Spellbound (2024)

Spellbound (2024)

2/10

 

Starring the voices of

Rachel Zegler

John Lithgow

Jenifer Lewis

Tituss Burgess

 

Directed by Vicky Jenson

 

This is a horrible animation. I do not even understand how they made this animation this way with such bad writing. The only intention that I can get from this production is that it will entertain no one except for children who will not understand what is going on, but like the colorfulness.

Which is very bad work on their part, when the whole idea of how this movie will play out is, “let us make it bright and sparkling, kids will be engulfed by that.” This animation is not meant to be viewed or liked by an adult, because I saw this movie and I felt like punching the TV.

It is the way the animation starts that gets me at first. I told myself, overlook the bad songs, and the very odd CGI, this idea of starting the movie, at the point of the parents being monsters and everyone must work around this to keep the populace in the dark seemed intriguing at first.

Then came the execution of this good idea. The distance between the people that know and the people that do not, and then the incidents which were meant to be funny, just fell by the wayside.

Then came the little girl who must deal with this, she got help from some oracle telling her that the parents are the only ones who can break the spell which has turned them into monsters.

How did the parents become monsters?

They went on a journey to the dark forest of eternal darkness (I do not know if the reason for this journey was justified, but the idea is they went), and it was there that they got turned into monsters.

It is worth saying here that, they are not monsters who know they are parents or aware that they are the king and queen of the land of Lumbria, more of monsters acting like pets.

So, the little girl Ellian (the princess of Lumbria) does not have the time to be a little girl anymore. She and the people who know, spend most of their time taking care of these large monsters.

The time is coming, and the people are getting impatient, so Ellian knows she must come up with a way to turn her parents back. That is when she summoned the oracle and is hit with the news that the parents must embark on a journey to the Lake of Light. It was while on this journey, the monsters got their voices back and had some level of reasoning returned to them.

What can I say, I have wasted time watching an animation this horrible.

IF (2024)

IF (2024)

 

3/10

 

Starring           

Cailey Fleming

Ryan Reynolds

John Krasinski

Fiona Shaw

 

Directed by John Krasinski

 

When there is a movie, which stars Ryan Reynolds, John Krasinski and a wonderful voice cast of Steve Carell, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and others, you will think, this must be good. Then it is about the imaginary friends, which people had when they were younger and have now grown out of, you will accept that you are in for a ride. But sadly, this is a very boring movie. IF is a fantasy comedy movie, that does not offer anything in the fantasy realm to hold your attention, nor anything in the comedy genre to make the movie memorable.

The movie is written and directed by John Krasinski, but the story never took off. It had a very dull start, and never even tried to change pace. The ability to stay awake when seeing this movie is a talent, which I am sorry I was not blessed with. I was only able to see it through to the end thanks to the power of pausing. Yeah, streaming this movie on Paramount+ was the best decision I made when I decided not to go see this in the cinema. It drove me to sleep, and I had a nice nap. Woke up, took it back to where I stopped (where Cal (Reynolds) took Bea to Memory Lane Retirement Home 40 minutes in) and watched it through to the end, and regretted doing that.

IF (imaginary friends) is about a little girl named Bea. Bea has seen her mother pass due to cancer and is now facing the trouble of her father having a heart condition. Bea is only twelve years old and is now staying with her grandmother. On her way home from the hospital, she saw this creature, which did not look real. She followed the creature, which went to her home and ran upstairs to some other apartment. This happened again, and this time Bea noticed the creature was with a man named Cal, and they were on their way to retrieve a large creature named blue. It was there Bea met the creature she saw earlier, a butterfly looking thing, and she faints. She awakes in Cal’s apartment, the one upstairs her grandmother’s, and she meets blue, and learns that blue and the butterfly creature Blossom are imaginary creatures, who no longer have kids, as the kids have all grown up. Cal is trying to see if it is possible for him to find them new kids. The problem is, the kids have to connect with the creatures, and only with this connection can they see these creatures. So Bea decided she too will like to help Cal achieve this, and while going through the motion of visiting her father in the hospital, she is out there, trying to link imaginary creatures to new kids.

As I said, the story looks like it will be an amazing time in front of the screen, but it is anything but that.

Red One (2024)

Red One (2024)

6/10

Starring

Dwayne Johnson

Chris Evans

Lucy Liu

J. K. Simmons

 

Directed by Jake Kasdan

 

The movie has a lot of one-liners for how to be a better person, but not enough actual good plot to make this a good movie, worth recommending to anyone. Funny enough, even though many critics dislike this film, I found it ok.

I felt the movie, did its job of creating an action world, where Santa is like guarded by these top notch, secret service agency of mythical creatures, one step above the James Bond world of gadgetry.

I can tell that the whole macho madness that this movie has can be very annoying, it has so many muscle flex scenes that do not matter to anything useful at all. If you look at the level of CGI in this movie, and the number of A-list actors it has, you can see why many believe Amazon spent way too much.

This is not a box-office breaking movie, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson for me, has never been a reason to run to the cinema to see a movie, even though many production companies’ think so.

250 million on production alone, is way too much for a movie, with a plot like this, that to me is not meant to bring in more than half that amount from viewing.

Here is what the plot is about. We are introduced to a world where Santa is real, and he does the whole thing of visiting the kids every Christmas day to give them gifts. It turns out that there is an agency called MORA, who deals with these mythical creatures, led by Zoe (Lucy Liu), they maintain the relationship between us humans and these creatures.

Santa has his own, next level James Bond like secret detail who protect him and run his affairs of being Santa, called ELF (Enforcement, Logistics and Fortification), led by Cal (The Rock).

As you can expect, Santa is not without enemies, and one of them contacted the best tracker in the world, Jack (Chris Evans) to help pinpoint where Santa is. Jack is unaware of who the people who contacted him are trying to track, he just does the job.

Well, Santa is kidnapped, and MORA was able to track the person involved to Jack, now he and Cal must find and rescue Santa to save Christmas.

I know it sounds like every Christmas movie, that gives you the run around and says, they must now work together to save Christmas. Well, it is like every Christmas movie, with Jack being the unbeliever, who gets to see that his actions have consequences.

It is an okay movie as I said, but it is very hard to say, run and go see it.

Gladiator 2 (2024)

Gladiator II (2024)

 

6/10

Starring

Paul Mescal

Pedro Pascal

Denzel Washington

 

Directed by Ridley Scott

 

This is an ok movie, fun to watch, I cannot say if it is worth your time or not, but not seeing this movie will not be written that you missed a masterpiece.

Now in case you want to be surprised, about who Lucius is, then do not read on because everyone who knows about this movie already does, so for you Spoiler Warning below.

The movie takes place sixteen years after the events of the first movie Gladiator (2000), Maximus (Russell Crowe) is dead, and now we see the events after his death. There was shared knowledge in the first movie, that Maximus was the father of Lucius (whose mother is Lucilla), and this movie shows us that Lucius was sent away by his mother to protect him from assassins.

This movie fails to rise above its predecessor. The first Gladiator movie was a 10/10 in my book, this movie had more action scenes than it, to make up for the lack of a deep story. But even though the action and blood were more, the lack of deepness in the plot hurt the movie overall feel.

For me, it was like, they took the first film and decided to redo it, but change some things.

The main eye-catching thing about this movie is Denzel Washington. Another sad thing about this movie for me was, when it started, and I heard the intro music, I was like Hans Zimmer is back. Later as the movie progressed, I felt, this isn’t Zimmer, then did my check and realised he did not come back to score the movie, because he did not want to.

The plot to me was the only led down in this movie, it was like the action was the focus and the plot, no matter how half-baked, was wrapped round it.

Lucius is living in a land called Numidia, which got invaded by the Romans, and he was enslaved. He was then and the rest of the slaves were taken to a stable, where Macrinus noticed him, and took him under his wing.

Lucius had a goal to kill General Acacius, because he led the army that invaded Numidia where his wife was killed in the invasion. So, he is on a revenge hunt, and was promised that he will get his time for revenge if he rises in the Gladiator ring. As you can see, all these are just ideas from the first film.

So we get to watch, just like in the first film, the plot to reign in Rome, the plot losing its grip, the Gladiator getting his fight, and the end where that is the only thing concerning more death that they decided to change.

Sitting down to watch this movie is a decision to not compare it to the first film, because it does not measure up to the first film’s plot, acting and depth.

Moana 2 (2024)

Moana 2 (2024)

5/10

 

Starring the voices of

Auliʻi Cravalho

Dwayne Johnson        

 

Directed by David Derrick Jr., Jason Hand and Dana Ledoux Miller

 

Fifteen minutes into the movie and absolutely nothing was happening, I was bored and absolutely confused on what the point of all the cultural significance that is being bestowed on Moana. It was like, the writers felt, they needed to elevate her more, after all she has done in the first Moana. Moana 2 is a cash grab, it is Disney being so much in need of a win, that they decided to just turn what was meant to be a series for Disney +, to a movie, just to get a box-office win. Moana 2, like this predecessor, is a CGI animated feature movie, featuring the voices of Auliʻi Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson.

So, what do we the unfortunate movie watcher get? Too much bone and so little meat. A forgettable experience in the movies, with songs that do not stick to the tongue like the ones in the first Moana movie in 2016.

The succinct plot is that Moana has been searching for other people like her own people on the island, so that they can connect (connect the people of the ocean). Because of her heroic adventure with Maui, she has been elevated to the person who will connect the people of the ocean. Problem is, after the events of the first movie, she has been searching for others and has not been able to find anyone.

Like all movies go, during the ceremony she gets a revelation, which I always wonder, when these ancestors come to visit to give us directions on our path, why not just tell us what to do. Give us a map and be very direct. Why be cryptic and send Moana to find a light to guide her to find the people of the island of Motufelu, which was sunk by a storm god Nalo.

To make it more intense, she must do this to save the people on her own island from extinction. So, when does she begin this journey? Well, like almost 30 minutes in, with a crew of people from her island. How does Maui connect? Well, he too is trying to find Motufetu (coincidence isn’t it), and he has some issues with Nalo, and Nalo's chief henchman, has him captured hoping he will reach out to Moana for help. Maui refuses, because he fears for her life, if she comes to help him.

One thing I know is that this movie will rake in millions and probably get to over a billion in the box office, it is possible, but we need better materials and not just Disney doing some spin-off of a series to a sequel.

Not worth the watch.

Venom: The Last Dance (2024)

Venom: The Last Dance (2024)

3/10

 

Starring          

Tom Hardy

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Juno Temple

Rhys Ifans

 

Directed by Kelly Marcel

 

There is something about the CGI, which is used in these Venom movies, that just doesn’t sit well with me. It is so big and when Eddie is in Venom mode, that it just feels out of place, but maybe that is just me, and it does not matter to the grand scheme of things when it comes to the fans of the franchise. This movie is not as amazing an addition to the whole spider-verse as you would want it. I was not moved or intrigued by what was happening and the idea of making the ending be so emotional, did not work. It just looked like the same old superhero movie move, where the end is never really the end for any character.

Venom: The Last Dance is “supposed” to be the last of the Venom trilogy by Sony, supposed in quote because nothing ends any more. Like the previous movies before it, Venom (2018) and Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021) it follows the story of Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and his symbiote Venom on their adventures. This time we are starting in a bar in Mexico, where Eddie is on the run for the death of Patrick Mulligan. We know, from the last movie, that Mulligan’s situation and absence has nothing to do with Eddie or Venom.

We are then introduced to a new being Knull, who according to the symbiote has been around before the creation of the universe. He has risen because Venom brought Eddie back to life at one point creating something called a codex. This codex is what alerted Knull, because with the codex, he can break free from the prison which the symbiotes have placed it. So, he sends these creatures called Xenophages to go find this codex.

Now there are a lot of holes in this story, that I do not want to dive into, because I don’t care that much. Now in Area-51 Strickland and his team have been going about collecting all the symbiotes they can find and any left trace about. We meet Dr. Teddy Payne, who has been working on these symbiotes to find out why they are here and their intentions. It was from all these they learn that Knull has woken up, and that the only way to stop him is to kill either Venom or Eddie.

Here is where movies lose me, in other to save Venom, the amount of people who died are amazing. Also, the amount of symbiotes who gave their lives, in a situation, which in the end was not stopped. So, to me all those deaths was wasted.

I know Sony will be holding on to the spider-verse for a long time, so that is why we will continue to see such nonsense being released time and time again.

The Wild Robot (2024)

The Wild Robot (2024)

 

image from Universal Pictures

9/10

Starring the voices of     

Lupita Nyong'o

Pedro Pascal

Kit Connor

 

Directed by Chris Sanders

 

It is not hard to say that this is going to go down as one of the best animated movies of this decade, because the story is that good. Based off a book by Peter Brown, Chris Sanders wrote this amazing screenplay and directed this masterpiece. He has not dropped the ball since he left Disney for Dreamworks, animations like How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods are part of his resume, so when I saw his name attached to this, I knew I had to see it.

The animation is not trying to compete with Disney when it comes to the graphics, the movie does not have a complete CGI look, you can see a form of hand painting used on the characters, which is why the budget is below $100 million.

The masterful voice acting in the movie and the flow of the movie steals you away from what you are doing, and you become lost in this new world. Sanders did a wonderful thing of not allowing Roz to become a lost puppy on screen, running around looking for something to do. Roz seemed confident and pushed to finding a reason to carry on, and once found, there was no stopping her until she was able to see it through to completion.

Roz is a robot, full name is Rozzum unit 7134. Her container was washed up on the shore of an island not inhabited by humans. She comes on, when an animal mistakenly hit her on button, then from that moment, she was following her basic programming running around the island, looking for someone to claim her as her owner and give her tasks.

The running around was not without its price, since she was not meant to be on this island and does not understand how to relate with the animals or navigate such surroundings. By the time Roz decided to slow down to understand the language and the surrounding she is in, she had sustained some considerable damages.

Nonetheless, the stumbling about led her to crash into a tree, which caused the death of a goose mum and smashed all her eggs except one. She took that egg, then lost it again and had to chase down a fox to be able to get it back. Her curiosity got the best of her, and she kept the egg until it hatched. The gosling was a runt. A runt meaning it was smaller than what a normal goose should be and in the wild, runts do not naturally survive. Roz met a possum mother with her babies, and she told Roz that she is now the gosling’s mother and must care for it. Roz took that as her new directive, modifying her programming and adopted the gosling. But since she did not understand what it means to care for a gosling, the fox, which initially tried to eat the gosling as an egg, decided to work with Roz to raise the child. The selfish process the fox thought will be beneficial to his survival, and the fox felt sorry for the gosling because Roz’s way of trying to care for this child was almost like she was torture.

So, we get to watch this two raise the gosling and prepare it for winter when it must migrate.

The whole process was not easy, and the animation made sure that we get to have enough comedic fun watching, and there are touching moments seeing them fail and some action in the ending with robot fights.

This is a must see.

Brothers (2024)

Brothers (2024)

 

6/10

Starring          

Josh Brolin

Peter Dinklage

Brendan Fraser

Glenn Close

 

Directed by Max Barbakow

 

One thing this movie has is the engaging factor. I must be honest – it is written in a way to leave you wanting to see how things will line up. What I mean by line up is. Instead of the urge to see how things will end, how the brothers will find a way to make amends and get ahead, you are held by the many missing blocks.

What happened to their mum?

The mum’s boyfriend who swallowed the emerald, how did that play out?

What weird thing was the beautiful and forever gorgeous Marisa Tomei cameo appearance into?

And how were the brothers going to deal with the cop chasing them?

Some matters, like the last one was not well tied up, and the movie had some incidents that will make you go, hmm!!! But in the end, it made for a good time, and I enjoyed holding out to the end to see how the things lined up.

The cast in this movie were excellent, and I hardly recognised Glenn Close.

The plot is about two twin brothers, Moke (Josh Brolin) and Jady (Peter Dinklage). You can already see how the difference in height gives you the Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny De Vito feel, but the movie is nothing like that. These two brothers grew up as thieves, their mother (Glenn Close) was an armed robber and both brothers were just petty thieves when she left. During one of their heists, Jady got caught. He did not rat out Moke (something the movie does not really touch on), but Moke went on to turn his life around and try to be a better person after the incident. Jady got out early, and this was due to the assistance of a corrupt officer, Farful (Brendan Fraser). They had a deal, Farful will help Jady get out of prison with the aid of Farful’s dad who was a judge and he in return will do a job for them. As you can guess, Jady went to Moke and convinced him to help him out to carry out this last task. It was from there, Moke learned that Jady was in touch with their mother all these times, and they were running their own game and needed him.

How the family was able to iron things out and sort out their differences to get on top of the situation, well you will need to watch this movie on Amazon Prime to find out. Just note, it is not a masterful comedy, just a good enough movie to see when you have little or nothing else to watch.

Alien Romulus (2024)

Alien Romulus (2024)

7/10

Starring          

Cailee Spaeny

David Jonsson

Archie Renaux

Isabela Merced

Directed by Fede Álvarez

 

Alien Romulus is a good film, I tell you. It has been a while since I have seen a good film like this, and it carries its own weight of twist and turns, and it does homage to the franchise. There are ribcage bursting out things. Stabbing with the Alien tail, people running from a monster so huge that you wonder why not just give up. The movie plot is so dark it is amazing, and it is a great job done by director and writer Fede Álvarez.

It is a good thing to see what modern day graphics can do with these Alien creatures, and it is also amazing to see a familiar face. The moment I saw the late Iam Holm, I was like see what CGI can do. It was a nice work done, since we cannot get Sigourney Weaver’s character Ripley back into the franchise, thanks to the way the franchise has gone with her character.

This movie also takes place in space in 2142, and it follows the events of the first movie Alien (1979) the movie plot takes place between Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986).

After the events of the first movie, the humans took the remains of the Alien to a secret base to go work and see how they can merge the Alien DNA with that of humans and create a better evolved human race. Now how that played out, is something you will have to see, but this was a subplot in the movie that did not take hold until half-way in. So, what led to the Alien mounting another assault on the human race?

While they were doing their experiment in space, the Alien got out and damaged the whole space station. The whole thing was abandoned there in space.

Then comes Rain, an orphan miner who is trying to do enough time mining so she can finally leave the mining planet and go to a planet Yvaga where only humans live with the hope of a better life. Rain lives with her adoptive brother Andy, who is a cyborg with some broken motor functions, reprogrammed to protect Rain by her late father. When Rain was unable to leave the planet, her ex-boyfriend called her for a one-time job in space. The reason she was called is that they need Andy to help them get into the abandoned space station and steal the cryostasis chambers that will allow them to escape to the planet Yvaga. This was supposed to be a get in, get the chambers and get out, but as you know how these things go.

They got in, got the oxygen working, and they mistakenly got the heating on and the frozen cloned facehuggers got lose and well, as you can expect things did not go as planned from then on.

Enjoyed the movie more than I expected to.

Transformers One (2024)

Transformers One (2024)

4/10

Starring          

Chris Hemsworth

Brian Tyree Henry

Scarlett Johansson

Keegan-Michael Key

 

Directed by Josh Cooley

 

I have to say this movie was underwhelming. I had some idea at the back of my mind that I was going to like it, since it was now an animation and there is very little you cannot achieve when you are doing animation, but I was in the end disappointed. The main problem is how the story develops. I am not going to lie and say that I am fully into the Transformer franchise stories and understand many of the origin tales. This is the first time I am seeing this particular origin story of the hate between Optimus Prime and Megatron, when I naturally believe that the hate was not personal it was just you are an Autobot and I am a Decepticon. The change from friends to enemies came about from a betrayal that has nothing to do with both, and I felt the movie could have done better with that plot.

I did not enjoy the graphics at all, and I felt the plot was weak and will not help the franchise win more viewers. That said, the voice acting was good in the movie, but that was it.

The plot is about two friends working in the mines of Cybertron. Cybertron is the home of the transformers, who can transform into vehicles. But these two friends ever since they came online (which signifies birth in their world) were without transformation cogs. In fact, it turns out many come online without these cogs and are made to work in the mines of Cybertron, mining Energon for their planet.

These two friends Orion Pax and D-16 are mine workers, and Pax always sees them being more and does everything he can to be more than just a mine worker, especially obsessed with finding the Matrix of Leadership, but without cogs there is little to no way that can happen. The leader of Cybertron is a Prime called Sentinel, Sentinel is the only surviving Prime left in Cybertron after the others were killed by the alien invaders. Sentinel goes to the surface of their planet to fight off the alien invaders and to look for the Matrix of Leadership, something he has been doing for some time but never achieving.

Pax pulled one of his stunts and got he and D-16 noticed by everyone. This caused a moral boast of other mine transformers that they can be more. This did not go well with their mine leader Darkwing, the reason for this will be best if you watch the animation yourself if you are interested.

Darkwing reassigned them to garbage disposal, wanting them to be there forever, it was there they met B-127. But Pax discovers a message from one of the dead Primes, and he convinced D-16 and B-127 to follow him to the surface to find the message’s origin. There is where they find another Prime, who tells them that they were all supposed to have cogs, and no transformer comes online without one. Now they know there is more going on in Cybertron that is being kept from them. We can see from here that Orion Pax will become Optimus Prime, and D-16 will become Megatron.

As I said, I did not feel this animation as much as I should, and that is why I am not surprised that it did not do well in the box office and has some average ratings.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

4/10

Starring          

Michael Keaton

Winona Ryder

Catherine O'Hara

Jenna Ortega

Justin Theroux

Monica Bellucci

Willem Dafoe

 

Directed by Tim Burton

 

Thirty-six years after the masterpiece Beetlejuice (1988), we now have a sequel. This sequel tries to not forget the characters of the previous movie and maintain the special effect style of the first movie, to give this movie the same kind of feel. The problem is the story itself is not focused enough to gather the same kind of love as in the first movie. This movie had too many characters and too many sub-plots and just felt like it was made as a fan service art, rather than a movie meant to be a continuation of a legacy. Michael Keaton reprises his role as Beetlejuice.

The characters like Delores played by Monica Bellucci or Wolf played by Williem Dafeo, if you delete those characters from the movie, I think the movie will still have the same ending. Because both were added to the movie as forms of distractions, but were never integral to the movie itself. At first, it seemed like Delores was the main villain, but the plot just winds past her. Theirs and the other subplots were placed for laughs, problem is they made the movie feel lost.

The movie also introduces us to Astrid (Jenna Ortega) Lydia’s daughter. Now Lydia has embraced her ability to see ghosts, and milks it for money. She is the host of a show called Ghost House with Lydia Deetz, and she is dating the producer. She and Astrid are estranged and so is Lydia and her parents, but the death of her father, causes both Lydia (Winona Ryder) and Delia (Catherine O’Hara) to unite and start planning the burial.

There is a missing link in the movie, which is never fully explored. Astrid and Lydia’s estranged situation is not fully felt on screen. Astrid explains why they are estranged, which for many movies is enough, but add to it that her father is also dead, there seem to be more which can best be explained from Lydia’s view than just Astrid, which was not done.

We are shown that she does not like her family, as you will see from the movie, that they are weird and neglecting, but still it felt in the movie that they could have done more to make that feeling of distance more meaningful.

Unlike the first movie, Beetlejuice is shown a lot more, and we see him trying his best to get Lydia’s attention from the land of the dead. Astrid gets herself into some trouble, and she is in the underworld and Lydia needs help to save her, so she calls out Beetlejuice, and he agreed to help her based on his own conditions.

In the end, as I said, the movie is just a fan service making and lacks the fun of the first movie.

Trap (2024)

Trap (2024)

4/10

 

Starring          

Josh Hartnett

Ariel Donoghue

Saleka Night Shyamalan

Hayley Mills

Alison Pill

 

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

 

The first 50 minutes of the movie is amazing, 50% into the movie’s runtime, and you can feel the wonderful writing of M. Night Shyamalan and the directing for the first half of the movie is just superb. If the movie ended there, when he gets to have a one-on-one talk with Lady Raven (the make-believe famous singer in the movie, played by Shyamalan daughter) it would have been great. But even at that point, being able to get that close to someone famous seemed so impossible and out of place, but I was going to let it slide, but the Second Act of this movie was all about being out of place and just not adding up. Yes, the confrontation with the killer is before us and his next actions are important, but it was like Shyamalan ran out of ideas. How he was able to get that close to a famous singer and get that singer to co-operate with him to the point shown in this movie is outrageous and damn lazy writing. The final act of this movie was awful. If I was told this movie was written by someone who was having his first break, I would not have felt bad, but this is M. Night Shyamalan – how can he write such a horrible third act? It was just too obvious he did not want to kill the character off. No way, anyone will attack an officer and not get shot.

The movie is about a man, a serial killer who takes his daughter to a concert of the famous musician Lady Raven, and he notices that there are a lot of police officers about and FBI agents. He is suspicious, and he starts to get familiar with the people working there, asking innocent questions, to gain their trust and finds out that they are there looking for him, even though they do not know what he looks like.

He has no idea how they know he will be there, or how they plan to find him, all he knows is that he needs to get out of this concert and not let his daughter know that something is up.

We get to watch how he cons his way to people’s trust and use all these to get around the police. We see how he tries to keep his family together while trying to escape from the police and keep his identity a secret.

It will be hard for me to say, go and watch this movie when I know that halfway through, it goes from thrilling fun watch, to downright disappointment.

 

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.