, Tyler Sheridan (Wind River, Yellowstone) comes this action/thriller about a fire jumper (Angelina Jolie) who discovers a young boy on the run from assassins who will do anything to kill him and anyone else that might see their faces in the process. With the back drop of extreme forest fires and danger looming at every corner, the two must find a way to survive in the harshest of circumstances. There’s a lot to like here, including a solid actress in a live or die situation with no help and only an axe for protection versus two soulless hitman with a plethora of guns. It tells an engaging story against both a harsh human nemesis and even harsher natural enemy bent on absolute destruction. And yet it feels both rushed and incomplete, with a storyline that might not have been what Sheridan originally envisioned when beginning the project. It ends on a satisfactory enough note but the whole thing feels like it could have been something more than what we ended up with. B-
The Woman in the Window
Rated R for violence and language
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 26%
Available on Netflix
In this psychological thriller based on the novel A.J. Finn, Amy Adams portrays a woman suffering from agoraphobia who witnesses a murder from her apartment only to find out that what she thinks she saw is possibly just a delusion. Obviously inspired by Hitchcock’s Rear Window in both story and directorial style, the movie creates a unique atmosphere full of confusion and psychosis where you don’t actually know what is real until deep until the narrative. But in spite of a committed performance by Adams, the story goes limp, as if the the filmmakers and their talented cast lost interest half-way though. And then the big plot twist just sort of fizzles as it is exposed, due mostly to its absurdity and some to the fact that the story didn’t deserve a twist to begin with. Director Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice) is normally fantastic, but here his talents are wasted on material that tries desperately hard to be Hitchcockian while delivering a forgettable crime thriller. His visuals and style are creative, but they end up taking you nowhere. C-