The concept of a chilly hottie kicking ass and drilling bad guys was hatched 27 years ago by Luc Besson‘s La Femme Nikita, and a lot of superspy/action films have tired to make that shit work ever since. The problem is that you need a female lead whom you can really and truly believe can punch and kick like a horse. Did you believe that Salt‘s Angelina Jolie was strong and tough enough to beat up big bruisers? I didn’t.

Up until now the only female action heroine I’ve really believed could seriously kick ass was Gina Carano in Steven Soderbergh‘s Haywire. But I think I’ve been sold again — Charlize Theron as Lorraine Broughton in Atomic Blonde (Focus Features, 7.28). She’s strong and scrappy enough, having more than proved her mettle in Mad Max: Fury Road.

Based on a graphic novel called The Coldest City, a Cold War-era Berlin thing (circa 1989) about double agents and whatnot, pic costars James McAvoy, John Goodman, Eddie Marsan, Sofia Boutella and Toby Jones. Pic will premiere two days hence — Sunday, 3.12 — at South by Southwest.

The only scary element is that ex-stunt guy David Leitch is the director. Leith co-directed John Wick with Chad “pool attendant” Stahelski, and has directed the forthcoming, almost-sure-to-blow-chunks Deadpool 2. Leitch is definitely trouble.

Exactly two weeks ago (Friday, 2.24) I went to catch Jordan Peele‘s Get Out at the Pacific Grove plex. After the show mercifully ended I realized I had lost my keys somewhere between the outdoor Grove parking lot and the theatre, and it was no small loss — my Mini Cooper ignition/door key, a Yamaha Majesty ignition key plus a carrying case and chain-lock key, two apartment door keys, a laundry room and bicycle-lock key.

I got down and crawled all over the theatre floor with my iPhone flashlight on, certain that they must have fallen out. But I couldn’t find them. I whined and bitched at God, and then left my name and phone # with Pacific management. Then I gave the same info to the Grove valet desk as well as the Grove security office, which is adjacent to the Farmer’s Market grocery area. Nobody called over the next two or three days so I figured “okay, I’m fucked.”

Sometime last week I made some low-cost copies and then had to shell out $150 for two new bolt-lock apartment keys, and I would have had to pay a little more than $250 for a new Mini Cooper key. But yesterday afternoon (right after a screening of Terrence Malick‘s Song to Song) I went by the Grove to ask around again, and lo and behold the Grove plex guys had them. The sight! My eyes all but bounced out of their sockets. Elated, walking on air, shook everyone’s hand, “thank you!”, etc.

HE to Rian Johnson: What are your thoughts, brah? Did it raise a smirk of any kind, or are you too busy in editing? I realize it doesn’t have the same visceral impact as Luke Skywalker telling Rey to “eat my ass,” but that aside…well, this is our life, isn’t it? Everyone is making The Last Jedi right along with you. It’s a community effort. You can’t expect to just spring your movie on the world next December and expect the fans to just go “oh, wow….Rian, you’ve changed our lives!”

This drearily synthetic “meet Walter” piece, a promotion for Alien: Covenant (20th Century Fox, 5.19), was conceived by Ridley Scott and 3AM, directed by Luke Scott and produced by RSA Films. What horsehit…a perfume commercial! Why didn’t they use Rihanna or Beyonce as the nurse-surgeons? The Alien: Covenant buzz has just taken a nosedive.

The following is the final line from Manohla Dargis‘ N.Y. Times review of Kong: Skull Island, 90% of which reads like a spirited, half-joyous rave: “Alas, beauty no longer has her beast, the beast no longer has his beauty and this darkness has no heart even if it will have a sequel.”

While the Apocalypse Now echoes are incessant and Kong: Skull Island is clearly paying tribute to the jungle-thrills portion of the original King Kong, it is more similar to the friendly-monkey tone of Son of Kong. Why am I the only one saying this? King Kong was a tragedy about the perversion of naturalism and the heartbreak of obsessive love while the lightweight Son of Kong was mostly about goofy adventures on Skull Island and the making of a fast buck. The previous 12 words are as precise a description of Kong: Skull Island as you could possibly come up with.

Olivier Assayas‘ Personal Shopper, HE’s favorite 2017 film hands down, has opened to largely favorable reviews — currently at 77% on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. A 67% or 71% rating means a modest degree of difficulty, but 77% basically means that a film has been judged as very, very good except for the complaints of naysayers who don’t or can’t get it.

I was blown away in particular by Tony Scott’s beyond-brilliant N.Y. Times review. It’s so on-target and revelatory that I felt spellbound as I read it. Scott doesn’t just understand and accept this immaculate and mesmerizing film; it’s almost as if he wrote or directed it himself and has taken to reviewing to explain it to the pissheads and tomato-throwers.

Kristen Stewart in Olivier Assayas’ Personal Shopper.

The “perpetually displaced nomad set” amid “the drift and mystery of modern life”…yes!

Read it on the Times site or here in its entirety, but this is about as bull’s-eye as it gets:

“Like many other characters in the films of Olivier Assayas, Maureen, a young American woman living in France, belongs to a relatively privileged slice of the international nomad class. The old-fashioned term ‘jet set,’ with its connotations of glamorous indolence, doesn’t quite fit. Mr. Assayas’s world is populated by figures in perpetual transit: actors, corporate executives, terrorists. Their identities have been dissolved by perpetual displacement. We remember their faces (which are often the faces of movie stars), even if we’re not quite sure who they are.

“Maureen, who works as a personal shopper for a spoiled celebrity named Kyra, certainly brushes up against glamour, and occasionally tries on a piece of Kyra’s borrowed couture. But she dwells mostly in a benumbed, stressed-out limbo, in frenzied motion from one nowhere to the next. Her human connections are often mediated by screens. She video-chats with her boyfriend, a tech consultant on assignment in Oman. She exchanges feverish texts with a stranger on a train from Paris to London and back. When asked what she’s doing in Paris, Maureen answers, ‘I’m waiting.’