Tag: Action

The “of the Planet of the Apes” films have been met with some pretty critical acclaim in the last few years, especially after the rebooted Planet of the Apes film was so dismal.

And hey, for Rise? I totally agree. An amazing film, great acting and a plot that made me cheer for Apes instead of just humans. Just a silly romance subplot stopped it from being a great film.

Unfortunately, Dawn just didn’t really do much for me. It was an okay film, but I believe it received more praise for being a pretty standard plot, but with Apes instead of tribal humans. Some cool moments sure, but it was also forgettable.

I had no idea what to expect for War, but I would hope with a long run time, it would put an end to humans once and for all, so the Ape society can begin to grow into what we already know is the end goal.

Which is horses and apes riding horses in the future, right?

War is set only a few years after Dawn, where the apes have mostly gone into hiding in the woods. Koba (Toby Kebbell) is the one who started the fighting with the humans, and Caesar (Andy Serkis) ended it. A few apes are still pissed off and left to rabble rouse, but the rest of the apes just want to live alone. However, humans don’t give a fuck, blood was spilled, and they want revenge. So they keep venturing into the woods, hoping to take out Caesar and the rest of the apes will scatter.

Thanks to a scouting mission, a few apes found a desert on the other side of the mountain where the apes would be able to flourish. Humans are super dying out so they are likely to leave them alone.

But leave them along they don’t. A small raid enters their compound hoping to get Caesar, but get some other apes instead. Boo, hiss. Caesar mad. Caesar wants revenge on the soldier in charge of the humans in the area (Woody Harrelson). So he takes his very small band of soldiers on a potential suicide mission.

Starring Gabriel Chavarria as a human soldier, Amiah Miller as a human deaf girl, and a whole lot of people as apes. Like Judy Greer, Steve Zahn, Terry Notary, Aleks Paunovic, Devyn Dalton, and Karin Konoval.

“Well, are you feeling lucky…Ape?”

Trilogies usually go one of three ways. There is the the rare but incredible trilogy that is amazing with every iteration. There is the more common trilogy where the sequel surpasses the first and the last film is a let down. Or there is a trilogy where it starts off good, and each iteration loses a bit of its soul, giving us a worse and worse film.

And a lot of you would assume this might be the second trilogy because people loved Dawn, but to me, this is the third type of trilogy. Dawn was okay, War was kind of shit.

At almost 140 minutes with War in the title, you would expect a giant battle to, most likely, bring about the end of mankind to start this whole Planet of the Apes thing. Maybe. Well, the Caesar journey with his band takes awhile to follow the humans. On the way, they have another Ape who can talk who joins them, and a deaf girl. This part drags, and even when they make it to the human encampment it drags. I found myself falling asleep, despite being an early screening and having finished an energy drink before it.

The ending is about the apes being enslaved and needing to get to get broken out of a prison system where they are slaves, and the humans are fighting with each other. There is also a new iteration of the Simian Flu, that causes humans to lose their voice and potentially become aggressive, reverting them back into a more primitive form.

The ending break out is not a brilliant plan. It involves the humans being incredibly incompetent. When plot necessary, apparently no one is standing guard at the military compound, so a little girl can walk in and have a long conversation. When necessary apparently a guard will behave like someone who has no military training, and no one else will be on guard duty. When necessary, the fighting between humans will stop enough so that the humans can fire on some apes that none of them were able to notice even escaped. This scene includes a soldier that is so upset with these apes, that he cannot stop firing despite a looming other human threat, that he cannot turn around to get his own grenade launcher. When necessary, an ape looking for redemption will use a weapon to take out a single human, instead of just doing the more obvious move to complete the task that Caesar was trying to complete. When necessary, a giant deus ex machine straight out of Mulan will save the day, but this time no daisies are involved.

The ending is a mess, the middle is a bore, and the beginning is predictable. I didn’t even get into the ridiculousness of the Simian Flu change, and deciding to have a girl who was deaf for real, not deaf for flu reasons. War for the Planet of the Apes is a waste of a film that tried to go a deeper, personal route, and just left feeling a bit superficial.

When the first trailer for Monster Trucks hit the scene, the internet latched onto it and immediately made it feel bad for existing.

I was a bit excited. Yeah, it could have been a shitty kids movie. It could have been made as a concept just to sell toys. The fact that it came out in January could mean something.

But I was just impressed that they came up with an original concept. Good or bad, clearly this is them trying SOMETHING different. Something that could be cool. Something that could spawn them a television series and make them money.

Who knows, maybe this movie will be so good on a minor level that it will try to run for president one day. What do I know?

Oh no a selfie? Clearly this is a work of millennials and must be made downtrodden!

Tripp (Lucas Till) is your average high school kid. In that he is bad at school and works in a junkyard shop. Not entirely sure if that is average or not, but it has a high percentage of appearances in movies. His dad (Frank Whaley) is an oil field worker, this is North Dakota by the way, and his mom (Amy Ryan) is dating the town’s sheriff (Barry Pepper) who is always on his ass.

Well, while junking in his yard, a mysterious amphibian looking animal scares him! Ahh! Miles away, at a fracking site (and thus, evil), while drilling under a lake, and these creatures came out of the drill site and messed things up. This company, led by Reece Tenneson (Rob Lowe), is able to capture two of them, but one of them escapes, as we know. And there is also a geologist (Thomas Lennon).

Anyways, basically this alien or prehistoric lifeform that likes oil becomes friends with Tripp. And he merges into Tripp’s big truck that he is building that doesn’t have an engine. And through prehistoric lifeform magic, he lives happily around the truck and it is used to help them run from the bad guys. You know, typical stuff.

Also featuring Jane Levy, Danny Glover, and Holt McCallany.

How could they do that just go and have an alien orgy in a PG movie like this?

Monster Trucks, honestly, could have been a really fun film. But they took the creatures and did what? Well, hid them in a truck mostly. They made a truck behave cooler than normal and that on its own isn’t fun.

If that truck shot out laser beams or had rocket boosters? Maybe. But this thing could like, jump higher. Higher than normal trucks, because trucks on their own don’t jump without ramps.

And yeah, this film is just a complete drag. The conflict is all of the same, shady people trying to get their monster back, kid doesn’t want them to get the monster back. I am not saying he is in the wrong, it is just. Yeah, boring.

Monster Truck should have done something to really give more to the monsters in the movie. Slightly abnormal trucks are not worthy of their own movie.

Holy shit, it is finally here, the Universal Monsters Movie Franchise! Or Dark Universe, as it is going to be called. And this is for real!

Yeah yeah, you heard it was going to start so long ago, but with less buzz, with The Wolfman, But nope. And you were super seriously sure it was starting with Dracula Untold (because they said so), but apparently they changed their mind. They changed their mind DESPITE the ending taking place in modern day, clearly being ready for the Dark Universe.

So this time it is real. They have a name for the franchise. They have photos with actors in it. They have bigger names.

And you thought my intro to The Mummy would just be talking about the last Mummy Franchise? Well, you’re also right. I really enjoyed The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. The third one sucked, besides some yetis. The Scorpion King was fine, its sequels are bad. And I expect this movie to be NOTHING like the previous iteration, so I won’t really compare them.

The main difference is wanting to make this Mummy sexier.

Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) is in the military, or some subset of their intelligence. But he is a bit of a rebel. He has taken his underling, Chris Vail (Jake Johnson), to a completely different area of Iraq where he believes there is some sweet buried treasure that they can sell on the black market. They are supposed to be 100 miles away on a basic scouting mission, so they kind of are really big jerks here.

And sure enough, there is a goddamn hidden pit/tomb thing here, Egyptian made, despite Iraq being decently far away from Egypt. Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), an Egyptian Archaeologist, believes that there was a Pharaoh princess written out of the records due to shenanigans and this might be her resting place.

Speaking of this princess, Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) lived a long time ago. She was going to be the new Pharaoh when her dad died, and then despite her older, ready age, he went and had another child, a boy. And there went her hopes and dreams. So she made a deal with Set, got all demonic, killed them all and was about to bring Set into the world when she was mummified while alive (kind of BS) and you know, imprisoned far away and for ever.

Ah yes, the plot of the movie. This sounds like a lot, but honestly, this is all the beginning of the movie. What follows including death, destruction, magic shit, mummy curses, the dead rising, jokes, and a whole lot of other mysterious allusions to monsters. All in two hours!

Starring Courtney B. Vance as a general, Marwan Kenzari as a bodyguard, and Russell Crowe as a mysterious doctor dude and sometimes narrator.

This may look like a romantic moment, but that bitch is about to get sucked out of a plane OMG

I have FAR MORE to talk about with this movie than I had possibly imagined before viewing. There is a lot going on, possibly to its own detriment, certainly that is a negative a lot of people are pointing out. Because it is the first film in this universe (Of which Dark Universe was given its own big logo right after Universal) it has to give a complete film and tease out the future. All without an after credit scene to help them either.

A lot of the film can be described as messy. It jumps across genres in a bad way, it decides to describe the entire mummy backstory through exposition out of nowhere. A poor decision. We also get a bit TOO much teasing of the future. Another character that is relevant to the films appears and does a bit more appearing than I wanted. I wished they teased him more out and didn’t go full on monster so early in this franchise.

And the ending? Well, it puts the film and the universe in an interesting place. But at that point it didn’t go strong enough and didn’t seem to match really what was being built.

But despite all this, I still had a lot of fun. It had a real adventurous feel throughout it. The Mummy was straight up scary at points, raising her own undead army to get some shit done. It wasn’t campy throughout, but there was still some camp. Some of the stunts from Cruise were of course amazing, and just, I am excited for more. I really am.

Oh, less Jake Johnson would have been nice. They really don’t need him in future films. Alas.

Oh goodness, Wonder Woman. At this point, the DCEU has been just shit.

Man of Steel was disappointing, BvS was extremely disappointing, and Suicide Squad was in all ways a bad movie. But my favorite part of BvS WAS Wonder Woman, despite her small appearance. Or maybe her small appearance is what made it better.

Regardless, this is another film that is going to be hard to review. Regardless of quality, it has been hailed online by everyone for being the first modern female centric super hero movie, with a woman director! So they need it to be good and hyped up, because it if fails “Hollywood” will use it as evidence against women super hero movies and we will be stuck with just the status quo.

At the same time, I can still feel be extremely worried, because this film being actually great would mean the fourth time is the charm. That isn’t a saying though for a reason. So I am just skeptical of anything I heard online, just based on the need for it to be good, while other people will be tearing it down just for being anti-DC.

And that is why this review is so late after the film came out. Because it allows time for reflection, away from the biased information on either side.

Never mind, costume is great, movie A+!

Ares is a dick, that is the real moral of the story. He decided to introduce war to humans, Zeus’ creations! And then they fight, rah rah rah. So then the Amazons are created, to help bring peace to the world. All the gods fuck each other up, basically dying, except for Ares who is weakened into hiding. Zeus gives the Amazons a hidden island from the outside world, and a weapon to defeat a god, on the day that Ares returns to bring destruction to the world.

And then there is Diana (Gal Gadot, but little Diana is Lilly Aspell), the only Amazonian child, made from clay from her mother, Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen). She has a huge drive and wants to be a warrior to help protect the world, and eventually she reluctantly lets her train under Diana’s aunt, Antiope (Robin Wright).

And yeah, Diana grows up and kicks ass! Ready to fuck up Ares as soon as the world goes to war. Oh hey, a plane has crashed in their sea area, what the fuck is a plane? Diana saves the person in it, a MAN, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine). But behind him are a lot of boats and guns. Holy shit, a war, on their shore? No more!

Needless to say, some people die, some information is gained, and Diana finds herself going into the world, near the end of World War I, to look for Ares and put an end to this madness.

Are main bad guys are of course German, Ludendorff (Danny Huston) and Dr. Poison (Elena Anaya). We also have Steve’s secretary (Lucy Davis), a helpful British politician who wants peace (David Thewlis), and a ragtag group of people to help (Ewen Bremner, Eugene Brave Rock, Saïd Taghmaoui).

It looks like all the spirals are part of the sword, that would be a sweet cross guard.

The best news out of this whole movie business is that yes, Wonder Woman is the best film in the DCEU. It didn’t have any real competition, and The Dark Knight trilogy isn’t part of the DCEU so shut up about that.

But it still didn’t make it into 4 out of 4 territory for me. And I know, again, a lot of people would put it super high thanks to feelings it made them feel and what it stands for. But the good news is that a movie can be good for various causes, have a message, be the first to do a few things, while still having issues we should be able to address and talk about.

There is a lot of good! Gadot wrecked it. The Amazonian world was awesome. Their warrior spirit was strong. Several stand out scenes including the island beach scene (for badass action), the boat scene (For humor), the village fight scene (for more badass action), generally every time Gadot interacted with the human world in weird ways. It had a lot of rah rah action going that was easy to cheer along with, because hey, the Germans are the bad guys again and we know what to do there.

However, it had points that felt rehashed from other films. And it sucks to hear it, but it has more than a few similiarties with Captain America: The First Avenger. World War I instead of II, a super heroed person helps end the war with a rag tag group of soldiers each with their own very specific strengths. They are fighting an organization on the German side who want to continue fighting at all costs and are developing super weapons before they get stopped.

I hated the Wonder Woman extra group of soldiers. They didn’t add anything to the movie, except add more dudes to take away from the strong woman. They annoyed me, they sucked. I also really disliked the final fight scene with Ares. At some point it just turned into this giant fire and lightning explosion fest that reminded me a lot of…the end of Batman Vs Superman. Oh just gotta get that super CGI destruction in there, regardless of setting. Boom, pow, blah!

I will end this note talking about Chris Pine, because I am a guy and it is expected of me. I thought he was getting cast as the “pretty romance character for the hero” character, like so many women in super hero movies, but then they had to go and make him really great and have a good character arc. So they made him more than just a romance character, what jerks.

Wonder Woman is a great movie and will hopefully lead to SOME big change with the DCEU to stop also forcing so much crap down our throats. A lot can be learned, but remember, a lot can always be improved as well.

I believe I told my wife that I wanted to watch Mindhorn on Netflix for a review. Her response was something similar to “What the fuck is Mindhorn?”

And of course I gave her the netflix description of it, and she said “That sounds fucking stupid.” Yes, yes it does. And that is of course why I watched it.

Also the title is powerful. Mindhorn. Mind. Horn. Mindh. Orn.

MINDHORN.

I am now in your brain, learning your secrets.

Mindhorn is a British television show about Detective Mindhorn, played by actor Richard Thorncroft (Julian Barratt). He has some telepathic powers, and he solves crime. It is the hottest TV show around. It is on the cover of magazines, everyone talks about it, and it is getting a spin-off led by one of its minor characters played by Peter Eastman (Steve Coogan).

And now? It is 25 years later, Thorncroft is living in poverty, doing commercials, no one caring about Mindhorn anymore. It lasted three seasons and was cancelled and Thorncroft was a dick, so he left all his friends behind to try for something better. And shit, the spinoff lasted over 10 seasons and is what everyone cares about now.

But things will change. Because on the Isle of Man, where the series was filmed, a MURDER has occurred. By a “lunatic” Paul Melly (Russell Tovey), who will only speak to Detective Mindhorn. He thinks that Mindhorn is real and will only deal with the character. So Thorncroft is brought in, to act and help deal with the boy. But Thorncroft needs money and fame, so he will make this last as long as it needs to be to get people saying his name again.

Also starring Richard McCabe, David Schofield, Simon Farnaby, Kenneth Branagh, Jessica Barden, Andrea Riseborough, Essie Davis, and Nicholas Farrell.

If this movie was in 3D, this would be an intense, frightening scene. Because of the shots, not the weed wacker.

Mindhorn takes an interesting premise, makes it British, adds some comedy, and still doesn’t fully deliver an amazing movie.

It had amusing moments, it had interesting characters (a lot of the side characters were brimming with personality), but I feel it was also plagued with pacing issues and not being strong on the humor. It is adequately bizarre (not extremely bizarre), even a bit zany, just not incredibly humorous. That is one of my biggest issues.

As for pacing issues, at times it feels clunky. It is easy for mystery-esque movies to lead you all over the place with only tiny details mattering by the end, but this one isn’t even a real mystery. The police believe they know who the killer is right away, and when things inevitably change, we have a new obvious killer, and the majority of the film is just trying to get the proof. So not really a mystery, despite set up like one.

It makes the film just so hard to define. That isn’t a negative, given some of my favorite movies this year have hard to define genres. But when it comes out like a mystery and is instead just a slightly eccentric comedy, you just find yourself wanting a lot more in the film.

Dreamworks films never reach their full potential. Or they do, and Dreamworks films just suck, outside of the two Dreamworks franchises that I don’t even have to mention at this point.

They do not aim for universal appeal, they just want to get their cheap kid jokes and run.

I expected to outright hate Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie. I have never read or looked into a book with any level of effort, but I see the sort of humor that exists. You know, poop and underwear humor. Like the whole series, all based on one sort of joke. It is a bold move, but it was a hit with kids, and honestly I am surprised it took this long for a movie.

But as I left the film, it had some level of charm, despite all the shit.

His whole body is just so round.

Before we get to the superhero, we need to talk about George (Kevin Hart) and Harold (Thomas Middleditch). They have been best friends since Kindergarten, thanks to their similar humor styles. They pull pranks on school to get them by, and they love making comics together. George tells the story, Harold is the illustrator. Their favorite comic that they have made is Captain Underpants!

But at school, not everything is okay. The mean Mr. Krupp (Ed Helms) is the principal, and he outlaws fun for the sake of discipline, so George and Harold are a thorn in his side. But he never has proof! When he does get proof, he will be able to separate the two boys into different classes, thus killing their friendship, or something like that.

And thanks to a few other pranks their nightmare is about to come true! As a last ditch effort, they attempt to hypnotize him, and it works! There they decide to make him pretend to be Captain Underpants and wham! A superhero is born!

But can their school be run by a make believe super hero? Can they control him and protect their friendship? What about the evil Professor P (Nick Kroll) who has a weird plan to hurt children too, with the unknowing help of Melvin (Jordan Peele), a humorless nerd. Also featuring Kristen Schaal as the voice of the cafeteria worker.

Although pretty round, they have a few more edges so this isn’t just some freaky round planet. Whew.

Guess what?! Captain Underpants wasn’t extremely poopy, just somewhere poopy. For the most part, I didn’t find it really that funny. It relied on the same sort of joke over and over again. Of which the film did talk about how “toilet humor” is the lowest form, so they understood what they were doing. The exaggeration of their friendship being killed by being in different classes was a bit annoying, since they straight up hang out with each other as direct neighbors after school all the time as well.

But it was telling the story in their kid point of view, so it made sense on a level. On a different level, they are supposed to be very smart and savvy compared to the rest of the students, so when their characterizations are sometimes very childish versus mature, it is a bit confusing on what they are supposed to represent.

There are however aspects that I really enjoyed. This is a film where all the main characters are voiced by famous people. It is a stupid trend, it still doesn’t lead to more ticket sales like Robin Williams did in the early 1990s. They are paying more money for lesser voices. BUT, the characters in this film didn’t just sound like the normal actors for once. The closest two were Hart and Scahal, but everyone else I would not have been able to tell you the voice at all, so that is wonderful.

The second aspect I enjoyed was their decisions to tell the story in different ways. It is a CGI film, but we weren’t just given a completely CGI movie. It starts off with a paper comic book feel, we are given a flip book scene, various forms of day dream, but best of all, a sock puppet scene. Sock puppets! The changing formats of the film helped keep my interest and make the film a bit more sophisticated?

No, not sophisticated. Let’s just keep it as interesting.

It still caters to a lower form of humor. It still doesn’t have a lot of substance. But hey, it did try a few things I enjoyed and wasn’t a complete shit show.

Never watched Baywatch, never watched Baywatch Nights, but I understand the appeal of it all. Womens, womens, and David Hasselhoff. Sure, good.

And then they said they would do a movie reboot of Baywatch, decades later. My initial thoughts: FUCK YES!

But why? Well, history has shown to me that taking a serious show and putting it in a comedic modern reboot leads to extreme laughs. Sure, I only have 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street to base that opinion off of, but what if Baywatch is as good as those two films? It has the actors, it has a lot it can work with, it should be a sure sign of success!

Then I will eventually realize that it is just Phil Lord and Christopher Miller being an insanely funny directing duo, and not anyone else pulling the strings.

I didn’t want this generic photo, but it was one of the few that actually was decent.

Over somewhere in California, I guess, is a bay that totally needs to be watched. The lifeguard team is led by Lieutenant Mitch Buchannon (Dwayne Johnson), his second-in-command Stephanie Holden (Ilfenesh Hadera), and CJ Parker (Kelly Rohrbach). There are other people on the team too, apparently, but they are background characters with no names or words. Normally they only add a single member to their team a year, but this year they have spots for three people!

Spoilers, the spots go to Matt Brody (Zac Efron), an Olympic swimmer who needs community service and sort of just gets the spot against the wishes of Mitch, Summer Quinn (Alexandra Daddario), a girl who just likes life guarding I guess, and Ronnie Greenbaum (Jon Bass), a guy who doesn’t give up, is basically a tech person and lusts after CJ.

Anyways, Mitch likes to go above and beyond his duty, trying to solve crimes outside of his jurisdiction. Because he has no jurisdiction, because he is a lifeguard. This gets him into problems, with the above people and all of that.

Starring Priyanka Chopra as the villain, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as a cop, Amin Joseph and Jack Kesy as Chopra’s bodyguards, Rob Heubel as the boss, along with Hannibal Buress, Oscar Nuñez, David Hasselhoff, and Pamela Anderson.

The sexiest shot in the film.

Goddamnit, Baywatch. You could have been something special, but all of the worst components were overplayed, and they didn’t try to make it better.

First of all, the humor, sure jokes were made, but it wasn’t a laugh a minute riot fest like I had hoped (again, comparing to 21 Jump Street). They decided to feature a lot more action and serious moments that weren’t really impressive, nor did they really bring the viewer in on any emotional level.

Secondly, there are only six~ characters in the Baywatch team they decide to highlight, 3 guys, 3 gals. And guess who gets all of the plot, character development, and good scenes? Yep, the guys only. Hadera as “second-in-command” has absolutely nothing memorable happen, she is basically a background character. Daddario is brought in to have someone else famous hang out with Efron and Johnson, but she is the third wheel. And Parker exists only to be a sexualized object to Bass’ character, an ideal woman in her looks and kindness. And yes, they hook up by the end.

Yes, when people think of Baywatch, they think of slow motion women running and bouncing, sure. But that show also had a lot of woman characters with a lot of backgrounds and plots. This movie somehow decided to be WORSE for women than the 11 seasons of a show for people to get their jollies off. That is unacceptable for a modern remake. It is not hard to give six people real characterization throughout a film, but they didn’t even try.

Those are the main two points of contention. If the film was at least funnier on many levels then I might have been able to get around the weaker characters. But because it isn’t that funny, the problems stand out a lot more. The plot was also weak, the “bad guy plot” felt pointless, and everything was just so obvious.

Apparently this movie is bombing, so we won’t a Baywatch 2. But if it does, it should go the Baywatch Nights route, just get it over with.

No one knows how to Guy Ritchie like Guy Ritchie. He likes to go to the extremes, have some fast talkers, and go super British. But he has apparently mostly left his original line of work and decided to focus on remakes and cultural icons.

Sherlock Holmes, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and now his take on King Arthur.

Sure, I am excited, the knights of the round table are interesting, tons of lore, and tons of cool sorcery could be afoot. But I really just want some more of his original stories, more than anything. Hopefully this doesn’t use up more of his time with another franchise.

Honestly, this looks like he just swung his sword at a rock instead.

Uther Pendragon (Eric Bana) is more than a man with a badass name, he is the ruler of Camelot! And he is being attacked and raided by warlocks and mages. Uther is able to take out the threat, but his brother, Vortigern (Jude Law) betrays him and his family, summoning a demon to take the throne. But Pendragon’s baby son escapes, classic Moses manuver.

This son is found by prostitutes in another land and named Arthur (Charlie Hunnam). This is where he was born and raised, not knowing of his noble heritage. That’s right, he is from the STREETS. Now we have Guy Ritchie movie, loving those streets, even if they are over a thousand years ago.

Oh and uhh, then a lot of stuff happened with a sword, magic, wars, tons of fighting, and big group of friends.

Also starring Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Djimon Hounsou, Craig McGinlay, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Neil Maskell, Tom Wu, Annabelle Wallis, Freddie Fox, and Aidan Gillen.

Arthur walking around, fists out, with that “fight me” look on his face. Classic Guy Ritchie.

Another fun confession time: My movie synopsis was quite short, yeah? It is like I have no fucking clue what happened during the movie, which is true. I don’t. First of all, the theater I was in had two issues: One, the bulb was almost dead, and two, something with the polarizer was wrong too, so the 3D screening I went to was incredibly dark. SUPER DARK. I watched a trailer after the film surprised at the darkness, wondering where the hell the white sky had gone in my viewing.

The darkness, and the overuse of CGI, seemingly terrible 3D, and ugly color scheme, put me straight to sleep. I didn’t sleep throughout the whole film, I woke up quite a lot. But every time I woke up, it still seemed uninteresting and I could not keep my eyes open. And that is terrible. I do know that a huge reason I passed out was thanks to the bad cameras, but I wonder how much of the story actually put me to sleep as well.

And I am never going probably go out of my way to see this movie again. Seeing it in theaters, I sat through trailers spent hours of my life on it. As a reviewer I have to watch a lot, so giving something a second or third viewing is usually restored to things that I actually like. Sure, when it is out on DVD, there is a chance. Maybe someone else will make me watch it with them.

But the experience did not work for me, and normally “slept through the whole thing” would be a 0, but I have to give it some benefit of doubt.

The movie Max had a sequel. Max was a middle of the year release a few years ago, a movie about a boy and a trained dog, and it sucked. They just messed it all up, and it was a stinker.

I am surprised I actually gave it a 1 star, to be honest. Thought I hated it more.

And with this review you are finding out that yes, that film somehow got a sequel. Max 2: White House Hero, because hey, movies at the White House are fun. This movie was released straight to DVD thought, with a new cast and a new story. Apparently the “Max” brand name was strong enough that it warranted using it for the sequel, and not just a stand alone story.

Also, I realize some of you may have forgotten that Max even existed, so I apologize for bringing it back up.

Now that Trump is president, why not have Lochlyn Munro give it a shot?

TJ Bennett (Zane Austin) is the son of the president, and he hates it. He has a security detail at all times, the kids at his school hate him for it, and he is just lonely really. One of the only people who seems to get to know him is Chef Coop (Bradley Stryker), who makes a mean grilled cheese sandwich.

But his dad (Lochlyn Munro) and mom (Carrie Genzel) say he has to help entertain a new guest, the Russian President Bragov (Andrew Kavadas) and his child Alex. They are coming for an important visit for both countries. He reluctantly agrees of course, because he really has no choice. But wait, Alex is a girl (Francesca Capaldi)!

Well things are weird now, and when they get to Camp David, they will have to find ways to keep themselves busy, the stake of the world is on it!

Ohhhhhhhh. And yeah, Max, the same one from the first movie, is in this one. He is loan to the Secret Service to help with the mission, because their normal dog had puppies. And Max befriends TJ and listens to him, so TJ finally has a friend closer to his age.

Also starring Reese Alexander, Kathryn Kirkpatrick, and Bruce Blain.

WILL MAX SAVE THE DAY?

Oh, spoilers.

Max 2 features everything you’d want in a movie. Assuming that movie premiered for the first time on the Disney Channel, because that is how it feels. The only thing missing from my experience was 40 minutes of commercial breaks as well.

It wasn’t entirely shit, but I was indeed bored throughout it. It featured jokes and excitement that only a child could enjoy, unable to make it a family movie that everyone could want to see it. Strangely enough the only character who felt good in their roll was little Francesca Capaldi, playing a Russian president’s very young daughter. She got that accent down and gave that harsh level of authority we are now used to from Russia.

Dog stunts, kids running around, adults not listening to kids, just normal things in a film of this nature. It doesn’t offer really anything new or exciting, nor does it really have its moments. It is just a time filler.

2017 is the year of the wall.

Jokes about the president, blah blah. But we already got The Great Wall earlier this year. And now we have The Wall? I guess this wall isn’t as awesome as the previous wall. But The Great Wall was just an okay movie. If this movie has a lesser sized wall, will that mean the movie is also not as okay?

I don’t know. But I hope there is a movie even later in the year just called Wall. Or maybe The Wa. I could go either way with my dreams.

Not picture: Any goddamn wall.

Set in 2007, we are in Iraq, after the war was “won” with a dead Saddam Hussein and all. But we still have troops there, to help clean things up, transition, whatever.

And we have Sergeant Allen Issac (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Staff Sergeant Shane Matthews (John Cena) who are a sniper pair. They have been watching a site for about 22 hours now where an ambush took place. Well, maybe an ambush, maybe an enemy sniper. But there are a few dead bodies, a broken wall and some trucks. But after 22 hours, they have to assume whoever or whatever did all of this has gone by now as they have seen no movement.

So they decide to call it. Matthews heads down to investigate knowing that they are safe, with Issac watching from above, still playing it safe. And then, Matthews gets shot.

Fuck. There is an enemy sniper here. A real professional. And now they are caught in his trap, with a small tiny wall protecting them. He is even on their radio frequency (voiced by Laith Nakli). And he wants to talk.

Wall so small, not in this picture either.

Doug Liman is the director of The Wall and he is an interesting dude. From Swingers and Go, to Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Edge of Tomorrow, he has been all over the map. If you look at his producing credits, he has a ton more action movies. But from what I can tell, he isn’t super heavy on the horror/thriller aspects, which is sort of how this movie plays out.

It is a short movie, about 80 minutes, and it plays out entirely in one location. It is more dramatic/thriller than horror, but it really could have gone either way based on the sniper character. Since they were able to communicate with radio, they could have made him down right horror villain. Thankfully they went the smarter, more realistic way, and made the sniper a compelling person with his own reasons for doing what he did.

Now, I will admit, they did make him a bit too powerful. Our soldiers 100% believed they were in the clear for good reason. But this guy is super human. He is a super soldier and he hits his mark, apparently. I would have liked it if they made him a bit more believable in those aspects.

But The Wall was tense, and the whole thing basically rested on the arms of of Taylor-Johnson giving an impressive and physical performance, which he did. Not a bad way to spend under 90 minutes and another film that talks about the real tolls of war without glorifying anything.