Tag: 1 out of 4

Magic is possibly the greatest card game ever made, but I am a bit biased. I played for over a decade, in and out, depending on school and setting. At one point I was in tournaments weekly, paying $15 just for sweet cards and sweet fun.

And eventually I stopped playing and became a collector. Then in my mind they tried to piss off collectors more and more, either making everything fun super rare, or super common. It used to one special card a pre-release tournament every set, and then it ballooned to 40. No one has time for that.

Needless to say, I eventually sold my collection and quit magic for the most part, only willing to go back and play on a purely casual basis. I still keep up to date with the card game and they have had quite a few blunders in the last few years, alienating members of the community and their own judges for tournaments.

But now they have decided to fully back a documentary, Enter the Battlefield: Life on the Magic – The Gathering Pro Tour. Show casing individuals who are great players, who actually do make money from magic and winning huge tournaments. So yeah, show that off, let the kids dream and people might want to become great magic players! Or just show us what it takes and what people have to give up to achieve these high levels of success. Give us that sympathy level and make them feel human.

This is widely considered to be the best magic card in the game’s history.

Except this documentary does’t do any of that. It is little more than become a fluff piece on a few great players currently playing magic, with a bit of there stories.

In the intro it briefly explains the game and the tournament scene, as narrated by Wil Wheaton. It doesn’t do a great job of selling the game though, and anyone who isn’t already a fan won’t suddenly become one.

A large portion of the documentary is around three American players who formed a “team” to get better, the first female to get int he top 8 of one of the biggest tournaments, a long time magic player and writer, someone desperately trying to get into the Hall of Fame, and the last winner of the World Magic Championship, the biggest crazy tournament.

And sure, it may sound diverse, but really it is a bunch of Americans and an American-Israeli guy. It is awkward to see footage of the best tournament, see that 2 of the top 4 are from Japan, where one is highly considered to be the best player in the world, and not have them more featured in the documentary. It is just very pro American, pro English speaking players, instead of highlighting who actually might be the best.

At only an hour long, this documentary is quick to watch, but I fail to see what the actual purpose of it is. It won’t work to get new people into magic. It won’t make people want to become pro tour champions anymore than they already did (and cutting their appearance fees right before the documentary came out was also a strange tactic). And no one will really learn a lot about the game if they don’t already know magic.

This is a strange documentary. Like it feels like it was just an idea to waste some time, then someone thought it was good enough to release. Sure. Why not. And it will be forgotten about in a month.

Live action remakes are of course all the rage nowadays, but Pan is not necessarily just another film in that trend. The Peter Pan story is older than Disney, so anyone can do anything they want with it. In fact, Disney plans on eventually doing their own live action Peter Pan movie within the next decade already, so you might as get used to it.

But Pan on its own can be something different. After all, we had Hook in the early 90’s, a very diverse film, both in its cast and how people took to it. A modern Peter Pan story, with a grown up Peter Pan! How dare they! I personally loved it and thought the film had a lot of heart.

So we have Pan, which has a similar naming scheme to Hook, going the opposite way and making a Peter Pan prequel. Peter when he was just a regular boy who couldn’t fly. People love Origin stories right?!

Especially if they have thousands of costumes and beards and make up.

Peter (Levi Miller), like every good Orphan, is left as a wee little baby on the steps of an orphanage by his mother Mary (Amanda Seyfried). And he never sees from her again. Now he is about…I dunno, 11. World War II is of course happening, so London occassionally gets bombed. Peter’s life is spent defying the nun (Kathy Burke) with his friend Nibs (Lewis MacDougall).

Next thing Peter knows, he is on board a flying pirate ship. The ship goes to Neverland of course! And the ship has been stealing Orphan boys around the world for ages. They are to be free and to live their lives as awesome people, as long as they can work for it. Namely, Captain Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman) wants them to mine for Pixie Dust for some secret reason.

Yadda yadda, Peter meets James Hook (Garrett Hedlund), with both hands, they find out her can fly, and eventually they escape with one Sam Smiegel (Adeel Akhtar) to get back home. However, Peter thinks his mom might be out here, so he wants to stay and look for her. This gets them to meet the natives. There they meet the Chief and Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara) and a great warrior Kwahu (Tae-joo Na) and find out that Pan is supposed to be some Chosen One Jesus figure to lead a revolt against the pirates and free Neverland.

Yay fun! Peter just wants to find his mom though, so…

Also featuring Nonso Anozie as Blackbeard’s muscle and Cara Delevingne as a mermaid, apparently.

At some points this does feel like an Indian Jones clone though, so watch out for snakes.

I just remembered. Almost no one likes origin stories. That is the biggest complaint about modern super hero films. Every new person seems to need an origin story. Even if we have already seen it many times before in film. We get shit like Fantastic Four where over half the film they don’t have any powers.

Technically no one knows about the origins of Peter Pan, but that is because no one cares. Peter Pan before he was a pirate fighting flying bad ass, was what, none of those things? So we get a story about a regular boy? I am not saying that regular boy stories are boring, because there is a shit ton out there, but knowing he eventually becomes someone like Peter Pan kind of ruins it a bit.

Pan is a strange film that doesn’t seem to know what it is. It is all over the place in terms of story. Blackbeard as the main villain seems strange, but not as strange as Hook being Peter’s BFF older friend. Sure, you might be thinking a Peter Pan origin story means we get to see a Captain Cook origin as well. We get to see that crocodile bite his hand off, fear of clocks, all of that. That could be fun! Well we get about jack and shit of that. The movie ends with them taking some boys off to Neverland, all happy. They have a few references, but no, we don’t get any of it. They want to save that for some futuristic Pan 2 that now will never exist.

See, that would have been a good story. To see what happened to Hook to make him a bad guy. What ruined their friendship. But we get nothing from this story and it is a lot more wasted potential.

Speaking of none of that, there was a lot of hullabaloo about the song choices in Pan. For some reason, large crowds in Neverland (set in World War II) are singing Smell’s Like Teen Spirit and Blitzkrieg Bop. I didn’t mind how they sounded months ago, but the problem is they have NO CONTEXT at all in the movie. They don’t fit the events around them, the lyrics don’t match anything, they make absolutely no sense. They are terribly added to the film, so they should definitely be mocked endlessly.

Pan. Wasted potential. All spectacle. Not even Jackman was good in this one. I feel a bit bad for Mara. At least has Carol.

It is now mid-April, and if that means anything, it means that shitty January movies are finally coming out on DVD. A lot of these January films were not screened for critics, for some reason. I mean, do they not care about press?! (That was sarcasm).

The one January movie I actually wanted to watch was Fifty Shades of Black. Sure, it is a parody film. But I have several reasons for wanting to see this one.

1) Fifty Shades of Grey, the film that is being parodied, was on its own terrible. We are getting a parody of shit, so the parody is likely to call out the shit while doing it.

2) It is a Wayans parody. Say what you will, but his two haunted house parodies are better than the last three Scary Movies combined. They aren’t necessarily great films, but he did put a lot of effort into them and didn’t just phone in his performance.

3) I don’t have a third reason, I just really want to see how bad this thing actually is.

It definitely captures the romance from Grey pretty well.

The story begins with young Hannah (Kali Hawk) going to interview Christian Black (Marlon Wayans), the head of a big company for her university paper. She isn’t a journalist, but her roommate, Kateesha (Jenny Zigrino) is sick, so she goes for her.

She is immediately swept away by his charm and his looks and starts to have feelings for him. Christian begins to take Hannah on dates and he lets her know that he has a secretive side. A play room, where he is a dominant and is looking for a submissive for some sex play.

Of course Hannah isn’t really into that, nor is she into contracts. But she still wants the sex, no matter how quick and uneventful it is. And hey, if he wants to smack her butt a few times, whatever. But when she starts to fall in love, that is where their relationship begins to fall apart. And basically I wrote the actual plot of Fifty Shades of Grey just now.

Kate Miner is the assistant, Mike Epps is Hannah’s father, with Fred Willard and Jane Seymour playing Christian’s adoptive parents, Affion Crockett his brother and Irene Choi his sister. Also Andrew Bachelor as Hannah’s best male friend, and Florence Henderson as…well, a rather weird cameo.

No, Marlon is not acting those abs. Those are the real and you are now pregnant.

If I could draw one conclusion from watching both the real and the parody movie, I can determine that they are equally bad. Grey is telling a stupid story and Black is telling a worse version of the story with the occasionally funny joke.

That is right. Fifty Shades of Black made me laugh occasionally. It was actually the movie’s goal too, unlike the times I laughed during Grey. It had some funny moments, with sometimes subtle jokes. And it made fun of the bad writing of the Grey book and some of the nonsensical parts of the film, which is what a parody is supposed to do. Of course, Black also went overboard, over and over again. For every actual funny joke there are 10 jokes that fall flat. Either from poor delivery, poor effort, or by over acting the scenes to extremes.

This film is somehow the polar opposite of Grey. In Grey, you see a lot of naked women and no penis, and in this movie, no naked women at all, but at least three fake penises. Life is weird. I just want a movie that can unite the genitalia under one film equally, and not be stingy on either side.

Wayons still put a lot of effort into this movie, although some of the physical comedy aspects were now given to other cast members. I think this film would have benefited by cutting out Crockett’s role completely, along with Zigrino. Their jokes were the bottom of the very full barrel and went on for too long.

The funniest thing? This parody actually has a better ending. It doesn’t end on a forced cliff hanger. It completes a story and doesn’t blue ball the audience. Fuck you, Fifty Shades of Grey.

If you don’t know who Hank Williams is, then you are probably not an American. Or at least not a Southern American. Which is okay in either regards, we will take all readers here at Gorgon Reviews.

He was a pretty big deal in the country music industry, and since Walk The Line got to be a big deal, it makes sense to see other country legends getting their own biopics. Hell, even the titles are similar with I Saw The Light. Verb the Noun and titled after real songs.

Here is really what I know about this film. It was supposed to be a big deal, was liked in festivals, and supposed to come out during awards season last year. But it was delayed until April the next year. Something happened along the way and the people in charge no longer thought the film was as good as they had hoped. Real shame. More British people should be playing Country superstars, after all.

There’s an Avengers joke around here somewhere.

Let’s talk about Hank Williams (Tom Hiddleston), a young country singer from Alabama. The movie begins with him marrying Audrey (Elizabeth Olsen) at an auto shop. This is her second marriage and she already has a daughter, but this is real love. And besides, she is going to join him on some songs and on the radio show he gets to sing for.

Well, her singing ain’t as pretty as her face, and that causes some problems, including his own support for her dreams. But Hank has his own dreams. He wants to play at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville someday, his Carnegie Hall, basically. Yeah, sure, he is just 23 or so, but he thinks he can make it. He just has to get more publicity and hit songs. With Audrey as his manager, he gets some singles and CDs, but eventually gets the help of Fred Rose (Bradley Whitford), who helps get him to the Opry with his hit cover of Lovesick Blues.

And then everyone becomes a Hank Williams country fan! Everyone! Which means more alcohol problems for Hank. He also gets some back problems too, which leads to a bit of pain killer drug abuse. And all the constant traveling and depression puts strains on his relationships with his wife and children.

Uhh, yeah, and then the movie is about the problems Hank faced. Including his extra lady problems, including Billie (Maddie Hasson) and Bobbie (Wrenn Schmidt), his mother (Cherry Jones) and his favorite band mate friend guy (Wes Langlois).

Ladies loved Hank, but not as much as Hank loved the ladies.

Hank WIlliams is actually a tragic figure in the country scene. His life was short, but he did a whole lot in that life and helped shape country music forever. I Saw The Light could have been a pretty dark tale, with some great acting and hardships on the screen, with the occassional tune to keep us on our toes. But instead, I Saw The Light is just a mess of a film, dull and boring from the get go.

For sake of keeping things honest, there was a moment where I fell asleep during the film. It was early on when the film was going nowhere, at most I missed the amount a bathroom break would cause.

I really cannot comment on how much Hiddleston looks or sounds like the actual Hank Williams, but I will say Hiddleston had an impressive American Country voice that surprised me. The songs in the movie weren’t bad and probably the most enjoyable element. Hiddleston had a goofy grin most of the time and made everything look very fun.

I listened to the official soundtrack for the film however, and it is horrible. Half of the songs on it are not performed by Hiddleston, but background tracks in the movie. Because of that, not every song they actually sing in the film made it to the soundtrack. None of the songs that feature Audrey, not the beautiful Cold Cold Heart that opened the film, not even his version of Lovesick Blues. It is a travesty.

And one more thought on the music. This film is called I Saw The Light. It wasn’t made by Williams, but he did sing it and make it pretty famous. And you know what? Williams doesn’t sing the name sake song in the whole damn movie. Sure it shows up near the end. It is a good rendition too, but one that carries absolutely no emotional weight behind it thanks to the piss poor editing and story decisions the movie makers made.

Like I said. The music is mostly fine, but the story is choppy and the directing and editing decisions are bad. I don’t always know what is happening. It sometimes feels like a made for TV family bio film, then we get random boobs and Fuck to show that it is actually an R film. They can only imply an abortion and usually only imply infidelity. It is probably one of the worst examples of trying to show the bad sides of a celebrity while actively ignoring it at the same time.

This is not the film Hank Williams deserves.

The male stripper film sensation has really taken off. Three in just a few years! What an exciting new genre. I can only imagine that soon these will be marketed towards teenagers and driving big summer franchises based on “novels” and produced by Lionsgate!

Why did I want to see Chocolate City? Well first of all, I try to watch all the dance movies. Even after seeing the disgusting Battlefield America.

Second, come on, it is basically being advertised as the Black Magic Mike. Outside of bad Marlon Wayan parodies, if your film can be described as the black version of another film, then generally it could be very entertaining. Because it isn’t just an actor swap, it is a complete genre shift, with different issues and different goals.

They can create something wonderful. Or they could create something forgettable, like Peeples.

Or they could stare deeply into your soul and take it when you are most vulnerable.

Michael (Robert Ri’chard) is in college, on a partial scholarship, and working at a local diner as a chef. He has friends, rides a bike, and does good in school. And he can dance. That is important. But things aren’t looking super good at his house. His mother (Vivica A. Fox) is struggling to pay bills, and his older brother who lives at home (DeRay Davis) doesn’t have a job either. So funds are barely coming in, but he is told not to worry, he needs to work on his school work.

Despite his mom’s wishes, he gets some overtime at work. But in a bathroom, he also meets a man named Princeton (Michael Jai White), who offers him some working gig. So Michael grabs his brother and they meet up with Princeton at his club. They expect to be in line for bouncer or server or something, but sure enough, he runs a male stripper club, and it is amateur night. Since they already came all this way and Michael has muscles, he hits the stage, and makes a ton of dollar bills.

This is something he can really start to enjoy. All the attention, even if he has a girlfriend (Eurika Pratts), the money to help his family, and the money to help himself. He can be Sexy Chocolate, a terrible dancing name, but it is what it is. He just has to lie to everyone about where it is coming from and make sure people know it isn’t drugs. Hooray!

Also starring Tyson Beckford, Darrin Dewitt Hensen, Ginuwine, Ernest Thomas, Carmen Electra, and of course, Jean-Claude La Marre.

They had to train for a big group dance. Because Magic Mike.

Chocolate City knows it is the “black Magic Mike” and they run with it. Hell, they make two references to the film, one almost instantly. Which again, is not an issue as long as they tell their own story and make it believable or entertaining or decent.

But they didn’t. They went one of the cheap routes, and gave us a lazy movie hoping to monetize off the success of another film. Damn.

First of all, the dancing in this film was lackluster and mostly missing. A lot of shots show their dancers only from the waste up, especially our main character early on. I can’t imagine him becoming a big success, when we never really get to see him show off his moves. They have him and the other dancers starring straight at the camera, in order to make you few like a patron I guess, which is more awkward than interesting.

Some of the non-star dancers we can see dancing, but even then, the choreography is lame or very simple. The ladies in these clubs apparently just rain down the dollar bills for barely anything as if they have endless purses.

Say what you will about Magic Mike, but the excellent dancing was half the point.

I have no idea what is up with this director, Jean-Clause La Marre. He has directed and produced a lot of films, all low budget, and a lot of them where he stars in them as a Pastor Jones character. He really likes to play a preacher I guess. It is comical looking at his IMDB page and quite clear he might not be the most qualified person to direct an entertaining male stripper film.

Our characters aren’t really relatable. The main star is a dumb ass who lies to everyone. And eventually, of course, he sees the light and realizes he should stop. Of course. Except the very last scene ruins any amount of character development he might have gained by the end, turning the whole film into a quick “just kidding!” joke.

I am disappointed with Michael Jai White too. I enjoy him for the most part, and he is playing the Matthew McConaughey role, but it never really pays out or has that level of professionalism.

I guess I will just see where it goes, because coming this year, Chocolate City: Vegas!

The hardest part about understanding Krisha, before watching it, is pronouncing the title correctly. Did you have an “n” in the title? I called it Krishna for days before watching it and realizing I was wrong.

Krisha is also apparently a name. What a time to be alive!

And uhhh. I uhhh. I have nothing else to say about this movie. Let’s just get into it.

First scene unfortunately reminds me of Army of Darkness.

Thanksgiving is a wonderful time where people eat food and watch football and get ready to shop before and after. The most American holiday. More American than Christmas, because Christmas is mostly about spending money, and only somewhat about eating, with zero football. Some people also spend time with family, but they are weird.

This is one of those weird families!

Krisha (Krisha Fairchild) hasn’t had a Thanksgiving with her family in ten years. She is old though and they have invited her back after some problems. She isn’t even the oldest one there! Her mom (Billie Fairchild) will be there too.

And well, most of it is normal Thanksgiving things. A big ass turkey. Food prep. Horse play. Watching pornos. The normal stuff.

And a lot of talking. But eventually, in the final 20-30 minutes, some drama will happen and yelling and bad things.

Also featuring, well, fuck it, here is the whole cast: Atheena Frizzell, Augustine Frizzell, Bill Wise, Bryan Casserly, Chase Joliet, Chris Doubek, Olivia Grace Applegate, Rose Nelson, Alex Dobrenko, Robyn Fairchild, and Victoria Fairchild.

Yep, just talking and smoking. Thanksgiving is the best.

I posted the full cast list for a reason. First of all, I don’t really remember the names of the family members that were actually important. Most of them do not have IMDB pictures so that makes it difficult to really figure it out.

And secondly, at least half of the cast is related. Half of the cast play characters with their same first name. It is clear for the most part this film is about a real family that, for all I know, is actually experiencing these same issues. So the director or writer did this to add realism to the film. That could be considered genius, I call that lazy.

Half of the cast are not actors, so realism aside, this type of thing shows. Most of them are the background characters, but it is still just a very strange experience.

As for the film, the drama all comes at the end, so most of the first hour of the film is just waiting. Watching people do normal things and have normal conversations. Waiting and waiting. They don’t have you waiting too long, because the film is only 80 minutes, but an hour is still incredibly long.

This movie was based on a short, which I imagine got to the point in a much smaller amount of time. And frankly, they should have kept it this way. Because when the bad things started to happen, and the screaming, it was too little, too late. I lost interest. The acting was fine from our main character, but it didn’t even seem like a big deal.

Krisha is a very forgettable experience, both in terms of story and who is even involved in the project.

I don’t know when this review would be published (but if you are reading it from a recent FB post or Tweet, then the answer is today!), but I assure you it has been sitting on my website for weeks just waiting.

You see, Daddy’s Home came out on Christmas along with a lot of good films that I had to spend time seeing. I didn’t feel like going to a screening of Daddy’s Home and was perfectly fine waiting for a Red Box rental before giving it any time or effort.

But then I had to go and win tickets to see it at any theater near me. Sigh. I even waited almost two weeks after I got the tickets, a month after it came out, hoping I could at least watch it alone on a Thursday matinee showing. But two other fucking people showed up. Who does that!

Either way, the review is just waiting to be filler. The entire month of February is reserved for new movies, and movies nominated for awards. Sorry Daddy’s Home! I am sure people will care about you in March or whenever the hell I remember to post this.

Rated PG-13 for Shenanigans for the whole fucking family!

Being a step dad is hard. Unless you are Brad Fucking Whitaker (Will Ferrell). He loves kids and has read books on being a step dad. He can’t have kids of his own after a bad dentist x-ray accident, so it is nice that he met and fell in love with Sara (Linda Cardellini). She has two kids (Owen Vaccaro and Scarlett Estevez) and they need someone stable.

Not someone like Dusty Mayron (Mark Wahlberg), the paterfamilias, who is beyond cool, but unstable and a drifter. According to the books, Brad should try and develop a friendship with Dusty as it is good for the kids, which is why he agrees to let him hang out and live in their house for awhile.

Sure enough, Dusty thinks Brad is a little bitch. He also likes his kids, so he tries to show case how awesome he is, at Brad’s expense, to win back his ex and the kids. Ah yes, Dad vs Step Dad. A tale as old as time.

Also featuring (in order of importance), Hannibal Buress as a dude, Thomas Haden Church as a boss, Bobby Cannavale as a doctor, and Bill Burr as a different dad.

He has facial hair and facial hair means cool.

Daddy’s Home is the type of film where watching the trailer is really all you need to get by. The major jokes are in the trailer and 90% of the film can be figured out from it alone. And guess what? The film offers no twists or turns that you wouldn’t expect. Given its genre, you can probably figure out how it will end, especially given how the trailer frames everything and they make Dusty out to be the bad guy.

I am not saying a film has to be 100% unique and non obvious to be likable, but I need something I haven’t seen before. Will Ferrell. Stop these shit movies. What the fuck. Can you just get back with Oscar Nominated Adam McKay? Is that the only way you can be in a good film? And also Night At The Roxbury, of course, a classic. The number of shit films is bugging me out and making me worried about Zoolander 2 (which will be reviewed on this site before this one is released).

Wahlberg hasn’t been in as much shit, but has been doing the Ted movies now, so it is hard to say. Maybe that man just can’t do comedy either. We need him doing action roles or something. Get him out of this funk.

Daddy’s Home is boring. The only part that was a delight was Hannibal Buress’ strange character. His first scene was very weak, as all the jokes involving him felt like they were written by a middle schooler who was trying to sound edgy. But thankfully his character kept coming back and got better after the fact. Still not really worth watching it just for him.

On a final note, what kind of elementary school Daddy Daughter dance would feature the “Like a G6” song. Did this movie come out 5 years ago and sit on a shelf that long? I lived my whole life avoiding it whenever it came on, but this film ruined that for me too.

Happy Marcho-wene! For those who read this months from now, I quite lazily decided to finally review Hotel Transylvania 2 in March. Hell, it even came out to DVD in January. No excuse valid, not even a busy Oscar season.

I thought Hotel Transylvania was only okay and really wasn’t surprised it had had a sequel. The animation isn’t top tier, so it is probably relatively easy to throw together a movie. And you know everyone in the voice cast is available for work. They keep busy, but they keep busy together.

Except for one person. CeeLo Green! He voiced the mummy in the last movie, but this time he is nowhere to be found. Instead they got Keegan-Michael Key to voice the mummy, keeping their “token black role” to one I guess?

Oh, and now old people might be voicing characters!

Mavis (Selena Gomez) and Jonathan (Andy Samberg) are getting married! But that isn’t the important plot point. They invite all of the family over, on both sides, except for Mavis’ Grandpa (Mel Brooks). He apparently doesn’t like humans. That will come back later.

Then they have a kid. A little ginger kid (Asher Blinkoff), gross I know. Because he is a male, Dracula (Adam Sandler) assumes he has inherited the vampire DNA (because his genetics is weird) and can’t wait for him to go doing Monster stuff. But instead, he can’t fly, has no fangs, can’t turn into a bat, and does a lot of normal baby things. Mavis is now very protective of the baby, living in the harsh Hotel monster environment. Jonathan just wants her to trust a babysitter and let them spend some time alone together.

Now it is like, five years later and it is still the same. Mavis wants to move to California, where Jonathan comes from, to live a normal and safe life. So Jonathan agrees to take her on a trip, but he likes the hotel and likes working there. So Jonathan and Dracula agree to hatch a plan: While they are gone checking out Cali, Drac will take the kid and go on a fear-adventure with his friends (Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, David Spade, Keegan-Michael Key) to scare him into going full vampire. Jonathan will try and make her think California is terrible so she won’t want to leave. Can’t go wrong.

Also featuring the work of Rob Riggle (Which was great), Fran Drescher, Molly Shannon, Megan Mullally, Nick Offerman, and Dana Carvey.

Jonathan fucked up. How could you go back when you get rainbow teeth?!

Hotel Transylvania 2 doesn’t live up to its predecessor. It also doesn’t improve anything along the way, with the exact same quality of animation.

First of all, it takes a long time to really understand just what this movie is about. Sure, vaguely it is about the family the whole film, but that isn’t a plot, those are just characters. A good third of the movie happens at least before we find out that the plot is a dad and husband lying to their daughter/wife, on a very ridiculous idea.

Secondly, it is all over the place in terms of applying its own rules. Namely I want to talk about vampires. They early on make the joke about how vampires can’t have their reflection, commonly shown through mirrors, but also any other thing that would capture their image. So of course, the wedding photographs are a bit funny. But then they let the vampires use skype and appear on video cameras, like they are really anything different. And of course, if they were wondering if the boy had any vampire in him, all they had to do was take a picture of him and see what happened. Unless in this world the vampireness just can develop all at once, and literally zero traits show up before hand.

Finally, the ending is a complete disaster. It ends with a complete brawl, all of our main characters versus an army of other characters (I wouldn’t want to spoil it). But yeah, it basically ends the same way that Grown Ups 2 ends. The fight is unnecessary and a bit nonsensical. It is unnecessary because it is the type of thing that could have been prevented and stopped at any moment by one of the characters literally just saying something. The bad guys wouldn’t have a beef with most of the monsters either, so they’d have no reason to attack them. And it was nonsensical, given the extreme powers that apparently exist in tiny bat forms. They just wanted to end it on a silly note, and kids like brawls I guess. But it is a shit move.

There were the occasional funny jokes. But this film had no focus and had no great conclusion. Mavis should take the baby and leave her husband and family behind, I think.

In 2013, our main Doppelganger films were Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down. The former was mostly serious with some jokes, the latter, full on action comedy in the middle of summer.

And you know what? I liked both of them. They had their charms and were unique enough from each other that I didn’t mind their similarities. They both worked and did what they needed to do to make an entertaining product.

But the Movie Gods have spoken, and Olympus Has Fallen has a sequel now, London Has Fallen, meaning it must have been the superior film. After all, the best films always get sequels, right?

And that was with Olympus Has Fallen having a shitty president. I could write a whole review on just why his character is stupid, but no one wants me to rant about fiction. The real presidential situation is crazy enough for us to not need that in our movie lives.

In order to take over London, you first must kill its rivers.

Two years before the events of this film (probably before Olympus Has Fallen? Or right after? Who knows), America did something stupid, as they tend to do. Aamir Barkawi (Alon Aboutboul) was a weapons dealer in the middle east, and he sold big boomers to lots of bad guys. He was a high target and so we drone striked his ass. Of course we also did it at his daughter’s wedding, during a huge celebration with a bunch of bad guys, but who cares, we got him!

And now, a prime minister in London is dead. He died young in his mid-40’s, with a heart attack over night. So now world leaders from all over are heading to London for his funeral with not a lot of time to plan it out. Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is thinking about quitting the secret service, because his wife (Radha Mitchell) is about to give birth and he wants to be there for his kid. The president is still Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart).

Guess what? Terrorists! They had killed the prime minister and set a huge trap throughout London to kill most of the world leaders. This is of course orchestrated over two years by Barkawi, who didn’t die, just all of his family. Joy. Leaders from France, Italy, Japan, Canada, and more all die, but they can’t knock America down. Now Banning has to lead Asher underground and around London, until the bad guys can all be shot and he can be extracted. Barkawi wants Asher, and he wants to execute him live on the internet for the whole world to see.

Returning characters are still played by Morgan Freeman and Angela Bassett. Jackie Earle Haley is a dude in the war room, and we have MI-6 agents now to help and hurt, featuring Patrick Kennedy, Colin Salmon, and Charlotte Riley, who happens to be married to Tom Hardy!

I bet if Tom Hardy was here, they would have escaped right away without all the death.

It is clear that London Has Fallen isn’t as good as Olympus. The terrorist attack in the first film was plausible, given enough time, sure. But the terrorist attack in this film was make every police, EMS, service worker a bad guy in disguise (all of which totally end up being Middle Eastern, cheers), and blow the fuck out of every major landmark. Not all of the landmark, just parts, to show they mean business. In fact, all of the world leaders who die seem to die mostly by accident, not by planning.

All of the destruction and wanton death happens early on with the President narrowly escaping each time. And then it just turns into a simple man hunt for him. This is after they contacted the White House and said they would stop killing everyone if they had the president. They obviously didn’t turn him over, and guess what? The random killing stopped anyways. There weren’t later attacks, or more death, so the good news is America didn’t have really any more death on their hands. The bad news is the movie is full of scenes like that. They sound intimidating, seem like they will lead to somewhere and don’t do shit.

I mean, apparently they always wanted to capture the president for a live execution, despite blowing him up, shooting at him and such. The president also seemed to know he was wanted for a public execution, despite not knowing who is behind the attack and not receiving any intel.

The worst part about all of this is the drone strike that started the whole thing. One would imagine that this would bring some sort of discussion about drone strikes, killing civilians and responsibility of America overseas. That would make sense. It did cause this horrible event to happen in London as a response, and America gets away with it scott-free (spoilers?). But no. It ignores it. It doesn’t discuss the morality of any of this. Not only that. NOT. ONLY. THAT. But it ends the damn movie (again, spoilers), with another fucking drone strike to get the bad guy again. Literally. No lessons learned. No sign of change. Just a nice fuck you, it’s America time.

The only scene I really enjoyed was when Banning and MI-6 agents were storming the bad guys base. It was full of long shots and shooting and was well choreographed. Everything else was lack luster.

Sixteen years ago, in the year 2000, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was released and changed cinema forever. I’d say it is hard to imagine any other martial arts movie having as much of an impact as this one. It won Best Foreign Film at the Oscars, a few other awards, and was nominated for a shit ton more. It put Ang Lee on the map, who has gone on to direct Brokeback Mountain, Life of Pi, and yes, Hulk.

It was renowned for its cinematography, changing the way a lot of fight scenes were done for the better. Something shaky cam had tried to kill. It has been referenced in TV shows and films, parodied, and is probably just one of the most well known martial arts films of all time, even if most people haven’t seen it.

So a sequel was finally announced, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny, hoping it could recapture all of the magic as the first. And hey, everyone can watch it too, because it was put on Netflix right away and some IMAX theaters. No need to buy a ticket. Can watch in your own home, in Chinese with subtitles or in English dubbed. What a world we live in!

I should note, I totally went the dubbed route. I have been watching a lot of foreign films lately, and I needed a break, damn it.

I’m tired of all these motherfucking Ninjas attacking these motherfucking old ladies.

Set almost two decades after the first film, we only have two characters returning. The first is Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh), our hero from the first story, and Green Destiny, the sword that people really want, and will want again.

Who wants the sword? Well, everybody.

Including Hades Dai (Jason Scott Lee), a war leader with a large army and a huge tower, looking to take over everything. He is the villain if you couldn’t tell from his name. There is also a mysterious girl, Snow Vase (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) who was trained very young in the cool martial arts stuff, by a mysterious female trainer. And of course we have Tiefang (Harry Shum Jr., yes the dancing Asian guy from Glee), who snuck into Yu Shu’s compound to steal the sword, but who does he work for?!

That’s not it either, though!

We have Silent Wolf (Donnie Yen), who also has a mysterious past and relationship with Yu Shu. He is more interested in stopping Hades, and lucks into his own army to do so! Well, four other people. Silver Dart Shi (Juju Chan), Flying Blade (Chris Pang), Turtle Ma (Darryl Quon), and Iron Crow (Roger Yuan).

Want some magic? Sure, let’s get some magic. We have Eugenia Yuan playing Blind Enchantress.

Ice fighting is a lot like dancing, it makes sense.

In a lot of ways, Sword of Destiny is like a lot of modern products. Actually an old product designed as new in flashy boxes and colorful lights, but of lesser quality so you have to buy another one in a short time.

Practical effects and stunt work are gone for cheaper/easier CGI. Intricate fight scenes are still there, but less impactful than the original and mostly look like a lot of other current martial art films.

The plot is so bad, I can barely even tell you what the hell happened. True, I remember close to nothing about the plot of the first film, but I blame that on time after only seeing it once, and not on it being overly bad.

Yes, some of the fight scenes are still entertaining at least, but they end up being the only occasionally good part of the film. The final battles are laughable, especially the fight scene on the tower. It is so incredibly animated looking, it almost feels like a bad video game.

Hey, at least this movie is free. Too bad if you haven’t seen the first film, for whatever reason Netflix doesn’t have that available to watch. Not that you need to see it to understand the movie. Maybe they realized it wasn’t as good, so they got rid of the better one to force you to see the new one.