The Gray Man (2022)

The Gray Man (2022)

5/10

Starring

Ryan Gosling

Chris Evans

Ana de Armas

Billy Bob Thornton

 

Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo

 

If you want to like this movie, after you’re done watching, stop. Do not think about it again. I made that mistake and started to ask myself, “How come Six flipped?” What kind of agent flips just because someone knows his secret identity and his unit? He was supposed to be a great agent, and he flipped just by the mention of his name and unit?

I would have preferred a Count of Monte Cristo kind of thing, where he delivers the message (here it was a flash) and is taken, not knowing what the message he delivered was or why he was taken. Give me some suspense, not the same old “top people in the government are crooked and use government agents to clean up messes.”

The Russo brothers' The Gray Man main challenge is that it’s borderline average. Predictable at its best, and sometimes it dragged way too long in some scenes. It was like the Russo brothers have a thing with Prague. The Prague scene dragged longer than I could have imagined. The way the lead character, Six (Ryan Gosling), keeps getting out of tight corners made the men after him seem simple, like children chasing after a serial killer who has infinite bullets and weapons at his disposal.

I believe Six spoke too little, and Hansen (Chris Evans, the main antagonist) spoke too much.

The Gray Man is about a recruited CIA agent named Six. Six was part of a covert team that worked under the radar, killing people for the government. Six was sent to kill someone but hesitated because there was collateral damage pending if he did. He then decided to kill the target another way. It was there the target called his name and made Six question his orders. Six collected a flash from this victim and gave it to a trusted party to decrypt so he could know what was going on. His refusal to give up the flash (lying that he didn’t have it) made the people in government go after him with everything, calling in a man named Hansen, who is not mentally stable, to go after Six.

In the end, I kept wondering how Miranda (Ana de Armas) was so lucky at times, finding Six and helping him, like she had a tracker on him or something. What would have made this movie amazing would have been if the final showdown between Six and Hansen was like what we saw in Equilibrium, but that’s just me thinking. There, the main bad guys and their henchmen couldn’t take on the main character.

You can catch this movie on Netflix, and I’m sure a lot of noise will be made about it, even though I believe it doesn’t deserve to have that much praise for just being mediocre.

Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank (2022)

Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank (2022)

3/10

Starring the voices of:

Michael Cera

Ricky Gervais

Mel Brooks

Gabriel Iglesias

Djimon Hounsou

Samuel L. Jackson

 

Directed by Rob Minkoff, Mark Koetsier and Chris Bailey

 

When anything bleeds on your screen, like the writer was probably tired and decided to recycle everything he knows about movies, you get this. They took all the ideas from the past and brought them to the present, recycling things we've seen in every movie possible. Not only is this movie boredom on the horizon, but it also makes you want to punch someone. There's no creativity at all, it’s not funny, and the whole “training a dog to be a cat samurai” is a mess.

Everything about this animation makes you want to locate the people behind it and ask them questions. The animation doesn’t try to pull any surprises. It just coasts on the boring idea of “we’ve seen this before, so why not see it again?”

You want to mention loose strings? This movie has them in loads. You want to talk about a lack of ideas? This movie is the perfect example of that. This is one of those animations you wish you never saw, and the one thing I will be grateful for is how forgettable it is, so I don’t have to worry about this mistake in the near future.

The story is as dull as they come. A dog who has been pushed around all his life (Hank) decides to become a samurai based on his past encounter with one. Samurais in this world are cats, and this dog leaves his dog land for cat land to learn how to be one.

He gets caught and would have been killed if a high-ranking official (Ika Chu) hadn’t hatched a plan where this dog could be of service. Ika Chu, an official of the land's Shogun, desires to expand his giant palace, but the land of Kakamucho is in his way. He has tried everything to get rid of the people, but nothing works. Now the people have requested a new samurai to protect them from raiders.

Knowing that cats will kill a dog at first sight, he sends Hank to the land to be its protector (samurai), believing Hank will be killed, giving him a reason to raid the town and destroy it—since it’s illegal to kill a samurai.

Hank goes to fulfill his duty after arguing that he knows nothing about being a samurai, as he came to learn. He survives the first encounter to Ika Chu’s displeasure. There, Hank meets Jimbo, a former samurai who agrees to train Hank so he can defend the town from raiders.

This would have been best done as a thirty-minute short film—early morning animation for toddlers who will just like the whole running around and colors. For more grown-up children, this would be the best thing to show them to guarantee they fall asleep.

Save yourself the time and money to see this animation. It’s not worth it one bit.

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

7/10

Starring

Chris Hemsworth

Christian Bale

Tessa Thompson

Jaimie Alexander

Natalie Portman

 

Directed by Taika Waititi

 

Following the footsteps of Ragnarok (2017) was never going to be an easy fit for this movie, but director and co-writer Taika Waititi did a nice job. I have to say, the comedy in this movie hit home every time, and the fights—along with the way Thor upgraded the children when he drew power from Zeus's Thunderbolt—are a sight to see.

The movie, in a way, found its own path and made the best of it. It had its challenges—the screenplay and the inconsistent tone can at times be annoying—but this movie was worth the time I spent watching it, and it will be worth yours too.

Yep!!! It’s finally here. Thanks to all the trailers, we knew who we were looking forward to seeing, and that was Jane. In the comics, Jane was an excellent Thor, and in this movie, she was one as well. When the two teamed up to take on the creatures in the Shadow Realm (also fighting alongside them was Valkyrie), it was a sight. Two Thors—one wielding Stormbreaker and the other Mjolnir.

Thor: Love and Thunder is the 29th movie in the MCU and the fourth standalone Thor movie.

The movie starts with Gorr (Christian Bale) praying to his god for help concerning him and his daughter, who were dying in a barren desert. His daughter dies, and as he wanders off, he sees an oasis. He rushes in to find his god, Rapu, having a feast. He still reaches out to him for help with his faith, but Rapu dismisses him and calls his daughter’s death irrelevant. This angers Gorr, who renounces his god, which annoys Rapu, who tries to kill him. Then, the Necrosword (a god-killing weapon) calls to Gorr as he is dying in Rapu’s hand. Gorr reaches for it, and the sword comes to him. He uses it to kill Rapu and swears to kill all gods.

Thor, on the other hand, is lost, trying to find meaning in his life when he gets a distress call about the rampaging Gorr. Gorr has killed many gods in other realms, and Asgard is next.

Thor goes to where the last Asgardians are on Earth, led by King Valkyrie, and is surprised to find Jane as Thor (someone he hasn’t seen in 8 years) there, along with Valkyrie, fighting Gorr and his creatures. Gorr loses this battle but takes all the Asgardian children.

Thor, Jane, Valkyrie, and Korg are now trying to recruit other gods to form a team to go after Gorr and save the children.

There is a sad undertone in this movie—Jane is dying, and this could be her last time to feel alive again.

Fun movie, and it was a fun watch. Something I’ll likely see again.

The Sea Beasts (2022)

The Sea Beast (2022)

 6/10

 

Starring the voices of

Karl Urban

Zaris-Angel Hator

Jared Harris

Marianne Jean-Baptiste

Dan Stevens

Kathy Burke

 

Directed by Chris Williams

 

This movie is a surprisingly good animation from Netflix, and for me, the main reason they were able to make this animation so nice is that they got someone like Chris Williams steering the ship.

The name Chris Williams is familiar to me, and his work is also familiar to anyone who loves Disney films. He’s been part of the production team at Disney since the time of Mulan (1998) and through to Raya and the Last Dragon (2021). You will see thread of his work on movies like Moana, and this movie is set in a world like that of Pirates of the Caribbean, he also picked things up from How to Train Your Dragon. He mixed all of this with a new story to give us this action-adventure movie that’s packed with some wholesome family fun.

I liked the excitement when the movie kicked off with what looked like a Moby Dick tale. That gave it a more mature start, with the movie deciding to shift gears as Captain Crow showed that he wasn’t as obsessed with the hunt as Captain Ahab was with Moby Dick.

The movie’s main cast is a stowaway little girl named Maisie. Maisie lives in an orphanage set up by the King and Queen, who care for the orphans of the men and women who died protecting their kingdom from these sea beasts. These hunters sail the seas, and they are funded by the royals to kill all the sea beasts they can find. The aim is to help the kingdom expand as the creatures are driven back into the seas.

Maisie breaks out of the orphanage and stows away on the most famous ship in the kingdom, The Inevitable, led by Captain Crow and his adopted son, Jacob. When the hunters’ work is threatened and the life of the captain is at stake, Jacob stands in the middle to wager the hunters’ reputation against that of the kingdom’s navy. There’s a popular sea creature everyone wants dead: the Red Bluster. So, The Inevitable and the navy go after the creature.

The Inevitable is the ship that comes across the creature first, and they’re losing the battle until Maisie makes a great decision to save the crew. This decision by the child annoys Crow, who points his gun at Maisie while Jacob tries to stop the mayhem about to unfold. Then, the Red Bluster returns and does the unimaginable.

Cool movie, and worth every moment I spent watching it.