Jingle All the Way (1996)

Jingle All the Way (1996)

5/10

Starring

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Sinbad

Phil Hartman

Rita Wilson

Directed by Brian Levant

Jingle All the Way, for me at age eleven, was everything fun. It had Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was landing comedy roles well at the time, and Sinbad, whom I recall from the TV series A Different World. I enjoyed it a lot back then, and I'm indifferent to it now.
It’s not a classic Christmas movie like It’s A Wonderful Life (1964), but for me, I get to enjoy it every now and again, mainly because it reminds me of a cool time from my youth with my sister.

The movie’s plot has our lead, Howard (Schwarzenegger), shown as a workaholic mattress salesman. Howard is married to Liz (Rita Wilson), and they have a son who is obsessed with the TV character superhero Turbo-Man. After missing his son’s karate class, Howard decides to fulfill his son’s wish and get him a Turbo-Man action figure. He tells his wife that he has already gotten it, believing that all he had to do was walk into a store and pick one up.

When he finally gets to walk into a store, he finds out that the action figure is the most sought-after thing in town and is sold out everywhere. It’s during this search that he meets another father, Myron (Sinbad), who is also trying to buy the action figure for his son. They soon become nemeses, following each other around and trying to get what could be the last Turbo-Man action figure in town.

The movie was inspired by the writer Chris Columbus’s attempt to get his hands on a Buzz Lightyear action figure. Buzz Lightyear was a character in the 1995 Disney/Pixar animated movie Toy Story. This is Schwarzenegger's fourth appearance as the lead in a comedy film, following Twins (1988), Kindergarten Cop (1990), and Junior (1994).

The movie wasn’t a box office hit, even though the studio invested well into the production, dishing out an eight-figure salary to Schwarzenegger, all adding up to its $75 million production budget. The movie made over $120 million. Although, over time, the movie has become one of those regulars you see on TV during the Christmas period.

Also in the movie is Rita Wilson, the wife of Tom Hanks, who plays Schwarzenegger’s wife in the movie. So, if you’re curious to see what she looks like, well, this movie will help.

Your children will enjoy this movie, and you’ll probably understand the feeling if you've ever been at a mall for last-minute Christmas shopping. This movie is a nostalgia quest, not something to watch if you're in the mood for a nice, family-fun movie.

The Hunt (2020)

The Hunt (2020)

6/10

Starring

Betty Gilpin

Emma Roberts

Ethan Suplee

Hilary Swank

Directed by Craig Zobel

The Hunt is one of those movies you only get to see because someone else saw it and recommended it. The movie is fun and sort of funny. I enjoyed the way the first thirty minutes played out, where you're left trying to figure out who the lead is. When you finally get to see her, you begin to wonder, "Why in the hell would these people decide to pick someone like her for their game?"

The movie has a final fight scene that is just sweet to behold. If for nothing else, that’s enough reason to see the movie.

The Hunt is one of those movies that will fly under the radar for many because, when it comes to fantastic acting, none really exists. The storyline is basic, and the gore is pretty much what you'd expect in a movie like this.

The Hunt is one of those movies you’ll be shocked someone would recommend. It’s easy to understand why when you see it. Based on the first thirty minutes and the way the lead is acting, you're never sure how the movie will end. Its thrill and excitement come from leaving you guessing what will happen next, and when those things do happen, they sometimes end up being funny.

Here’s the plot: A group of rich people decide they want to hunt. They choose their prey to be human. At first, you see the humans they’ve chosen, and you believe it must have been random because none of them seem to know each other.

As the movie develops, we see the hunt begin, with many of the prey dying mercilessly. Soon, you discover that it's hard to trust anyone in this movie because they may be part of the hunters.

One of the prey decides she’s not going to die easily and turns the tables on the ones hunting her. She does so well, with the help of some of the other prey.

One person at the head of all this craziness is a lady named Athena (Hilary Swank). She planted herself as the final boss at the end of the game—the last battle for anyone who survives the other bosses along the way.

I can easily recommend The Hunt for viewing. It’s a real pleasure to watch. It’s available for digital viewing, though it's sad the movie didn’t get more time in cinemas due to the current pandemic plaguing the world.

The Invisible Man (2020)

The Invisible Man (2020)

3/10

Starring

Elisabeth Moss

Aldis Hodge

Storm Reid

Harriet Dyer

Directed by Leigh Whannell

The Invisible Man—I watched this movie and was surprised to find that I preferred the book version a hundred times over. The movie and the book are totally different; nothing from the book is in the movie, except for the title.

The movie had some twists, which only made the whole experience worse. Horrible writing is the main challenge of this movie.

If you decide to look at the movie as a whole, it just doesn’t make any sense.

Griffin is obsessed with a girl, and when she runs away from him, he decides to fake his death to get her back. (At the end of the movie, you kind of realize that was the whole purpose of this weird plan.) He leaves her millions of dollars so she can be comfortable and forget about him, then turns himself invisible and starts stalking her. What’s the point of this?

He gives her the money, and within less than a week, he starts hunting her. What’s the point of leaving her the money?

He aims to make her seem insane and get her locked up, but how is that supposed to make her run back into his arms?

How does his invisibility and stalking her while invisible connect to him getting her back? If he wanted to kill her, he had all the time in the world to do so. So, the point of being invisible is to stalk her without her knowing—so where does the hurting and causing her pain fit into this? The idea of him going invisible just to stalk her feels like something out of Looney Tunes.

Unlike the book, where Griffin used chemistry to become invisible, in this movie (set in modern times), Griffin achieves invisibility through physics. I won’t say more so as not to spoil the movie.

I’ve been fortunate to have read the book, listened to the BBC audio play, and watched the old BBC series. Each one stayed true to the book’s portrayal of Griffin as a criminally insane psychopath who wants to be the only person who is invisible. The whole book is about him trying to figure out how to become visible again.

H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man was well-written, easy to follow, and you can understand why Griffin was the way he was. This movie did not do justice to the book at all. That being said, Elizabeth Moss was magnificent in this movie. She’s become an actor to watch whenever her name is attached to something.

The movie had an early digital release, but Universal Pictures has already made millions from it. It was made with a $7 million budget and, as of now, has grossed over $123 million at the global box office.

The movie may be classified as good if you refuse to look at it holistically. But if you decide to consider the big picture, it just doesn’t make any sense.

Bloodshot (2020)

Bloodshot (2020)

3/10

Starring

Vin Diesel

Eiza González

Sam Heughan

Toby Kebbell

Guy Pearce

Directed by David S. F. Wilson

Bloodshot was a movie I was looking forward to seeing. I was hoping it would offer a new path away from the Marvel and D.C.-dominated universe, maybe bringing a third player into the mix. But don’t let the studio fool us into thinking the current coronavirus is the reason this movie tanked. The movie tanked at the box office because it was just not good. If you try to compare it to anything done by D.C. and Marvel in their cinematic universes lately, it doesn’t even hold a candle to any of them.

The character created was too much for the story this movie placed him in, and the action scenes were boring. The whole incident, when played out in full, was a total waste of time.

The writers tried to start from the comic book’s beginning and give us a backstory for Bloodshot, setting up the character for more movies. The story they came up with was too small and weak to carry the character. Meaning, the story didn’t make his existence meaningful enough to want to see another movie about him.

As for the supporting cast, I wished they all got a bullet so I didn’t have to see them too often. Vin Diesel, on the other hand, was not bad as the lead.

In a nutshell, Bloodshot is about a U.S. Marine named Ray (Vin Diesel) who was killed, along with his wife. He’s brought back to life by a company called Rising Spirit Tech, which specializes in developing cybernetic enhancements for disabled soldiers. Ray’s body was donated for the experiment to bring him back from the dead, which was achieved using some special nanite technology that also made Ray indestructible and very strong. After some flashbacks, Ray remembers who killed him and his wife and seeks out revenge. That’s where the movie went bizarre.

Here’s a character who is just seeing life for the first time and is told about the nanotech in his body. All of a sudden, without any information about his abilities, he’s able to do magical things. He discovers he can download how to fly a plane and then flies it—he does all this by hacking into some directory from his head. He can track a person by pinging phones, all through the nanobots in his head. Again, remember, he does all this without being told how or that he could.

He was able to hack networks and databases to find out who is protecting whom, linking things together to discover locations. I was starting to wonder if I fell asleep and missed something that must have happened in the boring intro to this movie.

Without giving too much away, there’s more to Ray’s revenge mission than he knows, and very early in the movie, we discover this.

Bloodshot is one movie I won’t be seeing again, and I beg anyone who hasn’t to not bother.

Altered Carbon: Resleeved (2020)

Altered Carbon: Resleeved (2020)

6/10

Directed by Takeru Nakajima & Yoshiyuki Okuda

Altered Carbon: Resleeved is a full-length animated anime based on the Netflix original cyberpunk web TV series Altered Carbon. The TV series itself is based on the 2002 novel of the same title by Richard K. Morgan.

This animation is way better than the second series of Altered Carbon the TV show, and it is set before the events of the first series. Can it be a standalone watch without seeing the TV series? I don’t think so. They try to make it so with enough explanation about what led to the present situation of Takeshi, but there isn’t enough info to watch this animation without feeling like something is missing.

The story is easy to follow if you’ve seen the first series. The ending makes you feel there’s still more adventure to come before this anime catches up with the first series of the TV show. The fight scenes are bloody, intense, and fun. The animation is cool, but it doesn’t play well when the fight scenes turn bloody.

To give you the plot of this show, we need to dive a little into the plot of the first series. The world of Altered Carbon is set in the future, where people have the ability to live for hundreds of years. Their consciousness can be transferred from one body to another.

There is a device called the Stack, where the consciousness is placed. This Stack contains a person’s memories and experiences. It can then be placed in a body, which is now called a Sleeve. Humans have not only found a way to defeat death but have also overcome the stars, taken over planets, and transformed them into places where humans live.

Now, in this future (sometime in the 2300s), these Sleeves can be augmented to be faster, stronger, and even part robotic. Altered Carbon focuses on a man named Takeshi Kovacs. Without giving away too much information about Takeshi (so as not to ruin anything for those who want to see the TV series), let’s dive into this animation.

Takeshi has been sleeved into another body, with the help of a friend who wants him to investigate the Yakuza as well as protect a young girl. The girl is a tattoo artist for the Yakuza and believes her life is in danger there. She tries to run away from that life to the man who just sleeved Takeshi, when her path crosses with his. He saves her, and while they’re leaving together, she runs away from him and into the hands of the CTAC, a mercenary unit. There, they are attacked, and the girl (Gena), along with Takeshi, are the only ones left standing. Both decide to join forces to protect the girl and take her back to the Yakuza base.

It’s there that we discover there’s more to this girl’s tattooing than she’s telling us, and there’s more to Gena than we know.

Like I said, this is more like it when it comes to Altered Carbon, compared to the second series of the TV show.

The first series focuses on what happened in the book it was based on, where Takeshi acted as a detective to solve a case after he was brought back, his stack having been shelved for years.

The first series was magnificently done, staying quite close to the book’s storyline. Much like in this animation, Takeshi was calm and in control. In the second series, he was out of control. Takeshi in the second series was aggressive, impulsive, and angry at everyone and everything for no reason. They left the whole detective thing behind and gave us a show so deep into sci-fi that it didn’t need to go. Then we got a Takeshi who was emotionally out of control, which you wouldn’t expect from a man of his caliber.

This animation is worth delving into if you liked the first series of Altered Carbon.

101 Dalmatians (1996)

101 Dalmatians (1996)

6/10

Starring

Glenn Close

Jeff Daniels

Joely Richardson

Joan Plowright

Hugh Laurie

Directed by

It’s not every day you get to see a movie filled with the warmth and joy of naivety—where things so unlikely to happen, happen, with good people finding each other, falling madly in love, and getting married. When such movies come along, with a screenplay tuned to almost perfection the way the late John Hughes is known to do, you can’t help but marvel at his work. Written and produced by John Hughes, this 1996 screenplay is based on Disney’s 1961 animation, 101 Dalmatians, which was based on Dodie Smith’s 1956 novel, The Hundred and One Dalmatians. They decided to remove the talking dogs and the singing, and in its place, filled the movie with action. You have to respect the work done by the dog trainers, although the puppetry was not the best.

The movie is fantastic, and no matter how old I get, seeing this movie at any point in my life is always a welcome experience.

The plot places Roger (Jeff Daniels) as a video game maker (in the animation, he wrote music), and Anita (Joely Richardson) works for Cruella (Glenn Close) in her fashion studio. Like in the animation, Pongo (Roger’s dalmatian dog) spots Anita and her dalmatian in the park, chases after them, and many things lead to both of them getting married.

Now, the two dogs are expecting puppies and give birth to fifteen of them. Cruella shows up at their house and offers to buy them all for a substantial amount of money. Roger and Anita refuse, and Cruella leaves angry.

Still wanting the puppies to make fur out of them, Cruella hires Jasper (Hugh Laurie) and his partner Horace to steal as many Dalmatian puppies as they can find, including Roger and Anita’s. How the animals all came together to save the pups and what Roger and Anita did to get them back is all in this movie that I want you to see again.

The casting is just as good as the screenplay, and the directing is top-notch. There is no way you will forget fantastic characters like Glenn Close as Cruella DeVil or Hugh Laurie as Jasper. Not to say the other cast didn’t live up to their roles in this movie, but (especially) Glenn Close was magnificent in her role as Cruella.

The movie was a huge box office success, which led to a sequel (which was nowhere near as good as this one). Close’s magnificent performance earned her a Golden Globe nomination.

The movie is getting a prequel, set to be released sometime in 2021. I guess Disney doesn’t want to do a remake of a movie that’s so well done. A remake would be a daunting task to surpass what this movie represents, especially when it comes to classic Disney live-action adaptations of their classic animations.

If you haven’t seen this movie at all, well, there’s still time now that you’re alive to remedy that error.

Disney remakes on this site

List of Disney remakes on this site:

1. 101 Dalmatians (1996) | 6/10
2. Alice in Wonderland (2010) | 7/10
3. Maleficent (2014) | 7/10
4. Cinderella (2015) | 8/10
5. The Jungle book (2016) | 8/10
6. Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) | 4/10
7. Beauty and the Beast (2017) | 7/10
8. Christopher Robin (2018) | 7/10
9. Dumbo (2019) | 5/10
10. Aladdin (2019) | 5/10
11. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019) | 6/10
12. The Lion King (2019) | 5/10
13. Lady and the Tramp (2019) | 6/10
14. Mulan (2020) | 7/10
15. Cruella (2021) | 6/10
16. Pinocchio (2022) | 3/10
    
17. Peter Pan & Wendy (2023) | 7/10
18. The Little Mermaid (2023) | 6/10
19. Mufasa: The Lion King (2024) | 6/10

Osmosis Jones (2001)

Osmosis Jones (2001)

6/10

Starring

Chris Rock

Laurence Fishburne

David Hyde Pierce

Brandy Norwood

William Shatner

Bill Murray

Directed by Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly | Animation: Tom Sito and Piet Kroon

Way back in 2001, the voice of Chris Rock came screaming at us right from inside Bill Murray as the white blood cell Osmosis Jones.

This animation and live-action mix wasn’t a big hit back then, nor was it a crowd-puller at the box office, as it didn’t make enough money to cover its budget. This is the only version of the movie, and for me, it’s good enough family fun.

Seeing it again nineteen years later, I still feel it’s a nice movie that makes you think about your health, while entertaining you along the way.

With wonderful voice acting paired with Bill Murray’s performance as the jerk Frank, the movie takes place half the time inside Frank and the other half outside him. The live-action happens outside, with Bill Murray, and the animation shows us what’s going on inside, with great voice casting. The animation here is average, but it does the job.

We get to see how the things Frank does on the outside affect him on the inside, and how what’s happening inside him affects the outside. The focus of the movie is on Frank’s white blood cell, Osmosis Jones, and his partner, a flu drug named Drix.

Frank is not a healthy individual—he eats whatever he likes, his house is a mess, and he’s like a toddler who puts anything into his mouth without thinking about where it came from. Frank eats an egg that no one in their right mind would eat and, in doing so, ingests a rogue virus named Thrax.

Thrax has been killing people all around, trying to make a name for himself by getting better at killing his mark in fewer days than the previous one. His goal is to make the body think it has one problem, while the body focuses on curing those symptoms, allowing him to carry out his work. Osmosis spots Thrax and starts investigating the situation, but he’s a rogue white blood cell—very impulsive, acting first and thinking later.

When he spots Thrax, he goes after him, but he’s alone in this battle, as his impulsive actions make it hard to get everyone on board with his mission.

I seem to enjoy this movie every time I see it. I understand that it wasn’t meant to be one of those box-office blowouts, but I guess this is what Disney watched to figure out what they should not do to make sure Pixar’s Inside Out was a box-office hit.

Spenser Confidential (2020)

Spenser Confidential (2020)

4/10

Starring

Mark Wahlberg

Winston Duke

Alan Arkin

Iliza Shlesinger

Directed by Peter Berg

Netflix has done better, and Spenser Confidential felt (quoting Bilbo Baggins) "thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread."

Netflix is in the market for making movie sequels (examples include 2017’s Bright with Will Smith and 2019’s 6 Underground with Ryan Reynolds) to keep their subscribers coming back for more. Spenser Confidential is one of these endeavors. It ends with room for a possible sequel, but the film itself was average at best.

The movie producers seem to have had the aim of making the movie longer than ninety minutes. It’s filled with so much unneeded fluff that you could skip through the time-wasters and not miss a thing. This would have been better packaged as a forty-five-minute series episode, rather than a full-length movie.

I’ve never been on the Mark Wahlberg train, and this movie hasn’t helped me get on board.

Wasted characters, too much talking, and little to no relevant action—this sort of buddy-cop comedy thriller is based on the Spenser: For Hire TV series from the mid-'80s, which was based on a series of books written by Robert B. Parker. However, this film is an adaptation of Wonderland, one of the novels in a series written by Ace Atkins, based on Robert B. Parker’s character Spenser.

Spenser (Mark Wahlberg) just got out of jail after serving five years for beating up his superior officer. He stays with his mentor, and that night, the superior officer is murdered. At first, Spenser is a suspect, but evidence points to another cop, Terrence, as the killer. Terrence is later found dead by suicide in his car. Spenser, who knew Terrence before he went to jail, decides to do whatever he can to prove Terrence's innocence. However, digging into the case leads Spenser to discover more than he expected.

I can understand why this was made into a movie, but based on the screenplay and the whole plot—if Netflix had followed their usual style and released ten episodes of this, people would have stopped watching after the first episode. This is not the kind of show you’d want to binge, even if each episode dealt with Spenser trying to correct a different wrong made by the police.

If a sequel to this movie is released in a later year, there’s a high enough possibility I might see it, hoping for better material before bowing out completely. Regardless of that, this movie itself is not worth recommending.

Onward (2020)

Onward (2020)

6/10

Starring the voices of

Tom Holland

Chris Pratt

Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Octavia Spencer

Directed by Dan Scanlon

This animation is charming, funny, and the adventure is very inviting. In fact, the adventure in this movie about using magic to get something you want, and being on a quest to find a special gem to make it happen, is something I bet RPG game lovers have wished for themselves. Not to mention battling a dragon, having allies with magical swords, and solving puzzles—this movie is an RPG board game brought to life.

There’s this Disney/Pixar formula of one parent being dead in many of their movies. They seem to use it a lot. When I saw it happening again, I wondered why they can't come up with another narrative to center their lead's story on. That said, this movie uses the same formula of a dead parent and makes that the main arc on which the story spins. If you’ve seen the trailers, you’ll understand that this animation is about two brothers trying to bring their dead father back to life. The idea stems from a gift their father left them, which was given to them by their strong-willed mother (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus).

The movie’s plot comes from Dan Scanlon’s own personal life. (He also directed Disney/Pixar's Monsters University in 2013.) When he was a year old, he and his older brother lost their father. It is from this sad beginning in Scanlon's life that this story builds on. The story takes place in another world, where we have two elven, blue-haired brothers living with their strong-willed widowed mother. Their father died before the youngest, Ian (Tom Holland), was born.

Their world was once full of magic, but it wasn’t easy to master. When innovation and science came along, people put magic aside and moved on.

Ian is shy, skinny, and odd. The movie introduces us to him when he turns sixteen. He hopes it will be a turning point in his life, where he will change from being this shy person to a more confident one. His big brother is Barley (Chris Pratt), who is somewhat aloof about what's going on in the real world. He is out of school and still lives at home with their mother. He’s a fanatic of a Dungeons & Dragons-style role-playing game and seems to have mastered everything in it.

When their father’s gift—a magic staff—is given to them by their mom, Barley knows immediately how it’s supposed to work. It just so happens he doesn't know how to make it work. The staff comes with a spell that will make them see their father for just one more day. Ian mistakenly conjures the spell, which makes Barley happy, but the spell is incomplete, and they’ll need a gem to finish it.

So, they have half of their dad back—from the waist down—and Barley, who always wanted to go on an adventure, drags Ian with him on a journey to find the gem that will complete the spell.

The chemistry between Tom Holland and Chris Pratt in this movie is amazing, and the movie develops into a bumbling adventure, the way Pixar knows how to deliver.

The movie is worth seeing with the family, but don’t expect it to have the same magical spark as the Pixar classics.