Emergency (2022)

Emergency (2022)

 8/10

 

Starring

RJ Cyler

Donald Elise Watkins

Sebastian Chacon

 

Directed by Carey Williams

 

Emergency is a movie that is setup to make you think how crazy this world is. If you are living under a rock and do not believe that there is racism and some racial bias to the way things happen in this world of ours, you may not like this film. This movie just shows us the racial bias of this world while laying down the troubles of trying to do something right in a world that does not reward such things.

I like the acting and the story of this movie, this comedy-drama has many things happening at once and does not fail to make you feel the tension going on on-screen. You may watch this and think, the first I will do is call the cops, “that is just what anyone will do.” In reality, maybe that would have been the best suggestion, because taking the lady around just complicated her health and their life the more.

Emergency is about two roommates (Sean and Kunle) who plan to have a wild night by attending to all the frat parties happening on campus. They get prepared step out, when Kunle remembered he forgot to close the fridge which houses his cultures. They run back to the house to find a young girl passed out in their living room. Carlos their other roommate forgot to close the door, which allowed this lady to just wonder in. Confused and not knowing what to do, they check her to be sure she is still alive. Kunle wants to call the cops, but Sean kicks against it saying how are they going to be able to convince the police that they did not do anything wrong. They are two black guys and let us not forget Carlos, so they are guilty before even the cops arrive. The problem is now what are they going to do. Sean recognises the dress she is wearing as one from one of the parties they are planning to attend. The three decide to go there and drop her off at the party.

Carrying her into the car begins one of the worst nights these guys could have had. The car gets damaged, they get chased by three people on bicycles accusing them of kidnapping the passed-out lady. They get mistaken for drug dealers by an old couple and almost even kill the girl they trying to help by letting her drink (unknowingly) a spiked drink.

The whole thing started out with a lady passed out in their living room and ended with a gun pointed on Kunle. The movie is one ride I would not want to experience at all.

But watching it is fun and guaranteed to be fun for you too.

Memory (2022)

Memory (2022)

 

3/10

Starring

Liam Neeson

Guy Pearce

Monica Bellucci

 

Directed by Martin Campbell

 

This movie is a failed job. It should have been darker, more serious and surrounded with actors who could match Liam Neeson, because the movie felt like he was acting alongside people with better things to do.

The movie is a remake of a Belgian movie called The Alzheimer Case, which was based on a book De Zaak Alzheimer by Jef Geeraerts. When the hitman has dementia and Alzheimer you are left to wonder how things are going to play out in this matter. The movie is weird, there are some killings they don’t show and then they show some. I don’t know if that is bad budget or just the editor of the movie on some funny drugs. The movie is so forgettable if I do not write this review now, I may forget that I have even seen this movie. For the first time in a while Liam Neeson is playing a character that fits his age. He is a hitman getting too old and finding it difficult to remember things. There are not too many crazy stunts where we see him do some horrible hand to hand combat like in some of the other movies. This one just has him shooting at people. The plot is a good one, but the execution is horrible, and the screenplay is just a joke. I will advise anyone with anything better to do to avoid this movie.

The overall plot is, Alex (Liam Neeson) is a hitman hired to kill two people. The first one was a man who gave him a drive which has on it, video recordings of popular men sleeping with a minor. He killed that man and collected the drive easy. The second person he was to kill was the minor on the video, Alex refused to carryout that task and threatened the man who paid him to call off the kill. He woke up the next day to find out that the girl has been killed. He at first doubted himself because of his dementia whether he had done it, but then asking the person he was with he discovered he did not. He knew they were coming for him, so he ran off and called the FBI agent in charge of getting the girl to cooperate Vincent (Guy Pearce). He told Vincent all he knows about the case and telling Vincent he will kill the people involved. The movie is about Vincent trying to get to the end of the case he is dealing with and stopping Alex from committing murder. While Alex is slowly losing his grip on reality.

The movie is a failed attempt at doing something good with a story that had many possibilities. So many things do not make sense, how some people know some people. How it is easy to reach the FBI and an agent if you want. How foolish the police can be, a man steps out of the car unarmed and he is gunned down. Many things about this movie is recycled nonsense that is best forgotten.

Matchstick Men (2003)

Matchstick Men (2003)

 9/10

 

Starring

Nicholas Cage

Sam Rockwell

Alison Lohman

 

Directed by Ridley Scott

 

There is nothing better than revisiting classics and just refilling your love for the cinema. I do think we do not get them as good as those days, but maybe it is just me getting old saying that. Or maybe the dying cinema numbers, and the failing Netflix figures corroborate my theory. I do hope these golden days return soon.

If you get the chance to appreciate talent, go see this movie by Nicholas Cage based off a 2002 novel of the same name by Eric Garcia. This movie is one of those classics that you must be in for the long haul if you want to fully appreciate the class of this movie. The acting and plot is captivating, and the movie has like two plots running together, Roy (Nicolas Cage) and his daughter Angela (Alison Lohman) bonding. Or the second thing which is Frank’s (Sam Rockwell) big con score which Roy and Angela were helping him pull off. The movie made these two things be the center of everything, if we are not focusing on the first thing, we are on the second. If you have seen The Usual Suspect when everything comes into full view in the last few minutes. Well, this movie is like that, there is a bigger plot at play and that does not come into full view until the final minutes and that will hit you right at the gut.

Matchstick Men introduces us to two characters Roy and Frank who perform cons on people and live on that money. Roy has been doing this for years and has amassed a fortune. An information Frank is privilege to know. Frank too wants to have this sort of security and has been planning a big score. One of the challenges to fulfilling this big score is Roy. Roy has OCD, he is a germophobe and Tourette’s. He is a basket case, so Frank arranges for him to see a psychologist he knows. The treatments had him talk about his past, his failed marriage, and a probable child. Roy gives the doctor his ex-wife’s number hoping he can help call her to find out about his daughter which he abandoned more than fourteen years ago. One night Roy gets a visit from a girl named Angela who says she is his daughter and gives him the tale that proves it.

Angela brings to Roy some sort of comfort and helps him put his medical issues in check. Frank and Roy were working the score when Roy invites Angela and trains her on how to be a con person.

I will stop here and let you take the time to go see one of the best con movies that there is out there.

The Valet (2022)

The Valet (2022)

 

6/10

Starring

Eugenio Derbez

Samara Weaving

 

Directed by Richard Wong

 

This movie does something I was not expecting in the end. Movies like this are very predictable and so there is no chance for there to be a shocker, but the ending to me was something cool, a little shy off the path of what movies like this do.

I liked it and to be honest more than I expected to. The Valet is a remake of a French film of the same name, and I have not seen that one, so I do not know how it compares. This movie for me sails smoothly because of the two lead casts and the whole idea of not trying to force an unrealistic romantic pairing. The two had their lives and were forced to work together to cover up a scandal.

The movie plot is easy to follow, and it made a good decision of focusing on the same story and not having any other side distractions take control for a moment.

The plot is about a famous actress Olivia (Samara Weaving) having an affair with a billionaire real estate developer, Vincent. Their affair has them living in the shadows to keep it a secret from Vincent’s wife, Kathryn. Olivia is unhappy with the relationship feeling guilty of the whole thing, but Vincent is happy to just carry on. After an argument that had him chase her into the street from the hotel they were staying for the night, a valet Antonio (Eugenio Derbez) runs into them while riding on his bicycle. He falls off and hit a car with his bicycle. Pictures were taken of the three and Kathryn suspected that Vincent is having an affair with Olivia. Vincent lied that he was just an innocent bystander when the couple Olivia and Antonio ran into him. Antonio is an older man, old enough to be Olivia’s father and Kathryn was not buying it. Vincent decided to pay Antonio to act like Olivia’s boyfriend to fool the press and his wife. Olivia agreed to the deal and so did Antonio who needed the money. Their acting grew from just acting as lovers to become friends, something movies like this always have happen so there is no surprise there.

From here on, the movie just charms its way with wonderful acting from the two. Antonio trying to navigate his way through the separation and tentative divorce from his wife. Who also happens to be jealous of his present relationship. While Olivia is trying to come to a decision with what she wants to do with her life. Kathryn on the other hand is working extra hard to discover the truth, because all the press appearance and kisses cannot make her believe that Antonio and Olivia were in a relationship.

The movie is easy to enjoy, and it is streaming now on Hulu.

Dual (2022)

Dual (2022)

3/10

Starring

Karen Gillan

Aaron Paul

Theo James

Beulah Koale

 

Directed by Riley Streams

 

Dual is one of those movies that when it ends you are left unfulfilled. There is so much missing in this movie that seems to have setup a future that likes violence for a reason that I feel is so complicatedly woven into their world. I feel there is a better way to handle the transition from original to clone, but this movie leaves all that complication there. Making me feel the writer wrote this movie from back to front. He had an idea of a future where for two people (an original and a clone) want to live in the world one must kill the other. With that ending in hand, he wrote a story to join it. Instead of coming up with a better story and work out a better ending, they just put some things together and submitted it as a finished work.

Director and writer Riley Streams did not do a good job here.

In the end, I found myself asking… is there a moral to this? If not, then is there a point to be made? All these questions were whizzing in my brain because the movie failed to entertain enough for me to careless about other things.

The plot is about a future where people can choose to clone themselves and have that clone take over their lives in the case they are longer living. Our focus is Sarah (Karen Gillan). Sarah has a depressed life, unfulfilled and in a dead relationship which is just hanging on with strings. She has a bad relationship with her overbearing mother and just wants everything to end.

One day she woke up in a pool of her own blood to discover later that she has a terminal illness. She not wanting the two main people in her life to be without her, Peter her boyfriend and her mother, she decided to clone herself. The double will start living her life with Peter while wait until she dies before telling her mother. Well, things did not go so well, the double and Peter hit it off. The two became intimate fast and Sarah had to endure that, but she felt since she was going to die, the pain will not be there for long. News flash, she is not going to die as soon as she thought, there was a miracle. Sarah gets home that day to share the news with Peter, only to find her double in a meal with Peter and her mom. Sarah is angry and could not understand the level of betrayal from Peter and her double. They have moved on without her and Sarah is now left alone. Her mother prefers the double to her own daughter and Peter doesn’t want to have anything to do with Sarah, he wants to be with the double.

Sarah takes the matter to the authorities, and she is told she and the double will have to duel for who will be the one and only Sarah.

The movie does not end in a way I felt justified the journey to it and I believe in the end the movie should have been done better.

Chip n' Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)

Chip n' Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)

6/10

Starring the voices of

John Mulaney

Andy Samberg

Will Arnett

Eric Bana

Keegan-Michael Key

 

Directed by Akiva Schaffer

 

 

From The Disney Afternoon comes this live-action/animated action-adventure comedy based on Chip and Dale’s detective life. The animation, story and voice acting are amazing. You will love the comedy and the way the characters are developed. This world is so inviting and easy to follow, this movie is one adults won’t mind watching along with their children.

The Disney Afternoon is from the 90s and it was a two-hour daily TV block of fun Disney animated series. The block over the years had DuckTales, TaleSpin, Darkwing Duck, Gargoyles and many more. This movie is about one animated series in the block, which was that of the Rescue Rangers, Chip n' Dale: Rescue Rangers. I loved watching the group pick up the slack and solving crimes the real police failed to close. I enjoyed their many adventures and lived off reruns.

In a way this movie feels like a spiritual successor to 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit. With Disney’s legal team going to work to get as many animated characters as possible from other studios to make this movie’s world building fit. The world building is like 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit, where the animations live in the same world as humans and their animations are them going to work as entertainers.

We get to see the life behind the two chipmunks Chip and Dale. How they met when they were young and how they became a comedy pair. Their work landed them the gig with Disney to play the lead in the series Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers. Dale felt he was living in Chip’s shadow and wanted to venture on his own with his own solo show, which led to their show being cancelled and his show never went past the pilot phase. The group part ways, with Gadget and Flipper getting married. Jack went on his merry way with an addiction problem. The two leads no longer talk.

Now in the present, (many years after) Chip is working as an insurance salesperson and Dale is still going about doing as many little gigs as possible so he can get to pay the bills and trying to revive the glory days. Chip gets a call from Monterey Jack, who was in big with a loan shark. Jack owed Sweet Pete a lot of money because of his cheese addiction and if he does not pay, he was going o be bootlegged. Chip shows up hears the story and then Dale also shows up because Jack called the two for help. Chip leaves believing it was a plan to get them together and patch things up. He latter gets a call from Dale that Jack has been taken. The two must team up to find their friend.

The movie is available to stream on Disney+.

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

 

 7/10

 

 

Starring

Michelle Yeoh

Ke Huy Quan

Stephanie Hsu

 

Directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert

 

This movie is a mix of genres. There is action, adventure, thriller, comedy, and Sci-Fi. There is one thing this movie gets right all the time and that is reactions to the chaos. This movie explores the multiverse in ways that differs greatly to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness that came out after it. When it then boils down to the reaction of knowing that there is an almost infinite amount of you, drawn across the multiverse based on every possible decision you make – our leads view of such possibility was almost perfect.

The acting and the performances of Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan are Oscar winning. You may be familiar with Yeoh, and wonder who Quan is, he played Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984).

Now the way the characters are written are in ways anyone will be when facing the idea of the multiverse. Confused, tired and not wanting to be anywhere near the chaos of it all. It was so cool to see someone behave like a human for once on TV. When the lead was asked to choose between the madness of the multiverse and her present life of depression, failed possibilities and loneliness, she choose her present life because even it is not perfect, she seem to have a hold on it.

The movie drops us into the life of Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) and Waymond Wang (Ke Huy Quan). Their life is that of a couple who are tired of being together and are struggling to keep their laundromat up and running. They are facing IRS foreclosure on their laundromat and then a bombshell drops on Evelyn's lap. The whole universe as we know it is coming to an end. Why? Because a being called Jobu Tupaki. The cool thing about this insanity is watching Evelyn coming close to solving the whole issue and taking the wrong turn at the final moment. Those times made me scream and love the movie so much more.

Jobu Tupaki wants to end the universe for a reason that no-one knows. Waymonnd Alpha (a Waywand from another universe) came to what I want to believe is our universe to meet with our Evelyn and get her to help stop this being. Problem is that Evelyn is one of the many Evelyn’s they have met, with all the others failing. You may wonder why Evelyn is so important, if I tell you that, it will ruin the first half of the movie.

The movie did have a very annoying ending and it rounded up in a way I would not have wanted it to, but in the end the movie is one of those movies that you should see.

Firestarter (2022)

Firestarter (2022)

 2/10

Starring

Zac Efron

Ryan Kiera Armstrong

Sydney Lemmon

 

Directed by Keith Thomas

 

The movie makes some attempts to improve on the 1984 movie adaptation version of the Stephen King 1980 book Firestarter. All having the same name, but both movies still fail to be fun. I recall not totally falling for the 1984 adaptation which had a boring story with no compelling character. This movie is just similar, both decides to even go lower when it came to the story.

There are many rooms for creativity when it comes to adapting this novel, because the book happened over a period and happens mostly at a facility as the two Andy and Charlie were captured. The movies seem to want to flesh this up and have things happen in different locations and compress this time to make the movie watchable. Where this movie goes lower than the previous failed attempt is in the whole story. The movie tries to bring the whole incident to the present day which they believe will make the movie easier to enjoy, but that just made the movie more disjointed from the events unfolding.

The story is about a family with different powers. The parents were volunteers of a clinical trial which gave the couple different supernatural powers at some low levels. The mother had telekinetic and the father (Andy – Zac Efron) telepathic. Their child (Charlie) on the other hand had pyrokinetic powers, the ability to control fire. She can shoot it out of her and set things far from her on fire. Her powers are growing, but she lacked control. The people who conducted this experiment on the couple want Charlie. They want to control her power and study her, which makes the family to always be on the run. But Charlie was having episodes of losing control of her powers which was giving out heat signals that the bad guys could track. The couple try to escape but they were tracked down and the mother was killed.

It was from here the movie just decided to throw everything into the wind and just set itself on fire.

The movie ended very different from the book and the previous movie before it. The death of Andy is different, poorly thought through and very anticlimactic.

The whole Charlie being captured in the book is skipped and the whole making Charlie feel safe and manipulate her to using her powers does not exist instead what we have is one of the worst final acts of the movie world. Then the ending of the movie with Charlie not walking off alone back to the Mander’s farm is not in this movie, but it ends in one of the most annoying way and even insulting to the memory of Charlie’s parent.

 

Sneakerella (2022)

Sneakerella (2022)

3/10

Starring

Chosen Jacobs

Lexi Underwood

Devyn Nekoda

Bryan Terrell Clark

 

Directed by Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum

 

I don’t think Disney can every get tired of the Cinderella character. They seem to have made many reimaging of this character from their first animated movie about it in 1950, to their first adaptation of their 1951 animation in 2015 and now we have this one. Which focuses on Sneakers and tries to be real, I use the word tries because Disney is not going to work on anything Cinderella without a little magic getting involved. I felt the movie was average at best, but I think it is because movies like this are not for me.

The long and short of this movie is that it is made for a particular audience in mind, those who like musical comedies and are young. There is a Disney age group that fits this kind of movie, and they will like it. I for one felt the movie tried in its reimaging and as I am not one for musical comedies, I found myself skipping pass many of the numbers to get to the plot.

The plot is about a young man named El who lives with his stepfather and two stepbrothers. His mother owns a shoe shop in Queens, New York and his stepfather moved there to manage the shop when she died. As Cinderella stories go, the man did not understand El’s passion for sneakers and instead of trying, he just shuts him down anytime El tries to show him he can do more than just watch the shop.

His brothers are cruel, while his stepfather was not being patient to understand his stepson, the stepbrothers did everything they could to make El’s life difficult and his work tedious.

El’s best friend is a young lady named Sami who invites El to come with him to a shoe drop off, there they meet Kira. El and Kira immediately had chemistry. When the three got into trouble and were being chased, Sami took off on her skateboard, thus leaving El and Kira to take the train to Queens together. El shows Kira around, telling her about his shoe making dream and she fell for him as he did her.

But El had to run off to his shop and ran off without getting Kira’s number.

Sami on a later day found out who she was. Kira is the daughter of a sneaker tycoon, a man looking for new designs. Sami convinces El for them to go to sneakers-com and with the help of a little magic from El’s gardener friend they made it. There he and Kira meet again with sparks everywhere.

How matters played out, how the Cinderella stories come into play in this movie is something I believe your children who are Disney fans would love to see on Disney+, maybe you the adult should go watch something else.

Senior Year (2022)

 Senior Year (2022)

2/10

Starring

Rebel Wilson

Sam Richardson

Zoë Chao

Mary Holland

 

Directed by Alex Hardcastle

 

There was no point in this movie that will have you say, wow! There was neither any point in this movie that will have you say, cool! This movie is poor, bad, and desperately needed to get a grip of itself.

It does not play close to being truthful about reality and does not even make any attempt to entertain. The movie feels like something Rebel Wilson had to make so that she can pay the bills.

Netflix is complaining that they are losing subscribers and they fail to understand that one of the reasons they are losing subscribers is because of how poor their movies are. Bad acting, bad writing, and annoying characters. Even when the movie flipped the script in what the mean girls in high school are and will do, it didn’t matter – I had already lost interest in this movie to care.

Our character lead is Stephanie who was not part of the popular girls in the late 90s and early 2000s in high school. She decided to do something about that. The seventeen-years-old Stephanie joined the cheerleading squad and became very popular. She was now complacent and selfish to her true friends and was focused on being Prom Queen. Her rival Tiffany had her own plans and in one of the cheers Stephanie was tossed in the air and Tiffany pushed the catcher away. This caused Stephanie to hit the ground hard and fell into a twenty-year coma. When she woke up, she was now the thirty-seven-years-old Rebel Wilson. Who, if you remember was in a coma for twenty-years, but was able to walk with no challenge at all. Now I have slept and woken up and had difficulty walking, not to imagine being asleep for twenty years. Let’s add to an already annoying revelation, Stephanie had enough energy to talk with no challenge and even gained weight. I do not need to be a doctor to know that all these medical miracles is not remotely possible. And people she was released the same day she woke up from coma.

Now out in the world she is still seventeen in a thirty-seven body and was acting seventeen all through the movie. The whole acting seventeen was annoying to behold and made watching the movie more like a burden than anything else.

Netflix needs to shape up and do better if they want to keep their subscribers and stop blaming password sharing for their bad delivery of good entertainment. Do not bother seeing this movie even if you have nothing better to do, you may end up clawing your way at your own eyes.