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.

The Killer (2024)

The Killer (2024)

3/10

 

Starring          

Nathalie Emmanuel

Omar Sy

Sam Worthington

Diana Silvers

 

Directed by John Woo

 

Growing up in the 90s, there is no way you will not have heard about John Woo’s 1989 movie, The Killer. This movie starred Chow Yun-fat in a role that was memorable in our brains then. The movie was not without its pacing problems, but it was good. Now more than thirty years after, Woo releases a remake of this movie and this remake is one of the weirdest movies to see. Here is a John Woo movie, which has shooting, and action, and it is still very boring. There is nothing good to say about this movie, the cinematography was horrible, it has funny camera tilts at odd times, and the no needed zoom ins, I was screaming. Then I noticed some areas where I can tell, some bad editing was obvious. The pacing is all over the place, making it hard to keep you excited.

The actors all felt like children wearing daddy’s shoes. It seemed the roles were too big for them and none of them fitted well into their role, and then there was the plot.

When a hired killer known for being brutal takes pity on someone for a reason which is not shared in a way to make sense, you start to wonder who wrote this script?

It played out like John Woo, typed on ChatGPT, write me a script like my other movie The Killer, it was a lazy plot put together, and to think John Woo directed this.

The pacing was all over the place, and the characters had motives that seem to make sense to them and the child-like thoughts they have in their head.

Our leads are Zee (Nathalie Emmanuel) and Sey (Omar Sy), Zee is the hired killer who works for a man named Finn who in turn works for a Drug lord. Zee is hired by Finn to take out anyone who the Drug lord wants. So, on her recent case to take out everyone in a room, she spared a young lady who, is not innocent, but somehow Zee took pity on her.

Now Finn wants her to kill this lady to finish the job. We also discover that Finn has been having dealings of his own, which makes him also someone who wants to clean up loose ends, which Zee happens to be. I guess that predictability in the plot was just something that Woo could not help but include.

If you could see this movie, please save yourself the stress and don’t.