Crime/Heist

dir: David Roher

2026

If the title and the existence of this film prove nothing more, it’s that you can make a film out of anything, any job, any idea, if you’ve got the right angle.

Tuner is literally about a piano tuner. How’s that for specific and literal accuracy in film titles?

Even though it’s completely contemporary, this film somehow feels like a throwback, like something from a bygone age and era, and it’s not just because Dustin Hoffman is in it or that it’s about someone who works on pianos. As an example, who even has or plays pianos anymore? Even within the context of the film, none of the people getting their pianos tuned even remember the last time someone played their piano – as a prelude to some special occasion, they’ll get someone out to make sure if the ivories get tinkled, they’ll at least be in key.

That being the case, we would imagine there aren’t that many piano tuners still around. A dying breed. Harry Horowitz (Hoffman) has clearly been doing it since pianos were invented, and in fact was there tuning up the harpsichord when Mozart first played “Chopsticks”. No, but he did know many of the greats, including Herbie Hancock, who gets several mentions and even a cameo, and Harry has a van with his name on it. Harry gets driven to all these places with pianos, but the person doing all the work is Niki (Leo Woodall). His apprentice. Apprentice piano tuner. Just like in any trade, the apprentice does all the work and the ‘master’ rolls around wanking on about mercury levels in fishes and such.

The young man has ear plugs permanently in his ears, and noise cancelling headphones on top of that. Hyperacusis. It’s a real thing, look it up. Clearly has very delicate hearing, and yet perfect pitch as well. None of that probably can block out Dustin Hoffman’s constant braying and droning, but that won’t be a problem for too long.

That’s the stage of Hoffman’s career that we’re at now. He’s an aged ‘colour’ guy there to inspire the younger protagonist but not take up too much time or space. Hoffman really is around long enough only to practically force Niki into interacting with a young composer he meets at a musical academy where he’s tuning the pianos prior to a big performance.

As is the logic in all movies, shy people are seen as needing obnoxious but well-meaning older people to bring them together, break their iciness, and then let them have a montage or two together, and that’s exactly what’s needed here. Niki maybe be allergic to loud noises and general ambient noise, but Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu) is highly strung and desperate for approval and affirmation. She initially thinks, given the overalls / boiler suit that Niki is a blue collar working class oik, but needless to say, since he’s the protagonist, not only does he have perfect pitch but he’s incredibly knowledgeable and adept in the musical field beyond what someone who dresses like him would be expected to be.

That class aspect fades in and out of the consciousness of the flick, which is weird, because money, the lack thereof, the need for, the abundance in some places, and the complete absence in others, formulates the structure of the plot through which Niki swims.

He is not motivated by greed. This is important. Niki is the quintessential holy fool character compelled, almost tricked into doing something terribly illegal, but not out of greed, or from feeling financially inadequate compared to Ruthie or anyone else.

dir: Ben Wheatley

2026

I mean, what even is ‘normal’ these days? Who do we allow to define it, and to whose benefit?

We aspire to free will, we like to think of ourselves as freethinkers who live their lives on their own terms, but we’re still mostly conforming sheep, too concerned about standing out in case we catch people’s notice and they say something about any aspect of our appearances, our clothing, how we do what we do. We are still herd animals, even when we think we’re all alphas loping across the plains majestically without a care in the world.

It’s fucking stultifying. And that’s part of the imagined joke here, that a town called Normal, in Minnesota, the absolute pinnacle of Minnesota Nice, might not be that normal a place at all. That what Americans consider ‘normal’ is a fucking abomination in disguise.

For a full half hour of this flick, I thought I’d completely misjudged it, as in, for its first half hour it seemed like it was a serious kind of film about someone who’d had a crisis of faith (in Justice!) just trying to get by and get along in a temporary gig as a small town’s sheriff. The sheriff, for all his world-weariness, played by the great Bob Odenkirk, of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul fame, chugs around this shitty little town being nice and polite to everyone, so as to rustle no feathers and cause no conflicts. Every shop, every establishment is called “Normal Savings and Loans”, “Normal Yarn & Twine”, “Normal Hardware”, you get the idea.

Everyone’s mostly polite, but this isn’t even about the hypocrisy of them being vampires or something fundamentally antithetical to the projected wholesome image of white picket fence Americana. In the very first few minutes of the movie we watch some Japanese yakuza bullshit happening in Osaka, where two (of three) lucky survivors are dispatched, missing a bit of their pinkie fingers, to the town of Normal. It’s not a jolly; it’s for work reasons.

Work reasons that are quite dumb. Ulysses, the sheriff, pieces together some odd things about the town during his travels, but the true magnitude of what’s happening behind the scenes eludes him until it becomes the plot front and centre, and he has to kill almost everyone in the town in order to not die.

dir: Bart Layton

2026

If you’re going to call a movie Crime 101 you could at least have some educational material embedded in the flick. But no. This flick taught me absolutely nothing about crime that I didn’t already know. Crime hurts people. Crime doesn’t pay, unless you’re rich enough to have political cover, in which case, crime absolutely does pay.

I did learn one other strange factoid from watching this flick: Americans are so inured to gun violence, so worshipful of their shiny metal dicks, that you’ll have a so-called law enforcement officer repeat multiple times that a suspected crim (Doug Hemsworth) is not a violent criminal, even though he points guns at people’s heads in carrying out his daring raids. Many times.

That’s not considered a violent act in today’s America.

Anyway, what is this flick: Obviously one with crimes in it. A crime thriller, if you will. A kind of simplistic and not very believable one, but somewhat enjoyable all the same. Many of the parts don’t fit, and there’s one element, being the character played by Barry Keoghan, who seems like he’s from a completely different movie. Still, the Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo and Halle Berry do okay with some stock standard characters.

Ruffalo especially feels like he’s played this before, at least a couple of times. You have to know, even though you never asked, it’s both comforting and disconcerting to watch Ruffalo playing dishevelled over the hill “I’m too old for this shit” cop characters. For years (well, before all the Marvel Hulk stuff), he was put forward as the thinking woman’s piece of crumpet, and now he looks like someone you’d avoid making eye contact with if he was in your pilates class, huffing and puffing away.

He’s still solid though, as you would think he would be. His last bunch of films have been grating and disappointing (at least for me, and I'm talking about his Trump impression in Mickey 17, and whatever the hell he was doing (and whatever the hell that accent was) in Poor Things, but this is a comfortable fit, given the character’s practically the same as what he played in that excellent mini-series Task.

Hemsworth is… I admit I’ve never known nor will I ever know the immense burden of having the magnificent body of a Greek (or Norse) god, and the chiselled good looks to go along with it, but Hemsworth is not someone you go to hoping to play a character with depth, with layers, with a complicated psychology behind them. He’s just not that kind of actor. One emotion at a time. Anger. Olympian arrogance. Deep regret. Sadness (le boo hoo), maybe.

dir: Joe Carnahan

2026

It’s been a long time coming, but at least it’s finally here.

No, I’m not talking about Matt Damon and Ben Affleck reuniting in front of the cameras to star in a movie together: I mean I’m glad Joe Carnahan has finally made a decent movie again.

The last one of his I watched that was okay wasn’t that great, being Copshop for which I could describe with many clichés, which instead I’ll rely on one: it’s very much the definition of overegging a pudding. There’s a lot of shlock in his filmography, and the last genuinely great flick he made was The Grey with Liam Neeson fighting Alaska and wolves, in that order, and coming off second best.

Before that… it was Narc, with Jason Patric, and that was like the early 2000s, so a lot of time and money has been wasted in between.

This isn’t perhaps a great showcase for Carnahan as a director, because this was made for Netflix, meaning it’s a very Netflixian kind of movie. The main characters spend a lot of time repeating the plot and what’s going on, in case the audience watching the flick has had at least one of their eyes glued to their phone for much of the flick’s duration.

It’s okay. It can be a bit irritating if you’re the kind of viewer who pays attention and actually likes watching movies, and it might prompt a few exasperated “we know, we get it, get on with it” like statements. But for people who like doing chores like folding laundry when they watch their stories on the streamers, it’s probably greatly appreciated that the premise is often restated for their benefit, so they don’t get too lost.

The Rip feels like a shitty title, but it’s not that egregious, especially since they restate the title of the film throughout the movie. “What’s the rip? We’re going to the rip. How much is the rip? Where’s the rip? Have I told you lately that I love you, and I love rips?” Eventually you’ll realise you can’t live without saying “rip” a few times every few minutes, just to maintain a serious demeanour.

I have to say that, yes, I am that cheap a date that seeing Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in a flick together again so long after their fresh faced debuts in Good Will Hunting and as two fallen angels in Kevin Smith’s Dogma all these years later is a kick, is a trip, because damn, they old, which means we old.

They look and act like sad dads, 99 per cent of the flick. Mad dads for the other 1 per cent. They have beards too, but they’re not paunchy, middle-aged and spending all their time online arguing with other middle-aged losers about the tanks used in World War II. They’re working career cops not two days before retirement, who maybe have been in long enough and become mean and cynical enough to maybe be corrupt as well.