Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)

Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)

4/10

 

Starring

Angelina Jolie

Finn Little

Nicholas Hoult

Aiden Gillen

 

Directed by Taylor Sheridan

 

I guess I expected way too much from this film and so I partly blame myself for the letdown. This 90s styled action film fails in the aspect of giving us a compelling story that will have you engrossed. Instead, it traded a needed compelling story for a thrilling all-night action sequence which dragged way too much. The film is based on a book of the same name by Michael Koryta, who also worked on the screenplay. The movie has a lengthy somewhat beginning which introduces you to everyone involved in the first thirty minutes. If you skip from there to the last twenty minutes of the film you can still piece it all together easily.

I recall back in the 90s, when all you needed for an action film is a seemingly bad guy sending his goons to take down a family where someone there has evidence against him. One member of the family escapes and with the help of a stranger who somehow was able to stop all the bad guys. That plot summarizes the whole movie except some changes here and there.

In this one, we have Hannah (Angelina Jolie) who is a smoke jumper suffering from nightmares where she lost some of her coworkers in a fire. On the other side of things, a family is murdered by two assassins. The murder was to kill the father and stop him from releasing evidence he has on a series of bad dealings between top people in the government and some mob boss. The forensic accountant who actually dug up this evidence saw the incident on TV and knew it was not an accident (as the murders were covered up as a gas leak explosion) and went on the run with his son. You know how these movies go, time is of no relevance. This man and his son were on the run from the moment the man saw the murders on TV. These assassins first searched for them in their home and took their time to piece together their possible destination, then got ahead of running pair to lay a trap.

The man died, but not after handing over the incriminating evidence to his son asking him to get it to a TV station. While running, he runs into Hannah and together, the two were being hunted by these assassins.

This weak screenplay from the past has been worked on and shaped better in films of today. This film on the other hand decided to not bother to work with the standard of today, but run with a 90s setup.

Acting wise, based on the seasoned actors all lined up in this film I have to say they delivered. Other than that, there is hardly any reason to recommend this film to anyone. I was hoping that having Jolie in the cast will make this movie a compelling one which I cannot wait to tell my friends to go see, but I was disappointed.

You can catch this movie in the cinemas or on HBO Max, but honestly I will say go see something else, problem is that there are very few things to see now adays.

The Mitchell's vs The Machines (2021)

The Mitchell's vs The Machines (2021)

 

6/10

 Starring

Danny McBride

Abbi Jacobson

Maya Rudolph

Eric Andre

Olivia Colman

 

Directed by Mike Rianda

 

The animation does it best to throw you off with its quirkiness, keeping itself edgy and leaving a mark of the danger of the over reliance on technology. Starts off with a family on the run then drops us to a family about to self-destruct. The fun in this animation is for the whole family and the movie takes its time to build up to the world destruction and when it does the movie takes you on a fast-paced ride as this quirky family are tasked with saving the world.

The animation will strike you as one of those you can guess how things will turn out, there is practically nothing new under the sun, but I like the way it leaves some things just up in the air. Like are their neighbors truly a happy family on Instagram? I thought we will see that bubble burst.

Anyways the Mitchells are your average family with your average problems. The father Rick, is weird and loves to fix things with his hands and knows nothing about technology. The mother Linda, is more into both and has developed a liking of technology and doing things with her hands. Their daughter the first-born Katie is a lover of all things tech and wants to be a movie producer one day. Her love for movie production. She has her own channel on YouTube where she uploads her short movies, which based on viewership are quite good. Their son Aaron is a lover of dinosaurs and he knows everything there is to know about them.

Katie and Rick used to be inseparable, but the teenage years have come and the two are always fighting. Add to that Katie is all set to go to film school and Rick was not ready to let her go. With a push from Linda, he decided to give his relationship with his daughter one more push and try to fix it. He cancelled her plane trip to her college and up for them to go on a road trip to the school to drop Katie off.

While on their road trip, the world was over turned by robots and it was not long before the carnage happening to the world caught up with them on their road trip. The Mitchell’s constant bickering and irregular behavior made it hard to keep up with them, and before long the world was in their hands to save.

You can catch this animation on Netflix and it is a fun watch for you and the family.

Mortal Kombat (2021)

Mortal Kombat (2021)

 6/10

 Starring

Lewis Tan

Jessica McNamee

Josh Lawson

Tadanobu Asano

Mehcad Brooks

 

Directed by Simon McQuoid

 

The story is not at all any good, anyone who is not a fan of the franchise will lose interest easy. The weak plot drops this to a form of B-movie setting, even though this is supposed to be top class. This movie is to set the ball rolling for potential sequels, I just hope the plots in those ones are better. Since I am a fan of the franchise and know of the plot, it was easy for me to follow – plus easy for me to like. The comedy is only for the fans who have played the game, which I felt should have been done to encompass everyone. But the movie kept he gory aspect of the game, with its brutality.

It failed to entertain in most of the hand-to-hand combats with some becoming boring because of the too much effects involved. The only fight that really caught my eye and had my attention is the fight between Sonya Blade and Kano. There Sonya fought with some form of urgency and smartness to stop a killer.

The movie is based on a fictional fighting game first released in 1992 and since then has had numerous releases, with the latest now being Mortal Kombat 11 done in 2019. The first film (Mortal Kombat) done based on this fighting game was released in 1995 and it was a hit. Since then, plans to make a three-film series had hit many obstacles. The main one was the follow up to the 1995 hit, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation which was a dud both critically and commercially. This movie is more of a reboot of the film franchise with the Mortal Kombat main plot still holding. You can of course except new subplots and twists in the old tales.

So, let us dive into the main plot, in this fictional universe there are numerous realms which are under the control of Elder Gods. These Gods are bound by the rule of Mortal Kombat not to interfere in the fight of realm domination by its occupants. This fight is between the chosen warriors of Earthrealm and that of the other realms for control. This movie shows us three realms, the Netherrealm, Earthrealm and Outworld.

The movie then sets one of the main rivalries of the game’s universe Sub Zero and Scorpion. We see Sub Zero kill Scorpion and his family and Scorpion vowing to return for revenge.

Shang Tsung one of the leaders of Outworld has decided that instead of waiting for Mortal Kombat to happen, he will send his warriors to kill all the chosen one of Earthrealm and seize control of it.

The warriors of Earthrealm, known by the mark of a dragon on their body. This mark can be transferred if you kill anyone bearing that mark. Jax and Sonya were searching for these people, as they have come to figure out what the mark meant, even though they don’t know much about Mortal Kombat. It was their search that led them to meet Cole, as Jax saved Cole from being killed by Sub Zero. Cole finds Sonya, who had in her custody Kano. Sonya knows that the answers to everything is in Raiden’s temple, a place only Kano knows. Kano leads them there and where we see, Kung Lao and Liu Kang, who leads them to Raiden. Raiden fills them in on everything about Mortal Kombat and the realms before asking Lao and Kang to train the four to be able to save Earth and stop Shang Tsung. But Shang Tsung was not willing to wait for them to be trained and pulled all he can to disrupt their training and to be able to kill them.

The movie is not one of those superb things that you can tell anyone to go watch. The movie is done for the fans who already know the characters and are willing to sit through and watch them step up.

Speaking of stepping up, the movie had one of the most stupid step up to your warrior status scenes I have seen. These characters have had their ass handed to them, then they all had something to lose and stepped up their game. The fights in the step up were not cool, except that of Sonya and Kano, now that is a fight I will not mind seeing again.

If the movie makes enough money and brings in enough new subscribers to HBO Max, there will be a sequel. Until then I guess we can only hope that if one is done a better script will be done with it.

The Lincoln Lawyer (2011)

The Lincoln Lawyer (2011)

 6/10

Starring

Matthew McConaughey

Marisa Tomei

Ryan Phillippe

Josh Lucas

John Leguizamo

 

Directed by Brad Furman

 

The movie is based on a 2005 novel of the same name by Michael Connelly.

The movie idea is the world is full of crazies and The Lincoln Lawyer is a movie about what happens when one of them has a hard on for you. The movie takes pride in letting you know from the start that there is something up. It drops hints about how things are not first adding up, then it drops the bombshell – Mickey’s (Matthew McConaughey) client Louis (Ryan Phillippe) is not innocent. Now reading this and seeing who Mickey was doesn’t change anything you will think. Mickey is a lawyer who does most of his work in his black Lincoln Town Car. His clientele covers everyone from the guilty to the innocent, you will feel this was in his alley. But the twist here is, Louis is not guilty of a crime like drugs, theft or things like that. Louis is guilty of attempted sexual assault, assault with a deadly weapon and beating a woman so bad the picture is scary.

Louis being guilty is not just the problem here, we find out that Louis picked Mickey to be his lawyer, for one reason only. Mickey unknowingly helped him get away with doing this same crime once before, by getting the person he defended to plead guilty to the crime. Louis is getting his kinks off watching the system twirl in his hands and playing the game just right so he can get off.

The movie is fantastic to watch, as we see how the knowledge of knowing he sent an innocent man to jail is eating at Mickey and he wanting to do right by that man by getting him out of jail. The problem is he is Louis’ lawyer and everything he knows is protected under the attorney-client privilege. He cannot disclose anything he knows even though he dug deeper to discover how guilty Louis really is. Things take a turn when we realise how far Louis is willing to go to get free and does not care who he hurts to get there.

McConaughey’s acting and in this movie leads the pack to the way this movie will forever be seen. The Lincoln Lawyer is a courtroom thriller with nothing much in the area of suspense. The movie bares it all in the beginning, but thrilling to see is how Mickey was going to find a way to twist himself out of the whole problem he finds himself.