Creed II (2018)

Creed II (2018)

6/10

Starring

Michael B. Jordan

Sylvester Stallone

Tessa Thompson

Dolph Lundgren

Directed by Steven Caple Jr.

Following the success of 2015 Creed I guess we all knew Hollywood will not let this tale live without a sequel. Creed (2015) stared Michael B. Jordan as the son of Apollo Creed, the man who was killed in the boxing ring by Ivan Drago in Rocky IV (1985).

This followup sequel is not so much different from what you will expect from the eighth film in the Rocky franchise. Written by Sylvester Stallone the movie sticks with the same formula as the follow up movie series after Rocky (1976) and Rocky II (1979). After these first two films the story follows the same formula.

It starts with the introduction of an opponent who is larger than life and just too good and Rocky takes him down.

The Rocky sequels after Rocky (1976) and Rocky II (1979) may have been popular, but they were just as predictable as this movie is. Do not expect any surprise from this movie, in fact get ready to be able to guess your way all through the movie. The movie didn’t even try to spice things up a little.

In here movie, there was a new player in town and he is the son of Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren). Lundgren and many others reprise their roles in this movie.

The new challenger like his father Ivan was unstoppable and here is where the movie didn’t even attempt to change script, only by the intervention of Rocky was he taken down.

The movie shows Creed behave like a weird overgrown child who refuse to allow common sense to have a better part of his decisions. We see his character get into a tantrum over Rocky refusing to help him in his fight against Drago.

Creed claims this was more of a revenge for his father, but Rocky tells him he is not mentally set for the fight.

Meanwhile, we see Ivan Drago trying to get back his glory days and his glory through his son. He pushes his son to a point where it is almost unbearable. The aim is, Rocky took away his glory and he will get it back by taking down his protege.

All this is happening while Creed’s love interest Bianca (Tessa Thompson, reprising her role from Creed (2015)) becomes his wife.

Their union is further blessed with a child. We are placed on a tale where we get to see Creed and Rocky part ways and reconnect to take on Drago.

Like I said, the movie is highly predictable and very consistent with what it was trying to prove and do. That proof was, if a formula is not broken, do not try to fix it. A Creed III will be pushing it though if they go ahead to make it.

Polar (2019)

Polar (2019)

7/10

Starring

Mads Mikkelsen

Vanessa Hudgens

Katheryn Winnick

Matt Lucas

Directed by Jonas Åkerlund

Polar is not your regular action movie, it is intense, dramatic and has an amazing thrilling ending that just leaves the door open to possible sequels.

I have not had the opportunity of reading the Dark Horse Comic this movie character is based on, but I can tell you this movie is a John Wick and Taken addition with some more blood and nudity.

I guess Netflix wanted their own antihero star to which they have control since Disney is yanking off our heroes from the Defender Marvel comic group from Netflix.

What makes this movie different from John Wick?

This time our hero is not retired yet, John Wick was given an impossible task to get his retirement and be happy, here our hero has reached the age of retirement.

The company he works for retires their assassins at the age of 50. Problem is, these assassins have a pension program with their company. When the time comes from them to pay, they take you out. This has not always been the case from what you will gather from the film, but I guess new management comes with its own price.

Our assassin of focus here is named Duncan Vizla/Black Kaiser played by Mads Mikkelsen. He has reached the age of 50 and he is the best the company has to offer. He has racked up kills so much that he has a huge pension plan of over eight million dollars. The company decided it is time to take him out, problem is they didn’t plan it well the first time ticking him off that something as such was being set in place for him.

Their first attempt was ruined by some bad assumptions. They sent him to kill a guy, but the guy was paid to kill him. Problem is, he was supposed to call in when he sees the guy and he is ready to take the kill. He just went ahead and killed the mark and called in later.

By doing so he saw his file on the mark and knew something was up.

That is how the whole cat and mouse began. We see betrayal, we see setups not going as planned and he just being a force to reckon with. Many times the company head (Matt Lucas) had the chance to give up the chase, but he had to make money for the board to cover up his expenses and his greed got the best of him.

Mads Mikkelsen was way ahead in his acting skills in this movie and you will love his portrayal of the character. Even the cast were all in this movie for the long haul, as they gave performances that will make you just quake for more.

The movie did leave many loose ends open for a second part and I can’t wait for those loose ends to be tied up.

Plagued with some amazing kills, some great counter strikes that will make you twitch. Get ready to have a time of your life while begging for a new Polar to be done in 2020.

Mortal Engines (2018)

Mortal Engines (2018)

3/10

Starring

Hera Hilmar

Robert Sheehan

Hugo Weaving

Directed by Christian Rivers

I will take my time to say why this movie is so out of touch with itself that it surprises me that it has any good reviews.

Mortal Engines is more focused on what it is trying to do and so much tuned to impressing the film makers than we the viewers.

Does the movie have an aim?

Well to the makers it does, to me who knows nothing about the tale to which it was adapted from and curious to see a Peter Jackson film I was unimpressed. I had no idea what the movie was trying to do. The whole genre crossing was so blandly put together that if you are not careful you will doze off. Even though the actors were so engrossed in delivering, the movie failed highly on delivering the one thing every movie has to do, entertain.

My biggest turn off in the movie is that in the first twenty-five minutes many things happened. It felt at that point like Premature Ejaculation of Ideas. Then you are given more than twenty-five minutes before anything again happens. The movie just went on about things that did not matter., spring up characters here and there, and its flow so just not worth the time invested to keep up.

Now the plot, the movie is about a girl (named Elizabeth) who has a scar across her face. She got the scar when she was an eight-year-old child.

Also, the movie is about a man named Valentine who has a diabolical vision for the future. A future where he had the power to take down any city that opposes him.

What joins the girl with the man, is her mother. The mother was murdered by Valentine and Elizabeth was scared by him also.

All of this is happening n a post-apocalyptic future. In this future cities move on wheels. The reason that this is the way the future is, is not in anyway mentioned in the movie.

What happens is, big cities overcome smaller cities for fuel and manpower.

Fair warning, do not allow yourself get confused about the place of the Valentine’s daughter in this movie, she has no place. She is used to introduce the historian named Thomas who is fond of collecting dangerous items which can be tied to what destroys the earth.

She was the person who saved Valentine when Elizabeth tried to murder him, and he chased her and failed to apprehend her. His failure and knowing more than he should got him tossed off the moving city and into the helping hands of the person he tried to apprehend, Elizabeth.

Now, Elizabeth is not done having her revenge, and Thomas just wants to get back to the city life, while Valentine returns to his obsession, collecting old weapon items to create a weapon strong enough to wipe out an entire city.

In the end the movie was just a miss in everything. I do not have fond memories of seeing this movie, the only thing I know 100% is that, it is hard to believe that anyone liked this movie.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

4/10

Starring

Eddie Redmayne

Katherine Waterston

Dan Fogler

Directed by David Yates

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, is full of noise, many plot twists and suspense as high as it can be. With all that, the film is boring and less interesting than the worse movie you can think of in the Harry Potter/Fantastic Beast Wizardry World franchise.

It got to a point where I just could not understand why this movie had so much happening and so little of it leading to a point of excitement. It was like at every turn there is something to be revealed, something that is important to another thing that will be revealed much later. This can be very annoying and boring. I cannot understand how this movie was said to be good regardless of what the critics say, because to me it was difficult to go through the over two hours it played.

The odd thing is, J.K. Rowling developed and wrote this screenplay and what I see in this movie that is she is plotting something big, which can do great if you reading a two part book. The first part is in your hand and the second is on the shelf. In this here movie the way things were being played out, I'm bored already of the franchise. It is taking too long to get anywhere and it is taking too long to start to add up.

The plot continues where the first movie stopped, just some three months later. With Newt trying to get his international travel rights back. The rights were revoked because of what he did in the first film in New York.

Newt was giving a condition to getting his pass back, he should assist them (The Ministry) to find Credence Barebone. The man believed to be the only living Pure Blood wizard, and Grindelward wants him as a joker to kill Albus Dumbledore.

After he refused to choose sides or help the ministry he was dismissed. Dumbledore calls him later on and he was able to persuade Newt to go find Credence Barebone. Newt with his friend and human companion Jacob went in search.

This search took us through some dark pasts for many of the characters. We get to see Dumbledore and Grindelwald have a relationship. We get to see why Newt is so set apart from the others and we get to know more about Credence.

We also get to lose some people along the way in the path of trying to find Credence and getting to see Grindelwald recruit many wizards to his cause.

I for one think the movie was too deep for its own good. It introduced so many characters that were here today, gone in a flash. With many loss ends that you just wish they start linking them up sooner than later. A third movie is set to be released in 2020.

Replicas (2018)

Replicas (2018)

3/10

Starring

Keanu Reeves

Alice Eve

Directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff

Have you seen the science fiction movie called Replicas? If you have not, please save yourself the pain.

The movie stars Keanu Reeves and it is not enticing and the tale is very sad. Not dramatic sad, but boring sad. You can hear as the time ticks away as you waste your life of over one hour watching this movie. You cannot fall asleep because you are angry, you cannot throw anything at the screen because you cannot afford the damage, you just sit and wonder. You task yourself, “come on, how bad can it get from now on?” Then it gets to the climax and you see that it still has more horrid writing ahead.

This movie is about mind transfer. The acting in this movie is done by people who actually did this for the money and could not be bothered to be made to care whether people will mind that they too do not feel this movie will amount to anything in the end.

Even Keanu Reeves was not in his “A” game in this movie, or maybe the problem is the wrong people were cast in this movie.

Well, the movie plot is about a scientist genius of a man played by Keanu Reeves. He is married with three kids and his job is to figure out how to transfer the consciousness of someone from their recently dead body into a machine.

The first successful trial which resulted in a form of speech was much of a disaster and that is what we get to see as they have been at this for a long time.

The moral side of this trials start to plague or lead’s wife and she ask him to be careful. One unfortunate night he and his family were involved in an accident, where only him survived.

He called his colleague from work to come over with the body creation they wanted to use for their trials and he did the miracle. He transferred the consciousness of his wife and two of his kids into the bodies.

It was a miracle, the incentive that he will get to have his family again was all that he needed to make the experiment work this time. The only issue was that they only had bodies for three, so he had to do something drastic.

He edited the memory of his new family to exclude the crash and the existence of his last born. He went further to remove traces of her existence from the home. He placed his family to bed and in the morning they got moving about like nothing happened.

This success was monitored by the company he worked for without his knowledge and now they want in on his success and he doesn't want to share.

That is what this total crap of a movie is all about, do not bother enduring or looking for a reason to see it.

A Life Less Ordinary (1997)

A Life Less Ordinary (1997)

6/10

Starring

Ewan McGregor

Cameron Diaz

Holly hunter

Delroy Lindo

Directed by Danny Boyle

Do you want to see a movie go to shit in the last moment?

Are you dying to watch a movie grow on you and in the last minute everything gets taken from you?

Then you do not have to look far than this movie I enjoy seeing, but try my best to skip the ending. Everything would have been perfect if the writers just thought it through for a second, how can a hole in the heart be the one thing missing from this movie?

The movie was not well received when it was released and you can understand why, the plot is flimsy, the actors seem overly invested and the ending of this movie is rotten. Yet for me, I get to watch this movie often, because sometimes just some plain love story can be heartwarming.

The movie plot is about two people Robert (Ewan McGregor) and Celine (Cameron Diaz). In heaven there is a department whose job is make sure two people who are destined for each other get to be together. Problem is with the growing trend of divorce and splitting up the department success rate is dwindling (and God, I guess is coming down hard on them).

Two angels O'Reilly (Holly Hunter) and Jackson (Delroy Lindo) were assigned to our two leads and we soon get to meet them. Robert is a janitor in a company and was fired to be replaced by a machine. Celine is the daughter of the millionaire that owns that company and she is bored and going through boyfriends like clothes because she is unable to find the perfect fit.

Robert fed up with being treated like crap and being overlooked, decided to break back into the office during working hours and demand his job back from Celine’s dad. On that faithful day Celine was in the office and she is also having a word with her father concerning settling down and stating a family.

Robert breaks into the father and daughter conversation to start shouting and before he could get a sentence in, the security jumps him.

He managed to get a hold of one of their guns when Celine seeing the gun on the floor close to her, kicks it to Robert. He gets up and takes her hostage.

Since this was not his initial plan, he didn’t know what to do and Celine who just wanted to be away from her father assisted him in getting herself kidnapped.

The two now must find a way to get money from her father, while being chased by two angels masquerading as hired guns sent by her father to kill Robert and retrieve Celine. The angels on the other hand were hoping to use the present conflict to bring the two together.

Like I have addressed the movie’s tale has me hooked to seeing how things were going to unfold between these two parties. But in the end when all the writers had to do was find a way for the couple to get away with their lives, we had to see a love miracle. The miracle was delivered in such a mess and meant absolutely nothing, that can make you hate everything that led to it.