Due to “circumstances” we’re a bit late with a new episode of The Flickcast again this week. But don’t worry, it’s here now. You can relax . . . and enjoy.

On this week’s episode, Chris and Joe’s anger barely registers. But still, they manage to summon a bit of it. People seem to like it when they rant. So there’s that.

Topics this week include even more on Mad Max: Fury Road, the aborted Tron 3, the reboot of Point Break, Ash vs. Evil Dead, the career of The Rock, Big Trouble In Little China and a whole lot more.

Picks this week include Chris’ pick of the History Channel mini-series Texas Rising and Joe’s pick of the BBC show Space Odyssey. No, the other one.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship, or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook, Google+ or via email.

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Sean Penn is a sniper working for a mercenary group in Africa. He assassinates a government official and must go into hiding, leaving behind his girlfriend (Jasmine Trinca) to be scooped up by fellow merc Javier Bardem. Years later, he’s back in Africa under a different name working for a humanitarian organization when a handful of assassins try to take him down. He investigates the source, meets up with the shady fellows from his past, and tries to reconnect with his former love.

This isn’t anything new – it’s okay action, your standard plot, lots of buffed-up Sean Penn showing he’s a killer who cares, and exotic locations. There’s little humor, not much suspense, a non-sequitur role for Bardem, but there’s also not much of a ham-fisted political message either. Nor is it on the level of director Pierre Morel’s earlier film Taken; it’s a hardy helping of American-cheese slices on semi-stale crackers – not an extravagant hors d’oeuvres, the cheese could be better, even generic sharp cheddar, and the crackers aren’t buttered, but it’s not spray cheese and wafers either. As a light snack before the real action movies arrive in a few months, it’s palatable.

I don’t know what the point of this movie is. at times, it’s great to look at, and has some clever visuals such as dipping Charlize Theron in ivory or having her vanish in a murder of crows…or ravens, which are probably the right birds, seeing as how her name is Ravenna.

She’s the wicked queen who seduces the widower king and kills him on their wedding night and needs to drain the essence of the king’s daughter Snow White (Kristen Stewart) to become immortal. Ravenna tosses Snowy in the clink, but she escapes and retreats into the Dark Forest, the one place where Ravenna’s powers are useless. So Ravenna sends the one guy who’s made it through the Dark Forest before, the titular Huntsman Eric (Chris Hemsworth) to retrieve Snow White. Eric’s hesitant, but Ravenna promises him that if he succeeds, she’ll bring his wife back to life — or kill him if he doesn’t.

Meanwhile one of Snow White’s childhood friends (Sam Claflin) goes undercover as an archer in Ravenna’s Dark Army, headed by her whispy brother Finn (Sam Spruell). They pop up sporadically to menace Snowy and provide plot points, respectively.

I tend to think of Scorsese as a master of genre films—he’s done gangster films (Goodfellas, Casino), comedy (After Hours, The King of Comedy), police drama (The Departed), psychological thriller (Shutter Island), boxing (Raging Bull), biopic (Kundun, The Aviator, No Direction Home), concert (Shine a Light), historical (Gangs of New York), literary classic (The Age of Innocence), even a remake Cape Fear) and a sequel (The Color of Money)—but he tends to bring such a distinct touch to the films, they don’t quite feel like genre films.

So when I heard he was taking a stab at a kiddie flick, Hugo immediately shot to my most anticipated Scorsese film to date (outside, of course, of the fictional film he was making with Larry David as the money-hurling mob boss in Curb Your Enthusiasm)—added to that who wouldn’t be interested in Scorsese’s take on 3D?

And Hugo doesn’t disappoint. It’s not the most compelling story, but for all its two-hour-seven-minute running time, I wasn’t bored once. There’s a lot more going on, and I’ll get to that in a moment, but first the rundown.

Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) is an urchin who haunts a Paris railway station in the early 1930s, repairing its clocks and stealing various cogs and sprockets to rebuild the homunculus he and his father (Jude Law) were working on right up to his death. While Hugo tends to remain out of the sight and mind of the station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), he’s less successful evading the eye of the toymaker he robs (Ben Kingsley). Caught trying to thieve a wind-up mouse, he’s forced to give up his father’s notebook, which includes all the instructions on repairing the mechanical man and provokes a strange reaction from the toymaker.

When this Mel Gibson starrer came to theaters, I didn’t get a chance to see it so my first exposure to it was on Blu-ray. I won’t go into a full review of the film here (I’ll leave that to our own Shannon Hood) but suffice it to say I liked director Martin Campbell’s mix of cop procedural, revenge tale and conspiracy thriller. Gibson plays Boston Detective Thomas Craven who’s daughter is brutally murdered right in front of his eyes after a rather brief homecoming.

This horrific act spurs Gibson’s character on a path of revenge and a quest for justice that takes him in many different directions as he crosses paths with all manner of characters. Of course, things are not as they seem and the crime is not s simple assassination gone wrong, nor was Craven the target as everyone, except him, suspect.

During the course of his investigation Craven discovers a wider conspiracy that leads to the power corridors of the highest levels of government. Into this mix comes Ray Winstone’s Jedburg, a shadow operative who ‘s motivations and loyalties are unclear.

Is he a friend or foe and who does he work for? These questions arise as the film progresses and as Craven and Jedburg have several scenes together. Even though the other actors in the film, including Danny Huston, Shawn Roberts and Bojana Novakovic, are quite good, Gibson and Winstone elevate their scenes together and make this movie, at times, a real pleasure to watch.