Rebel Ridge (2024)

Rebel Ridge (2024)

 

6/10

Starring          

Aaron Pierre

Don Johnson

AnnaSophia Robb

 

Directed by Jeremy Saulnier

 

Rebel Ridge is a fun watch, you are engaged in a cat and mouse kind of situation, where the lead Terry and the police chief Sandy seem to keep running at each other. They never seem to find a way to de-escalate the situation between them, making it almost impossible for the movie to have a happy ending, which is what the movie wanted.

When my friend suggested that I see this movie, he said it had a Rambo, First Blood feel. I think it is more Jack Reacher than it is First Blood.

First Blood was gritty, rough and Rambo you can tell had lost his mind and was never going to stop until he was dead. This had a more reasonable motive, and the Summer character gave Terry the grounding he needed not to go overboard.

Now, that all said, you can easily see in this movie how things were taking to a point where make believe was overdone, and the movie failed to make a lot of sense in many cases, but in the time of useless films like The Union or The Killer, this is a welcome development to watch a film from start to finish and not feel like smashing the screen.

The movie starts with Terry on a bike and getting run over by the cops in the town he just rode in. He was searched, and he had on him $36,000 which he got from selling his truck and his partnership in a business. He needed the money to bail his cousin out. The police seized the money from him, and there is where Terry had a problem.

His brother was a state witness, who helped put a criminal in jail, so he cannot be sent to prison because if he does, he will not last a day. He was busted on drug charges and needed to be bailed out before he gets sent to prison, which is what Terry was trying to do.

The problem is, the town which his cousin got busted in was running a scheme, to which Terry happened to fall into. They were stealing money off people and running a game to fund the community and buy off the judge. So, Terry needed to get the money back, which was not going to be possible, and time is running out for his cousin.

As you can guess, for this to be a movie, things did not play out the way Terry wanted, and he decided to take the whole police department down with him, if he is unable to get this de-escalated the way he thinks it should go.

You can catch this movie on Netflix.

The Union (2024)

The Union (2024)

 

2/10

Starring          

Mark Wahlberg

Halle Berry

 

Directed by Julian Farino

 

The time has come for Hollywood writers to stop doing some made believe stuff like this. The whole idea that the world (or like this movie the union and its affiliates) is at stake, and they need to go recruit a nobody and train him in everything he needs to know to be an agent in like a week, when it takes some of the best agents’ years to master. Then this nobody will then be good enough paired up with someone else to save the world, it is ridiculous.

The Union is a movie created for fans of Mark Wahlberg or Halle Berry, because the plot and everything in it, does not even make you want to remember that you have seen this movie.

They want me to believe that a man who has no military training at all, who is a complete bum can be trained in like 2 weeks to be an agent, is just lazy writing. The movie plot has two high-school sweethearts reunite. One is the bum Mike (Wahlberg) and the other is an agent for The Union Roxanne (Berry). Roxanne shows up in Mike’s life after like 25 years and kidnaps him with the aim of recruiting him to join The Union. The Union is a secret government agency which functions as the mercenaries for the various government agencies.

You will think, there must be something Mike has to offer to be the one or be the right person for this job, but sadly, no. It is Mike because of the almost 8 billion people on this planet, Mike was the next person on the list which contains everyone Roxanne, the other members of The Union and their other affiliates knew.

The reason there is space for Mike is that, during one of their missions, a lot of their members get killed, so they need to recruit new ones. Now when I say a lot, do not go thinking like hundreds. Of the number of members still shown in the movie, The Union were not lacking members, they just need ground staff, and the ones who were killed were not even up to eight. The reason for recruiting Mike is not clear.

Well, he was recruited, trained and placed in the field to buy a list. The list contains the name of government agents and their agencies functioning around the globe. If this movie plot is feeling very similar to a lot of the movie plots about agents, then you have seen this movie and even a better version if possible.

The Killer (2024)

The Killer (2024)

3/10

 

Starring          

Nathalie Emmanuel

Omar Sy

Sam Worthington

Diana Silvers

 

Directed by John Woo

 

Growing up in the 90s, there is no way you will not have heard about John Woo’s 1989 movie, The Killer. This movie starred Chow Yun-fat in a role that was memorable in our brains then. The movie was not without its pacing problems, but it was good. Now more than thirty years after, Woo releases a remake of this movie and this remake is one of the weirdest movies to see. Here is a John Woo movie, which has shooting, and action, and it is still very boring. There is nothing good to say about this movie, the cinematography was horrible, it has funny camera tilts at odd times, and the no needed zoom ins, I was screaming. Then I noticed some areas where I can tell, some bad editing was obvious. The pacing is all over the place, making it hard to keep you excited.

The actors all felt like children wearing daddy’s shoes. It seemed the roles were too big for them and none of them fitted well into their role, and then there was the plot.

When a hired killer known for being brutal takes pity on someone for a reason which is not shared in a way to make sense, you start to wonder who wrote this script?

It played out like John Woo, typed on ChatGPT, write me a script like my other movie The Killer, it was a lazy plot put together, and to think John Woo directed this.

The pacing was all over the place, and the characters had motives that seem to make sense to them and the child-like thoughts they have in their head.

Our leads are Zee (Nathalie Emmanuel) and Sey (Omar Sy), Zee is the hired killer who works for a man named Finn who in turn works for a Drug lord. Zee is hired by Finn to take out anyone who the Drug lord wants. So, on her recent case to take out everyone in a room, she spared a young lady who, is not innocent, but somehow Zee took pity on her.

Now Finn wants her to kill this lady to finish the job. We also discover that Finn has been having dealings of his own, which makes him also someone who wants to clean up loose ends, which Zee happens to be. I guess that predictability in the plot was just something that Woo could not help but include.

If you could see this movie, please save yourself the stress and don’t.

Incoming (2024)

Incoming (2024)

6/10

Starring          

Mason Thames

Ramon Reed

Bardia Seiri

Raphael Alejandro

 

Directed by Dave Chernin and John Chernin

 

The whole movie is like a remake of the coming-of-age 2007 movie, Superbad. I enjoyed this movie enough to give it a good rating, it is not a great movie, but it was good enough.

If you have seen any coming-of-age movie, you have seen this, but it was still fun. I liked the way it did not waste so much time trying to build us up. Things just start going down, everything just gets started and it became a shit-show (a literal one at some point).

I can understand why many will not like this movie, because they will feel like Superbad did it better, and maybe it did, but to have a movie have so much happening from two fronts is fun. The characters all had an angle and something to prove to themselves, and how some achieved some clarity, some grew and became adults is nice to see.

The movie is about four friends, who just got into high school. They are, Benj, who has a crush on his sister’s best friend. Eddie whose mother is dating a douche who takes advantage of him in his own house, because Eddie is laid back and just wants to get on with life. Connor who is the same age as the others but is smaller and is tired of being a nobody. The last one is Danah, the one guy in every group of friends who is actually crazy and thinks he can become somebody legendary.

Danah’s brother Koosh is having a party in his place and tells Danah he can bring his friends. Danah invites his three friends, only for on that day Koosh tells him that only one of the friends can come in. Benj asked to be the one, because he had hopes of getting his sister’s best friend to be his. The other two were upset with Danah for not being man enough to let them in and left, not even giving a fight with Benj to get in. You will need to see the movie yourself to see all the things that Benj and Danah got up to at the party. How Benj was able to get the girl alone and tell her how he felt and how Danah trapped a girl in a room with him, with the hopes of getting laid.

The other two took Eddie’s mother’s boyfriend’s car and had a night they will never forget themselves. Which, in the end, was able to get them to have the respect that Connor wanted and helped Eddie to stand up for himself and tell the man in his house to behave.

Nice movie to catch on Netflix if you have the time, I found it was worth the watch.

The Garfield Movie (2024)

The Garfield Movie (2024)

 3/10

Starring          

Chris Pratt

Samuel L. Jackson

Hannah Waddingham

Ving Rhames

 

Directed by Mark Dindal

 

I have fond memories of the 2004 Garfield: The Movie. That movie starred Bill Murray (as the voice of Garfield), Breckin Meyer as Jon and Jennifer Love Hewitt as Liz, Jon’s love interest. That movie was live action with Garfield being CGI. This movie on the other hand is complete animation. Now, watching this new one, I was hopeful that I would like it. I will be honest, I have not given the 20-year-old Garfield movie a rewatch, so I do not know how I will feel seeing it now, but this one did not give me the same vibe as that one did, when I saw it 20 years ago.

This movie played like it was meant for children, so I will regard it as so. Because for me, other than Odie everyone else in the movie was a bore.

The plot is boring, as it plays to us as a reunion movie between Garfield and his father Vic, by doing this the movie just crosses all the Ts and dots the Is from cliché-r-us. Not playing anything new, just giving us the same old stories of parent and child, separated at birth. You know those Hollywood stories, where both now must overcome a hurdle to survive and to achieve this, they must overcome the past and work together.

The plot starts with us meeting Garfield, he is enjoying his lazy life, when he and Odie gets kidnapped by Jinx and her crew. Jinx used to be part of Vic’s crewmember as they go about committing crime years ago.

Jinx got captured during one of their heists, and wants revenge on Vic, because she believes Vic did not do enough to save her. She kidnapped Garfield and wants both he and Vic to work together to get her a quart of milk for everyday she spent locked up, which was more than four years. They must do this, or else Jinx’s goon will be set on them. So, the two go out to fulfil this new heist, and we see them struggle to work together because Garfield is holding on to the past of being abandoned by his father, and Vic is struggling to explain to Garfield that things did not play out the way he thinks it did. You will need to see the whole movie to see how they get on.

If you can stomach the boredom of this movie, then maybe you can enjoy it, if like me, you cannot stand boring movies with no glimpse of trying to do anything new, then I will advise you to stay away from this movie.

All that said, the movie was a great commercial success in the box office, so I will not be surprised if a part two is already being drafted to be made.

Outrageous Fortune (1987)

Outrageous Fortune (1987)

 

3/10

Starring          

Shelley Long

Bette Midler

 

Directed by Arthur Hiller

 

You do not get that much free time to do a lot of things in life. When you do get that free time, you can decide to take a walk with your dog, go for a picnic, have a nap or do what I did, watch a movie.

It would have been best I donated my free time to my office and work for free. When you decide to watch a movie, the biggest mistake you can make is to watch a movie that does not to be able to entertain, no matter how hard it tries.

Outrageous Fortune is a complete waste of time. How this movie made a lot of money in the box office and earn Midler a Golden Globe nomination goes above my head.

The whole movie context is lame and hard to relate to, because nothing that is happening or being shown to happen is in any way possible even in the context, they claim it can.

The leads are two women from opposite ends of the spectrum, who happen to be in a relationship with the same man, Michael. Michael uses them to be able to pass messages to his partner-in-crime, who happens to be the acting teacher of these two women. Michael is on the run from the CIA because he stole something, and he is using the women as mules to pass messages with his potential buyer.

Now the complexity of achieving getting these two women is not shown, nor do we see how he uses them to pass the messages, we are just told. From this point, the acting in this movie is so dreadful it is amazing and as the plot develops – we are exposed to so many plot holes. These two women must have some superpowers because they were able to track down a man, that the entire CIA could not.

I think what was worse still was seeing the CIA hoping these two women, will be able to assist them to track down the villain.

The two women in question are actresses who happen by some share luck to be in the same acting class and to have the same taste in men, are Lauren (Shelley Long) and Sandy (Bette Midler).

If like me, you happen to just come across this movie playing, and decided to sit through it, then I am sorry. If you have not, then please save yourself the pain, it is not worth the time.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024)

Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024)

 

5/10

Starring          

Will Smith

Martin Lawrence

 

Directed by Adil & Bilall

 

I know Will Smith is on a redemption run, so this movie is a good start on that run. It is not as bad as you will expect it. It is also not as great or cool as I thought it will be. My problem is movies of now lack the grit of the times when the first Bad Boys was done.

Now everything must have some computer genius moving accounts, hacking and cryptic messages and bad guys who seem to have too much connection into things, that just is so unrealistic.

You can send a cryptic message to people, so instead of just sending them the message directly, what you do is this. You send them a message, that points them to someone. The someone then hid a link to another message in a flashing screen, which can only be seen if you record the screen and go through it frame by frame. How did they discover this link? Well, an officer without any prompt from anyone decided to do the frame by frame look at a flashing screen, like… what?

How did she know to do that?

The lazy writing in this movie is so apparent it is annoying. The movie’s plot makes no sense at all and that in itself is even more annoying. I watched it to the end, thinking there will be a reason, why the bad guys, who have gotten away with killing the captain, will decide to bring up the matter again after many years. But I guess the writers are so lazy, they just could not find a better way to get the two actors angry.

All that said, I enjoyed the action, and the references to the old movies, and I did enjoy some of the comedic laughs I got seeing this movie, but the movie is not leaving behind a lasting impression. Like the other two before this, it is easily forgettable. The first Bad Boys movie leaves an everlasting imprint, the others after it do not.

This movie is about Captain Howard, who as we know is dead. The whole Bad Boys franchise (other than the first movie) is so forgettable, I was trying hard to remember this. Now, in present time, the two buddy cops Mike (Will Smith) and Marcus (Martin Lawrence) are at a wedding when Marcus had a heart attack and almost died.

His survival meant he looked at life differently and then, Captain Howard is implicated in a crime. His reputation is at stake because some millions have been found in his account, dating back to years, showing he is in bed with the cartel.

Now, I am not trying to ruin this, but even this setup was useless. You see, you can back date payments and forge documents to make it look like you have been paying money for some period, but this is traceable. Everything leaves a time stamp, so if anyone does just a tiny bit of forensic check, they will see this is fake. Hollywood writers must think everyone is dumb and knows nothing about how computers work.

Mike and Marcus are upset and want to clear their captain’s name, but they were not upset enough, says the writers. So, the captain sent them a cryptic message that points them to someone, who gets killed when he was trying to point them to the flashing screen, then they get shot at and almost get killed trying to catch the bad guys.

The movie, in a succinct way, is about these two trying to clear their captain's name and identify the corrupt cops in their station.

As far as lazy writing goes, this movie is full of it, and it is so forgettable a movie.