Tag: Action

The Belko Experiment trailer seemed to come out of nowhere, and it honestly got me really excited.

A Battle Royale experience, with regular office workers, in a potential psychological horror film with difficult moral decisions? That sounds like an amazing film, one that would quickly become a cult film and something that would top my end of the 2017 list!

And to top it all off, it was written by James Gunn, who has been kicking ass lately. Not directed, just written, but he is a pop culture junkie and someone who can really get to the heart of issues with, yes, excessive violence.

But really, the hype was real on this side. Fictional people killing people with office equipment.

Office equipment, like guns!

Head on down to Bogotá, Columbia, where the sun is always shining and everyone is so happy! And it is also the location of Belko Indutries, a very large office building seemingly in the middle of nowhere. They help hire foreign workers for American companies, or something like that. Hard to say, doesn’t matter, they have sweet government contracts, so life is sweet.

Weird things are afoot today. All of the local workers are being sent home. There is a larger security force than normal, checking cars and looking intimidating. But hey, it is still a work day, so even with some missing people they have meetings and phones to call.

And then, a voice (Gregg Henry) comes over the loudspeaker, that they didn’t even know existed in their building. It said that most of them would die, and that if in the next 30 minutes two people were not killed, then there would be consequences. Ha ha. Must be a prank. And then the office building straight up closes entirely around them, windows, doors, all covered in large metal panels. Fuck! Well, of course no one kills anyone, so then four people die from sudden head explosions. Head explosions! Each person had a GPS tracking device put into their head, in case of kidnappings, because Columbia. Turns out they are bombs and now everyone is even more fucked.

Of course it gets worse. Now they know it is serious. And now they know that with 76 people left in the building, they now have 2 hours to kill 30 people. Or else overall 60 will be killed, randomly. Now it is time to let your animal instincts out. Now is the time to go wild for survival. And hell, a few of the people have some special forces training before this job. Doesn’t look good for your normal receptionist.

And we have a lot of workers, so here they are: John C. McGinley, John Gallagher Jr., Tony Goldwyn, Adria Arjona, Melonie Diaz, Michael Rooker, James Earl, and Sean Gunn are some of the bigger players. We also have Brent Sexton, David Dastmalchian, David Del Rio, Gail Bean, Josh Brener, Owain Yeoman, and Rusty Schwimmer.

Blood bath? More like Blood…um. Office. Yes, Blood office.

I wanted so badly for The Belko Experiment to be good.To give me a satisfying psychological horror. To really emphasis the experiment parts, and showcase human spirit and humans in general. And yes, I also wanted it to feature a ton of violence through the use of common office equipment. Things like coffee pots, staplers (of course), paper weights, chairs, paper clips, who knows. And honestly? We maybe got 3. Definitely two that stand out, and of those two, one doesn’t even kill a person, it just injures them.

When it comes to wild and crazy deaths, this film lacks them. It just gives us death. MOST people, out of the 80 starting amount, die from a gun shot wound or from their GPS tracking devices exploding in their head. And I do mean that by most, definitely well over half. We have some knife/cutlery related deaths, a couple accident based ones, and a few explosions, but most of them are just regular violence in what could have been a creative film. The trailer implied a lot different film from the tone given.

A lot of screen time is given to the characters actively trying to escape. Making signs to hang, getting through the metal, taking out their “GPS devices” and so on. Perfectly good rational behavior. And that same behavior is why we never really get the all out blood bath the trailers seemed to imply. We get forced into a situation where a few people with power and guns just start killing off random individuals without the thrill behind it.

Overall, I guess what I am getting at is that the film is too serious. The violence doesn’t lead to the fun deaths which doesn’t lead to a fun movie. But it isn’t serious enough that it makes any point either. It just feels meaningless and hollow.

Sure, we have some interesting characters. Gallagher is our voice of reason. McGinley is a creep. Goldwyn is a typical executive. A lot of people play scared office worker quite convincingly. Surprisingly, Sean Gun, James Gunn’s brother, known basically only for Gilmore Girls, is the most exciting character and his actions are fun to watch, but he can not entertain us enough on his own.

The Belko Experiment seemed like it would be an immediate cult classic, but I doubt even a sequel could save the story it tried to piece together.

I find it very odd to see a lot of hype for the movie Kong: Skull Island. King Kong has happened over and over in film’s history, and given everything I know about the internet, they hate reboots, reimaginings, and remakes of other films, so they shouldn’t care about this one.

But alas, here we are. I don’t have too many fucks to give about it of course, after King Kong 11 years ago. Overly long and it didn’t really do anything different.

I guess this one is bringing in some hardcore CGI and bigger acting names. Maybe that is it. Or people are freaking out over the potential of a Godzilla and Kong showdown in the future. Needless to say, if this film doesn’t do anything different, I will probably be mostly annoyed.

I don’t care about context, these two people are not dirty enough.

Kong: Skull Island makes sure you get to see a giant ape really early in the film, when two crashed World War II pilots land on the island, start to fight, and then he shows up. But this isn’t set during that war, this is actually set in 1973, during the end of the Vietnam war.

Bill Randa (John Goodman) is some sort of scientist, who believes there is a lot to discover on this skull island they have found in the South Pacific. Ancient civilizations have talked about it, there are constant storms that surround it, but he wants a mission to explore what has never been explored. Let’s call it a geologic mapping mission. With a military escort.

He is able to gather a team. He has his own crew, a geologist (Corey Hawkins) and a biologist (Tian Jing), along with some extra scientists from another company (John Ortiz, Marc Evan Jackson). They have a legendary British explorer to help explore the jungles, James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), who is in it for some money. A prize winning photojournalist, Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), who helped show the truth about Vietnam to the public. And of course a helicopter team lead by LTC Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson) and Captain Jack Chapman (Toby Kebbell), straight out of ‘Nam.

Most of them assume it is just a real exploratory mission. But really, Randa has an agenda and believes to be giant monsters on this island, and he wants to bring an end to them. They’ve got weapons of many sizes. Unfortunately, when setting off seismic blasts to detect the crust, they wake up these beasts on the island, and they do not like having explosions all over the place. Spread out over the island, the crew has three days to make it to the north side before they can be rescued.

Also featuring John C. Reilly, and a whole lot of soldiers: Jason Mitchell, Shea Whigham, Thomas Mann, and Eugene Cordero.

Turns out this Kong film has a lot of Japanese influence.

At its heart, Kong: Skull Island is an action adventure flick that wants to show us giant animals fighting some dudes with bombs. Which on its own could be enough for most of the people who want to see it. I will say there are some scenes that look a bit awkward based on CGI usage. It doesn’t always mesh well. But the more pure CGI scenes like Kong fighting with the giant lizards look amazing.

The film also doesn’t pussy foot around Kong. We get to see him in the first few minutes. Within 15 more we are on the island and Kong totally fucks up the helicopters putting our characters in a perilous situation. We get a lot of Kong and they don’t tease him out.

You know what we don’t get a lot of? Character development. Basically every character in this movie is weak on that level. There is no gain. They don’t change. Well, some of them die. We have exactly one character who people will care about and does change and that man is played by John C. Reilly. His character is wonderful, an amazing addition to the film, and worthy of praise.

But Kong: Skull Island is just going to be a interesting film that could have been a lot better. With its post credit scene trying its best to imitate The Avengers it leaves some hope for the future. But have to hope they improve the scripts first.

I am thankful that I waited to review The Accountant. If I reviewed it months ago when it came out, it would have been so less…relevant.

What? Reviewing a movie when it comes out in theaters is LESS relevant? How crazy.

But yes. Because now I can say that regardless of the films topic and plot, this film should actually be about the 2017 Oscars. The two men responsible for the envelopes, the accountants at PricewaterhouseCoopers, have lived their lives up to that night probably in perfection. Never flubbing a number, never getting BBQ sauce on their beards, just perfection.

And then they fucked up at the biggest award and took a little bit of time to fix it. It wasn’t a smaller technical award (which would have been equally devastating for those involved), but the Best Picture, which affects large groups of people.

Just fucking insane. I want their story. But this one will have to do.

Ah good, numbers, now we know it is an intense mystery film.

A lot of threads in this film, so I will try to keep it simple and brief.

Ray King (J.K. Simmons), some head of a treasury department, is looking for this Accountant dude, who might behind all these various…accountant things. And crimes. He gets some underling, Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), to look into it. Some blackmail was involved too.

Chris Wolff (Ben Affleck) is of course our Accountant in question. He is a high functioning autistic dude, so he is good with numbers, but he was also trained to fight and stuff as a kid by his dad, because why not.

He is called into some company to look up financial irregularities. Turns out a lot of shenanigans are going on, we get some action, we get some mystery.

Starring Andy Umberger, Alison Wright, Anna Kendrick, Jon Bernthal, Jeffrey Tambor, John Lithgow, and Jean Smart. The A’s and J’s of the Hollywood complex.

He punched those numbers so hard they turned into tiny booklets and the room emptied.

A couple of days after I watched The Accountant, I realized something powerful. I don’t remember a whole lot about The Accountant.

The experience while watching it had some okay moments, but for the most part, nothing anymore stands out. It is a completely forgettable film, and that is not a good thing at all. If I wrote this review right away after watching it, it would have still only been a 2 out of 4.

But at this point, a die hard Ben Affleck fan, I am just wondering what happened? Is it worth ever seeing again? Shit, should I even watch Live By Night? I feel like I am automatically going to get the exact same reception for that film, and I can’t handle that happening right now. Another recent movie is Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and I don’t think I can handle that much shitty Ben Affleck in a row. I cannot go back the early 2000’s. Gone Girl was supposed to help lead to better roles, not worse!

I am just worried about my friend. Most of his upcoming films involve DC and I don’t want him to lose his acting career. He is lucky he even has one after all those shitty movies in the before time, here is no way he can survive a second falling out.

The Accountant is a forgettable action thriller. It might have smart moments, but it is not anything that I will care about discussing in the future, unfortunately.

When Jack Reacher came out, I was able to avoid the controversy involving casting choices, because I of course never read the books and didn’t care. I just wanted a good action thriller.

And Jack Reacher was a good action thriller. I enjoyed how small and personal it felt. It felt unique. It had an amazing opening.

I was totally pumped for a Jack Reacher sequel. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is a dumb title, but hey, if it was anything like the first one, fuck it, who cares.

This one promises to feature at one visually appealing location.

This film starts off already way less exciting than the first film. Just Jack (Tom Cruise) helping catch a human trafficking cop, without much detail on how he did it or why it was done in any special way. Then we get to see him calling Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders), someone he has worked with. But he talks to her a lot, he probably has the hots for her.

Anyway, according to some Colonel (Holt McCallany), Turner has been arrested for espionage. And also she maybe killed two people in Afghanistan. People she wasn’t supposed to kill. That is odd. Also, Jack might have a daughter (Danika Yarosh) that he has no knowledge of, from a prostitute. Look at all these shenanigans!

Somehow all of this gets connected. Jack gets framed for the murder of his lawyer, everyone gets in the same jail so they can break out and figure out all this shit.

Also featuring Aldis Hodge and Patrick Heusinger.

And after all of this, I fucking ran away from the movie.

You might be really interested in why the low rating? That is because I did the unthinkable during this movie. No, I didn’t sleep through it. But sleeping usually gives an automatic 0 as well. I turned the piece of shit off.

I realized my time was far too valuable instead of wasting it on another hour of the shit in front of me. This is not the Jack Reacher I remember from just a few years prior. This is some global conspiracy military film, without a strong focus. This is a complete mess.

Technically, from the first scene it was worse, but the first scene of Jack Reacher was legendary. This felt like a sequel that was made from a different cheaper studio, like a lot of the Disney straight-to-video sequels. Whatever was on the screen couldn’t have possibly been done by the same people. It just seemed so goddamn different.

I obviously don’t have a lot of unique things to say, seeing just under half of the movie. And hey, maybe the ending made it a bit better. But whatever it is I watched just felt so wrong, so non-Jack Reacher, that I figured I had already seen enough. This is not a worthy successor. They should have Never Gone Back to this franchise, apparently.

Do better in your next film Cruise. I trust you.

In attempting to catch up to some of the bigger movies of the fall that I missed, I will note that I completely forgot about Keeping Up With The Joneses. It came and it went. It had advertising, I am mostly certain. Definitely.

Not many people went to see it either. It was a bomb on a relatively low budget, and now I am talking about it months later mostly because it has a short enough run time for me to fit it into my schedule last week.

Also, because I liked the actors involved.

Look at them all together. Short. Tall. Hairy.

Jeff (Zach Galifianakis) and Karen Gaffney (Isla Fisher) live a quiet suburban life with their two kids. Jeff works as an HR rep at some tech company (and lives near a lot of his coworkers), Karen designs bathrooms, sometimes. Their kids are off to summer camp, so they have the house to themselves! That means sex very quickly and then mindlessly hanging out the rest of the night.

But then, they get some new neighbors. The Joneses. Tim (Jon Hamm) and Natalie (Gal Gadot). They are perfect, they are tall, they live amazing lives, and now they apparently want to settle down.

Karen, however, doesn’t trust them. Something seems off about them. They are a bit too friendly. She thinks they are spying on them!

And yeah, she ends up being right. They aren’t really friends. But what do they want? What do they need? Are they good spies or bad spies?

Also featuring Patton Oswalt, Ming Zhao, Matt Walsh, and Maribeth Monroe.

Spies get to wear fancy clothes and show off their assets.

To be fair to this film, which I don’t really want to type a lot, the idea for a comedy action film isn’t completely bad. It just didn’t have a lot extra going for it. I barely laughed at any thing. I would note in my head that a scene was potentially amusing, but it just never really pushed the funny bone like I had hoped.

Hamm is a wonderful comedic actor, given how serious his bigger roles have been. But he felt wasted. Gadot was given the entirely serious role plus sex appeal, so she wasn’t given any potentially funny moments, which is just poor writing. Fisher’s character was mostly one dimensional. They wrote her as a bored housewife, so she played a bored housewife. And Galifianakis at least had some sort of development, but again, he only had a few recurring joke stereotypes.

The ending was of course a mess, when they had to bring in the more action/spy elements. It weakens an already weak comedy film.

Two genres is hard, you have to be willing to go hard into both, not just a little bit into both. Because then you are just left with a dud, a master of none, and a film people will forget about in a few months time.

It feels like forever since I have seen a Dan Brown film. Angels & Demons came out in 2009, practically another life ago. I didn’t have to review that film or The Da Vinci Code. I thought the Code was okay, and I sort of likes A&D, but mostly because of Ewan McGregor.

I basically have forgotten these films existed.

But then Ron Howard comes back and says “No! There is more!” I am sure there is more than Inferno too, when it comes to the books, but I don’t even care enough to look it up.

Maybe Howard just got tired of making good movies, like Rush. Maybe he wanted something where someone would do all the leg work in the writing department. Either way, Inferno now exists. And I have to watch it after putting it off for months.

Inferno feels like uncovering a big mystery after thousands of years and opening it up to find out it was just empty.

Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is at it again! Or the opposite of that. As he wakes up in a hospital, in Italy, with no memory of recent events. He was dreaming of the Apocalypse though, which is always a fun time.

His Doctor, Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones) tells him he got shot in the head and survived it, which would explain his amnesia. There is also an assassin after him, so they both had better get moving, or more people will get bullets in the head resulting in even more amnesia.

They eventually find a clue left by Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster), a villain name if there ever has been one. He is a billionaire geneticist, and he wants to kill billions of people. Namely he thinks the population of the world has to go down, or else everyone will die. So, being obsessed with Dante, he made a virus called Inferno, that will kill everyone.

Unless, of course, you think…someone were to want to stop it?! Oh no! Who to call, who to call.

Also starring Sidse Babett Knudsen, Omar Sy, Irrfan Khan and Ana Ularu.

Is this the same scene as above? I honestly don’t remember.

Inferno is a wild, chaotic, burning, mess of a film.

From beginning to end, they want to use confusion, instead of mystery, to tell a story and keep you involved. It is convoluted from start to finish, and a cast of one familiar character does not really help myself ever feel grounded.

I honestly found myself halfway through the movie just wondering if I should turn it off. That I should not write a review and instead watch something else. But then I knew that Inferno was so bad, I needed to make sure my review came out, even if it was months later so that future people looking into RedBox would have some clue.

History is exciting. Conspiracies can be exciting. But Brown must have used his best ideas for the first two books, because he is really digging up some less exciting stuff with this movie. Hanks had a pretty bad 2016, yes, I didn’t really like Sully. So hopefully he can turn things around in the future. Play a new role, not a real person, not a sequel. Give me something to show off the acting. Give me something new.

Inferno can go back to hell for all I care.

I am quite weary over Wolverine solo films at this point. The first one was utter crap, and The Wolverine was just regular crap. That’s right, neither of them were good.

And honestly, words like Hugh Jackman retiring from the role don’t mean a lot to me either. Actors have said that in the past and lied. The rating going to R after the success of Deadpool makes me worried it isn’t that way due to necessity, but because it can earn them some money.

Look, I just want a good story. A good story, some good action, and some good acting. Okay, apparently I just want a good movie. I don’t want a convoluted villain story. I don’t want mutants running around with vague powers. I don’t want action for the sake of action.

Just give me a high quality work of art, then I can start the praise. But until the credits roll, Logan will remain skeptical.

Deciding to make our hero mimic Mel Gibson was an interesting aspect.

And now, we find ourselves in the future. Not the Days of Future Past future. A simpler future. Where there aren’t a lot of mutants. Logan (Hugh Jackman) is older, more grizzled, and gives very few fucks. He also drives a limo. He now lives in the southwestern United States, in a small farm compound. With an Albino dude, Caliban (Stephen Merchant), who is also a mutant who can sense and detect other mutants.

Oh, and there is also Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart). A very old man at this point, his brain isn’t as strong as it used to be. Oh, he is still a telepath. But Alzheimer’s disease is still a thing, so he is prone to memory loss, and seizures. And when he has a seizure, a lot of people suffer.

Also! There are not a lot of mutants in the world left. And mutants have apparently not been born for decades. They are dying out. And Logan is hoping to escape it all, live on the sea, not have to deal with hurting others. Until a girl enters his life. Laura Kinney (Dafne Keen), a young girl who has escaped from a facility in Mexico City and is heading North to Eden, with other children, hoping to free to Canada for safety. Of course, Laura and the other kids are mutants as well. The future of their kind! That isn’t the only thing they have in common. Laura is also Logan’s “daughter.”

Also s tarring Boyd Holbrook, Daniel Bernhardt, and Richard E. Grant as some bad guys, and Elizabeth Rodriguez as a nurse from the facility.

Aw, she is smiling! How can she be related to that mean old grumpy man?

R rated Wolverine. This is what we wanted. We wanted to see Wolverine go full, well, Wolverine on a group of guys. Slashing throats, stabbing heads, blood flying everywhere, which is what past movies were missing. Wolverine is a weapon, he should be shown how really deadly he is. And this film finally delivers on this promise. Right at the start, he has to take out a group of thugs trying to rob and murder him, and we get claws through skulls, blood spraying, limbs off, the whole thing.

Not that excessive is the only violence we need to earn this R rated. There are also boobs and at least five fucks! Look at how R that is!

Aside from the rating, Logan also features something that other Wolverine films do not. A decent story AND decent acting. Stewart helps that. Jackman and Stewart brought their A-Game. Merchant added a weird and nice to the story, despite a smaller role. Keen ended up being a tiny power house in this film, growling and jumping around. She is the little ball of hate we had always hoped for with Wolverine (since Jackman is actually so god damn tall).

It isn’t a perfect plot, but there are some great surprises along the way. We have weaker villains of course, some unexplained dilemmas to create mystery, and annoying scenes where mutants are running for too long before attempting to fight back. But the film also spends a lot of time world building. Taking place in the future, it isn’t extremely tech heavy, but there are minor improvements around and everything seems arid and dry. Global Warming is a bitch. We also have self driving trucks! And extreme genetic farming!

Logan is definitely the Wolverine film we needed, and a fitting send off for Jackman and Stewart. The former wanting to retire from the role, the latter being old and probably just not necessary for any future films. Definitely go see Logan, just don’t bring your kids.

Timing is everything. And I don’t think that Yimou Zhang, director of The Great Wall, intended for his alternative fantasy epic to tie in at all to American Politics.

But here we are, soooo.

The Great Wall has nothing to do with America. Just an American stars in it, because the Chinese director wanted him. And again, it is an alternative universe, so it isn’t taking place in Modern current China. What I am really getting at is there are people angry about a white guy starring in a Chinese setting film. Well, the director is Chinese. And he is telling a story he wants to tell. And they are playing Europeans who end up in China. So there is no reason to cry afoul. Unless the movie is terrible.

Then? Then we can cry afoul together.

Boom, racism over.

Set somewhere before now and sometime after, I don’t know, the year 1,000, we are introduced to a few white Europeans. William (Matt Damon) and Tovar (Pedro Pascal), two mercenaries, working their way to China in hopes of acquiring some of this black powder they have heard about, a destructive weapon and powerful force. They are the only two remaining members of their group after a few set backs. And hey, they get attacked by some big green creature they have never seen before too.

While running from some locals, they find themselves at a wall. A GREAT WALL! With thousands upon thousands of Chinese soldiers. Now they find themselves prisoners and in a war they had no idea even existed.

But good news, there is another white guy! Ballard (Willem Dafoe), a monk looking guy, who came here decades ago also in search of the black powder, but was unable to leave based on what he learned. And he can fill them in on the stories. There is also a female general here, in wonderful blue armor, General Lin (Tian Jing), who helps fill in our story.

The Chinese are being attacked by the Tao Tie, a large swarm of monsters. Every sixty years they attack, evolving and learning tactics, in order to get through to the other side. There is a Queen that controls them all, with every beast working for her in order to feed her. If she eats enough, she will be able to create an army to take over the world, so they have to prevent her from getting to their capital. Easy enough!

But can two extra soldiers really help? Sure, if they have some new ideas and have fought in many wars before this. Like mercenaries. Hooray!

Also featuring Andy Lau, Hanyu Zhang, Kenny Lin, Eddie Peng, Xuan Huang, and Lu Han.

We straight up got the Chinese Power Rangers leading this army.

Th Great Wall is a weird movie. Bizarre, really. It is a film that stays true to its roots and gives us a unique story.

When I say it stays true to its roots, I mean that it definitely feels like a Chinese movie. It fits the directors style. It is not overly Hollywoodized despite the Western cast members and writers (of which there was six)! The dialogue is shit, some build up scenes are rushed, but most of the focus is on the action, the mythology, and the colors.

The colors Duke! The colors! I loved that the outfits were stylish and seemingly useful. Each faction of the army with specialized weapon styles and tasks had a colorful cloak and armor to tell them apart to help with formations and look spectacular on the screen. I am especially impressed with the Crane Corps, all female fighters wearing blue. Their speciality was exciting, and it reminded me fondly of a Final Fantasy class system.

The ending was unfortunately a bit rushed. Moving the climax of the film to a new location put a damper on it for me. The CGI felt a bit weaker then too, with a lot of strange character actions.

Most of the characters were pretty two dimensional. But the film is weird. And it is pretty. So it has its uses.

When John Wick came out, I missed it for awhile, and everyone got mad at me for not watching John Wick. So I saw it a few months after the fact, thought it was interesting, but honestly, never rushed back to see it. Didn’t feel like a double watcher for me, is all.

But I was still excited to see John Wick: Chapter 2, because if anything, I like Keanu Reeves as a person and want the most exciting things to happen to him.

And besides, we need more action films where the hero actually reloads his gun and can get hurt.

But first, a reunion we have long been waiting for.

Chapter 2 takes place a little bit after the first film. Wick (Reeves) has a new dog now, but no name. He is still on a rampage, getting things back, finally getting his car. And once he returns, he can retire in peace. But right after he finishes burying his gun, a visitor appears at his door, some dickweed named Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio). Wick owes D’Antonio a favor, a blood favor, because D’Antonio was able to get Wick out of the killing game in order to retire.

But since Wick un-retired for a bit, D’Antonio is going to use his blood favor to make Wick go on one more mission for him. D’Antonio is going to use Wick to kill his sister, Gianna D’Antonio (Claudia Gerini). She has a seat in some international assassins council, and Santino wants it. Wick is forced to, based on these same council rules, despite the fact that killing a council seat holder also gets him in trouble with people on the council.

He is in a lose lose situation, but it is clear that when he does it, everyone will be gunning for him, and Wick will be gunning for one man: Santino.

Also featuring Ian McShane, Ruby Rose, Common, Lance Reddick, Laurence Fishburne, and John Leguizamo.

Something seems in common between these two.

I am actually having a hard time talking about John Wick: Chapter 2. I liked it as a movie, that is for sure. The first movie was very weak on plot, but still entertaining. It had a lot of mystery. In this film, the plot is technically still weak, still mysterious, but also something that answers a whole lot about their world. Secret cabals of assassins, rules for them to follow, safe zones, rules, rules. So many rules.

And you just jump into the world they created. It overwhelms you at first, characters come in with pasts that intersected with Wick that we don’t fully get explained nor do they choose to ever explain them. You just have to run and gun with the rest of them.

As for the action, it is at times non-stop and seemingly realistic. Outside of how many punches Wick can take in the face. He is also given bulletproof suits, they stop the puncture, but they still give him the forceful pain. And hey, he reloads his weapon when he runs out, he replaces his guns all the time, and there are some seriously intense fights. His two bouts with Common are pretty good, and the entirety of the catacombs escape was some of my favorite parts.

If anything, the ending is a bit disappointment because they are turning it into a trilogy and not what feels like a self-contained story like our first film. A great trilogy will have what feels like a complete story on each part, that enhances the whole. So as long as Wick2 makes money, Wick 3 will hopefully finish his story, and be a little bit more than a blood bath.

The Legend of Tarzan came out in the coveted July 4th weekend, because…well, I don’t know why.

I guess generic action movies might make bank then. Well, it hit better than expected levels, given that it opened against The Purge: Election Year and The BFG, so there wasn’t a lot of real competition. It still failed to reach a positive number to break even given its extremely large budget and shit reviews.

And I avoided it because it just seemed extremely unappealing. It had that mostly-CGI lens behind it all, attempting to give a new retelling of an old story. It just made a lot of people shrug at its existence and ignoring it, not giving any fucks.

It is the sort of film that gives the bad name to summer blockbuster.

If we make it modern, we have to make it darker and edgier.

This takes place in Africa, during British colonial rule, specifically the Congo. Apparently the Belgians are close to bankruptcy, trying to bring roads and trains to the Congo, to get that sweet natural resource money. He sends down Léon Rom (Christoph Waltz) to secure the diamonds down there, but they are ambushed by a tribe, and the chieftain (Djimon Hounsou) will let him have the diamonds if they can bring him one man. You know. Tarzan

Turns out this story takes place after the normal Tarzan stories. Tarzan (Alexander Skarsgård) is now living in London with his wife, Jane (Margot Robbie). He finds out they want to send him down to the Congo to check on how things are going, as a sort of diplomatic trip, but Tarzan doesn’t want to go. Too dangerous. He is convinced by an American, George Washington Williams (Samuel L. Jackson), to go because he believes that the Belgians are abusing the Congo people as slaves in order to build developments, and Williams wants to find out.

Then of course eventually a raid happens, a trap! Jane is captured! Tarzan escapes with Williams! And they have to get her back, put a stop to the bad guys, and have some good old fashioned monkey fights.

Also featuring Jim Broadbent as the Prime Minister.

If I asked who represents Africa and who represents America here, would you know without context?

Reimagining a beloved character isn’t the worst thing ever. It can require creativity, but it always feels like a cheap story nonetheless. They are requiring the public to have certain thoughts and opinions on a subject so that they can be blown away. Reimagining so that a villain is a hero is usually shit. Reimagining in a modern context is usually lazy. But what about telling the story after the story? That can provide some interesting stories to discuss how things have changed and how the character continues their life in the world.

And theoretically, that is what this story is about. It could have led to amazing things! But you know what it led to? Tarzan, going back to the jungle, swinging on vines, fighting people, teaming up with apes, and standing shirtless rain or sun. What we got is a very standard Tarzan story, despit the premise of a different sort of Tarzan story.

And don’t worry. For those saying “Hey! It is different because we don’t see him growing up as a kid with the apes, learning to swing, meeting Jane for the first time!” Nope, we still get that. Because just in case you are unaware of Tarzan, they have flashbacks for us. Baby and young Tarzan. And meeting Jane. That makes this a regular Tarzan movie, plus some extra. You should definitely feel ripped off.

In addition to all of that, it looks terrible when they have to go full on CGI. The big fights with the apes. Swinging on the vines. Just background jungle scenes in general. It has a darker tone too.

I don’t want to compare this to The Legend of Hercules, because that film is definitely a far worse overall movie (and this one is at least coherent). But they are clearly going for the exact same market here, and that is probably the reason it has been so dumbed down and made so pointless.

The Legend of Tarzan is a waste of time, but not the worst thing in the world.