The first few months of any given year are commonly seen as a dumping ground for movies that studio executives don’t seem to hold too much hope for, such as stand-alone non-franchised action thrillers, horrors that just about missed the Halloween window, one or two rom-coms to mark Valentine’s Day, and prestige-adjacent dramas that weren’t nutritious enough to qualify as functional Oscar bait. In fact, there are more such periods peppered throughout the year, like the tail end of Summer when major blockbusters have already taken their crops and low-expectations affair come out from under the counter-programming umbrella, or the first weeks of autumn between the awards season fully winds up and when it is still a bit early for genre movies to make the most of these sweet Halloween dollars. But Q1 is where it’s at – the savannah of dad cinema, where Liam Neeson is the apex predator. The Liam King.  

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