Tag: Action

I am so disappointed in myself for taking so long to see Deepwater Horizon. I am a goddamn geophysicist. And teacher. And movie reviewer. But geophysicist first.

And you know what? The BP oil spill in the Gulf was bad, it was terrible, but at the same time, certain aspects were completely overblown, public opinion was driven from emotions and not from science, and blame was thrown around all over the place.

But reality isn’t simple, a lot of people were involved, and a lot of processes and safe guards went wrong or were ignored to allow it to happen. And yeah, it sucked. But still, it happened only six years ago and doesn’t seem like the type of film to warrant a movie at all. Some shit went wrong, and some environment got fucked up.

Are they going to celebrate it? Fear monger it? What is the message? These are the questions I will ask myself and why I want to even see the movie.

I can confirm from my many years as an alive person that this is indeed a drill.

The day began like every other day for Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg). Hours of passionate love making with his wife (Kate Hudson) and sausages for breakfast.

Just kidding, he woke up, talked to his kid, heard a report on oil drilling, then left to go to his job for the next three weeks. He is on a crew on the Deepwater Horizon which is working on a borehole in the Gulf of Mexico. His boss is Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell), head of safety supervisor guy, and he is angry when they land, as the Schlumberger crew is apparently heading home early. They didn’t do all the safety tests!

Apparently because they are behind schedule, BP is getting impatient, and the people they sent to check things out (John Malkovich and James DuMont) are getting antsy. Needless to say, things get rushed, bad things happen, and a few people die in the process.

Also featuring Jason Pine, Jason Kirkpatrick, Gina Rodriguez, Ethan Suplee, David Maldonado, Dylan O’Brien, Douglas M. Griffin, and Brad Leland.

Not to mention they get about 10% more dirty than normal.

It turns out that this movie had a few things they wanted to cover. That people died during this accident, and to honor them with this film. Also that the main crews who were working were not to blame and the entire thing is BP’s fault.

And there is where some of the major fault for this film lands. It is hard to not have biases against films based on real life, and this one decides to run with the bias that the average American has taken. It is not using the film to right wrongs or tell actual true events. It is just telling us events based on what people want to hear.

Unfortunately, those biases cannot get out of my head and the film ends up taking a ding for that.

On its own, the first half of the film is interesting enough. The beginning is a bit corny, but the lead up to the events, the characters, they felt like a bunch of real people not just potential victims. They had their own voices. It is what really helps sell the whole film.

Things start to fall apart in the film when things start to fall apart. The explosions, the saving, the pain, the people jumping into the sea and the rescue? They all just felt like noise, like filler. Given how recent the events were it felt like the film was almost celebrating the disaster by making it take half of the film.

Deepwater Horizon is a strange event to make a movie about, has its moments, but also has its biases and excessive flair.

Max Steel is a movie I figured I saw before, or heard about, but everything I knew was wrong.

I was thinking it must have been some modern kids show, but I was wrong. Maybe a kids cartoon that I saw once a long time ago? Oh yeah kind of! I never saw the show at all, but existed a decade and a half ago, for about two years. And then apparently a lot of direct to DVD movies and toys.

So this is a franchise that some people, somewhere, care about? It just seems like a weird very niche thing to resurrect, literally hoping children who watched the show at the time will go and see the movie. The movie that had no advertising that came and went and is sneaking out to DVD like it probably should have done first.

Regardless of how it goes, this screen grab is unintentionally hilarious.

Don’t worry, the main character’s name isn’t Max Steel, it is Max McGrath (Ben Winchell)! And he is a high school student, living with his mother (Maria Bello), and for whatever reason they move around a lot. This is the 8th or 9th time they have moved, because of issues. They might have said more details, but my mind has blanked out big portions of the film.

He goes to school, flirts with Sofia Martinez (Ana Villafañe), they do some things, and then a mysterious man shows up at their door. This man is Dr. Miles Edwards (Andy Garcia), who knows the mom and has been sending presents occasionally. He knew Max’s dad, but his mom doesn’t talk about the dad a lot, nor how he dies.

Max’s Dad worked for some place called N-Tek, that does tech stuff and wants to protect to the world, and that is where Miles works as well. And this place is close to where they live now, oh man!

This is a lot of dumb set up. Max gets these weird powers to control electronics kind of. An alien named Steel (Josh Brener) shows up, talks a lot like an ADHD kid, and wants Max to help them stop bad things. They can even merge together to make a fighting suit thing. Ah, superhero time!

You know, like people cheating on their taxes. Take em down Max Steel!

About five minutes into the film, my brain checked out. Something about the movie just immediately turns me off. They are using nice cameras, and that somehow seems to add to the woes. Everything is so crisp like a commercial, but then we have moody cloud backgrounds. It is trying to show angst early on through visuals and it just looks gross.

The characters are not people to root for or care about. Winchell is not charismatic nor is he strong to carry the lead in a film like that.

Everything just feels drab and it becomes a surprise when they finally introduce Steel, who is way too upbeat and talkative given the tone for the rest of the film.

The plot may be confusing, it might not, I am not sure because it was just so hard to care about. The final fight with the bad guy, Garcia’s character, completely forgettable.

It is just Max Steel has absolutely nothing going for it. What is worse about it is that it had so little going for it, I don’t remember enough about it to even complain.

I don’t inherently hate remakes. There should be a reason for them though. Maybe technology has advanced to tell the story in a better way. Maybe the original copies are crap. Maybe the original films are crap. Maybe there is a good way to do a modern update. Just have a reason. A scene for scene remake usually feels like a waste of time.

When people heard about the Ben-Hur remake, they went ballistic. And it is hard to blame them. It should be noted that the “original” Ben-Hur was actually a remake itself. That’s right, we got Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ in 1929! But the reason it was remade is because they wanted to go balls to the wall crazy with it. The director William Wyler wanted authenticity, real chariot scenes, and shit, they got Charlton Heston!

It is a technological epic film that is still watched and enjoyed today. So yes, there seems little reason to remake it outside of a potential cash grab, which is what the studio was hoping for with an over $100 million budget.

They really just wanted to nail the chariot scenes. That would have made it ideal.

Judah Ben-Hur (Jack Huston) has a ridiculous name, but hey, he is made up so it is okay I guess. He is Jewish and a prince, and his family is awesome. They adopted a Roman boy too into their family, Messala (Toby Kebbell), about the same age and they are great friends. They chariot race and all that shit. The mother is played by Ayelet Zurer, and sister by Sofia Black-D’Elia. Messala feels weird though and leaves the family to join the Roman army, while Judah decides to marry a slave (Nazanin Boniadi).

Years later he returns, a great soldier now and Judah wants him to be an informant. A lot of people hate the Roman rule now in Jerusalem and want to rise up. He lets Judah know that a new governor, Pontius Pilate (Pilou Asbæk) is on the way. And when he shows up, a guy Dismas (Moises Arias) tries to kill him and fails.

This causes their palace to get overrun and Judah takes the fall for Dismas. His mom and sister are crucified, and Judah is sent to be on a ship to be a rower in the wars. Fuck. Also he meets Jesus (Rodrigo Santoro) when getting walked and whipped down the street. Needless to say, the brothers get mad at each other, a lot more shit happens, and some people get hurt in the process.

Also starring Morgan Freeman, Marwan Kenzari, and James Cosmo.

Et tu, Morgan Freeman?

Eyuuch. Oh man. There is bad, and then there is this Ben-Hur remake. This film tried to recreate an epic, but in a modern way. And despite going for an epic, it made it only 2 hours long to tell the same story, in 90 minutes less time. The original was slower, but it moved at a pace very deliberate to make sure everything was clear, motives and other wise.

This is a modern movie, so it is rushing right out of the gate and forcing you to keep up. It has a lot of region specific actors in side roles, and gives us a couple of white British people leads. I felt a bit lost very early on, despite being a little bit familiar with the story and it never really got better.

In fact, for those watching it, they will quickly realize that this is not a movie they should invest their time in. They will either shut it off, or play on games on their phone throughout it. The filters used to give it the old time feel make it actually just a pain to watch.

In addition, it reminded me of other recent bad “Ancient” movies like Immortals or The Legend of Hercules. No, it didn’t have CGI magic or anything, but just that bastardization of the past feel.

Even the chariot scene doesn’t save it. We have laws now that prevent any animals from ever being harmed now, so it doesn’t look as real as it did a long time ago. It feels fake, it feels processed, and it fails to keep any interest.

Ben-Hur is the remake no one wants, done in a way no one cares about, and was apparently a movie no one saw either, for good reason. Big pass.

After the success of my Saw Franchise review as a Milestone Review, I knew I wanted to do it again at some point in the future. Films that were mostly too old to be reviewed individually on the website, but as a whole, could make a pretty decent Milestone Review investment, for whatever relevant reason I could think about. And yes, I was a bit surprised that it was review 550, when it doesn’t feel like that long ago.

And I knew the next one of those I would want to do would be the Resident Evil Franchise for a variety reasons. The fact that this is review 1750 makes it extra special in my eyes.

1) When I moved to Ames, I started to review EVERYTHING that hit our theaters, both new and the cheap-o theater. I made that declaration the week AFTER Resident Evil: Retribution left the main theaters apparently. I had no worry, I would watch it when it hit the cheap theaters, because I would even watch “horror” movies now. And then the cheap theater never got it.

2) End of January, a new Resident Evil film comes out, and hey, I need to watch these in order to prepare for it.

And finally, 3) I own all five of these films on Blu-Ray, bought a couple years ago on Black Friday real cheap. So, uhh, I really need to watch them already. Also, I never rushed to watch them, because I have never really played any of these games. I played like, 5-10 minutes of Resident Evil 4, found it too scary, and didn’t touch it again.

And I will finally have some context for The Kick Heard Around the Video Game Movie World.

Let’s talk about Resident Evil, the first movie based on a horror video game, based on the first horror action video game. This film starts us in the Umbrella Corporation facility. They do tech stuff around the world, basically Google, but they also secretly did weapon stuff around the world, making them filthy rich. After some disease juice gets loose in their facility, the AI who runs the whole thing (The Red Queen), kills everyone inside the facility. Every single scientist, worker, peon.

So a military group of soldiers are being sent down there to investigate why and to turn off The Red Queen. Before this happens, we see Alice (Milla Jovovich) waking up naked in a bathtub, in a mansion, with some amnesia. And that is when the soldiers bust in. The group, led by “One” (Colin Salmon) bring Alice along into The Hive (the name of the underground research facility) and let her know that she works for the Umbrella Corporation as well and is meant to guard the entrance. The rest of the team includes Michelle Rodriguez and Martin Crewes. They also have Matt (Eric Mabius) as someone who they recently arrested, and Spence (James Purefoy), Alice’s husband and also guardian of the mansion.

Don’t get your pants in a twist, this monster is coming.

When they get down there, they find destruction, death, and weird shit everywhere. Getting into The Red Queen’s server room is difficult and people die, but damn it, they shut down The Red Queen. Yay! Time to leave and go back to the fun outside in Raccoon City, good job everyone. BUT WAIT. With the AI shut down, all of the locks and operations shut down as well. And it turns out that the virus, the T-Virus, basically made zombies. And shit like that thing in the picture above to deal with.

Somehow Alice is like, super incredibly, awesome. She fights so well. Turns out that Spence is the one who spread the virus, because he was trying to stop Matt and his sister from telling the world about what they were doing. So Spence has to die, and Alice and Matt barely escape to the top before bad things happen, with Matt dying from a claw mark, the antidote so close… And then they are found by Umbrella operatives and taken away.

When Alice awakes, she finds herself in an empty hospital. After she gets out of there, she finds Raccoon City in ruins. Crashed cars, fires, and apparently the T-Virus got out and it is zombie time in the real world. MOVIE 2!

Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the extremely high bar setting subtitle, take place right after the events of the first film. Because of the team going in to capture Alice and Matt, they accidentally also let off a wave of the infected zombies onto the city. And this spreads like wild, against Umbrella’s interests. They set up a perimeter wall around the city and only have one area for people to leave, assuming they pass the test to show they are not infected or bitten. But when the dead get to that area to, they close off the last gate and leave the people inside to deal with it on their owns, even willing to fire on regular citizens.

And this is a problem. This is what Alice wakes up to. Umbrella tried to get its best scientists out of the city as well, including the inventor of the T-Virus, Dr. Ashford (Jared Harris). They were unable to get his daughter out though, Angie (Sophie Vavasseur), clearly the inspiration for The Red Queen. So he wants people to go in and find her, anyone really, promising them a way out.

It takes a lot of skill to keep that outfit together in a high action zombie apocalypse.

People like Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), an ex-cop who hated Umbrella, and her old friend, Sargeant Payton Wells (Razaaq Adoti). People like Umbrella soldiers Carlos (Oded Fehr) and Nicholai (Zack Ward). And eventually all of them meet up with a news reporter Terri (Sandrine Holt), and T.J. (Mike Epps), a guy with guns, and Alice and the girl.

Also running around the city is a giant monster, named Nemesis, working for Umbrella and killing soldiers, not citizens. He is controlled by Umbrella, namely Major Cain (Thomas Kretschmann). Eventually they find out that the monster is actually Matt, from the first on. He was experimented on, just like Alice, except she just got super strong and looked the same while he mutated as he was already scratched. Oh snap!

Also Dr. Ashford gets killed, a lot of fighting ensures, and the survivors escape on a helicopter as Raccoon City is fucking blasted with a nuke! Their helicopter crashes in the wave, Alice is killed saving the girl and Umbrella finds them some time later. Alice wakes up a few weeks later, in a Detroit Umbrella facility, by Dr. Sam Isaacs (Iain Glen), restores her own memories, breaks out and goes on the run with T.J., Jill, Carlos, and Angela, with Isaacs letting her run, knowing she is still controlled. Or something.

Exctinction takes us five years further into the franchise. The T-Virus has spread throughout the world, and basically life sucks. It is all desert-y and dead, very Mad Max-esque. Alice is now driving on her own, abandoning her friends because she is being tracked by satellite. She also has some sort of psychic powers now, thanks to experimentation.

Somewhere near Las Vegas is where we find them all now, Alice wandering and killing bad people and bad zombies alike. And a big caravan of survivors looking for a place to call home. It is led by Claire Redfield (Ali Lartner), and features some returnees like Carlos and T.J. Yay! No idea where Jill went. Some of the new “survivors” include a girl named K-Mart (Spencer Locke) and other actors (Ashanti, Christopher Egan, Matthew Marsden, and Linden Ashby).

Shit, sand got everywhere. I hate sand.

And uhh, well, eventually Umbrella attacks them again when they are in Las Vegas trying to get supplies. They want to go to Alaska, where they heard there is a settlement. More people die, and Alice goes to the local Umbrella facility to put a stop to them and take their helicopter, so the survivors can go. And she does that!

Inside the lair is of course Dr. Isaacs again, but this time he was weak, so he injected himself with the T-Virus too. This turned him into a hybrid fighting entity, with arms that could be elongated with tentacles. Fun! Alice kills that guy, finds out that this facility has hundreds of Alice clones, and she plans to use them to take down Umbrella. Looks like they are located in Tokyo for sure now, they didn’t like Isaacs, and some guy in glasses (Jason O’Mara) is the new, bad guy. Survivors to Alaska, Alice plans to take out Tokyo Hive, end of film.

Afterlife begins with showing how Tokyo got infected. Then we see Alice storm in after Extinction, clone army and all, and clear house. But Wesker (Shawn Roberts), Mr. Sunglasses himself, now played by a new actor, escapes. During their battle, he removes Alice’s super powers, of which she is happy, they both crash and explode and somehow, Alice survives. So she makes her way to Alaska.

There she is attacked by Claire, with a metal spider on her chest. Once she removes it, Claire stops, with some amnesia and doesn’t talk. But Alice finds no other survivors, just a lot of planes and emptiness. So she flies a plane to LA with Claire and lands on top of a prison with some survivors flagging her down. The survivors include Luther West (Boris Kodjoe), Crystal Waters (Kacey Clarke), Angel (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), Bennett (Kim Coates), and a prisoner who calls himself Chris (Wentworth Miller).

Indoor rain scenes are all the rage these days, not at all for sexual reasons either.

And yeah, they are now in a prison, surrounded by zombies. Not just zombies, but a giant one with a big axe/hammer weapon, called Axeman. Turns out Arcadia, the Alaskan settlement, was actually the name of a ship, which is off the coast. They want to get to the ship, to see the other survivors, makes sense. So they do that. They escape, some people die, but when they get to the ship, turns out it also is an Umbrella trap.

They have everyone in tubes under ground, for testing or who knows what. And surprise! There is Wesker again, this time, super super fucking powerful, and fast, and he can regenerate. Much fighting occurs, eventually he is on a ship that explodes and everyone is free! Yay, the survivors are freed from the tubes, when…suddenly! More Umbrella ships show up, with guns. And our old friend, Jill Valentine, now blonde and not at all looking like her former self. But she has a robot spider on her chest, and then…movie ends!

Don’t worry, at the start of Retribution, we will see what immediately happens to Alice in crew, but in slow motion and backwards! Then she will tell us about the first four movie plot, then it will show the attack in regular motion at regular speed. Then we find Alice waking up in a suburban house, with a husband, a deaf child Becky (Aryana Engineer) and no zombies. Weird. Okay. Until zombies attack their neighborhood! Lot of people start dying and of course, then real Alice wakes up, again, in an Umbrella facility.

Sigh. Okay. But the computer that runs it starts to malfunction. So she escapes, a lot of weird things happen, and somehow she finds herself in Tokyo right when the plague begins? What in the fuck? Blah blah action, blah blah plot, eventually we get some knowledge. She is in a large Hive base (They are all really big), but it is a testing facility in Russia. They built huge areas to simulate T-Virus attacks in a few major cities, to sell the tech to governments against each other. It is also underwater and under ice. But don’t work she is being rescued by…Wesker?! What, he survived?

Oh and Ada Wong (Bingbing Li) his assistant. Apparently they want to free her to finally bring down Umbrella, because now Umbrella is being run by The Red Queen herself. They now have to escape, with Becky (who things Alice is her mom, despite just being a clone), in a two hour timer before the facility explodes. Also rescuing her on the other side is a crack team of warriors. Including Luther West! Also Leon Kennedy (Johann Urb), Barry Burton (Kevin Durand), and two guys who are totally not as important (Robin Kasyanov, Ofilio Portillo).

Resident Evil always had the most appropriate outfits for fighting AND doing that BDSM thing.

That’s right, this is another movie where they have to escape a place before they all die. But this one features a lot of returning members, because apparently a lot of them were actually clones the whole time. So people from the first and second movie are back, just to fight her with Valentine, still controlled by a robot, while the base comes crumbling down. And more Axemen, zombies, infected, and guns.

Needless to say, eventually they win, and get picked up by Wesker. Where is Wesker? In the White House, with the “last remaining survivors” ready to finally rid the infected threat once and for all. Maybe.

Oh where to do we begin. I guess the first film. Despite having CGI that has aged terribly over the last 14 years, the first film in the franchise is dreadfully okay. The acting isn’t great, but the concept it is introducing is original for the time and it creates a potentially scary situation. Out of all the five films, it is the scariest because everything is new, but again, bad CGI takes away some of the frights. Some of the scenes felt straight out of a video game, but it still wasn’t high art in any sense of the word.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse introduces us to some video game characters and a lot more action. Action at the expense of horror. Like, there are no fears at all in this movie. The zombies aren’t scary, and Nemesis NEVER feels scary, just threatening and powerful. For a horror franchise to immediately drop large portions of horror is a terrible move to make. But at least this film feels like the next step in the franchise and continues the plot along decently, despite the dumb teaser at the end. It is still bad and should feel bad, but there were some attempts there.

Resident Evil: Extinction takes the series in a completely different direction than anyone expected. The point of it was to make a scarier movie with a lot of it set during the day instead of night like normal zombie flicks. The plot was a bit of a weaker point in this film as well, but it would have been stronger had the next two movies not done what they did. It did increase some of the horror elements from the first film, not to the same level, but that is why I left it as okay. Mad Max and Zombies is a fun crossover idea and the film once again got a closer to some sort of closure.

Wow how did Umbrella get their logo to burn on a building like that? Is that a metaphor?!

Resident Evil: Afterlife is where the franchise starts to hit garbage fire mode. To talk about both films, neither really seem to feature that strongly of a horror element. Once again, these films feel incredibly action oriented, with very weak plots. And by weak plots, I mean the films should barely exist. After the third film, we have Alice heading to stop Umbrella Corp’s main office in Tokyo. Awesome, she does that early in the film, then most of the film is instead dealing with this being stuck in a prison, trying to get on a ship situation. This is not really a new plot line from this franchise or from zombie films in general.

And in the fifth film, we start off once again LOCKED IN A GODDAMN UMBRELLA BUILDING. And the entire focus of the movie is to get out of the building. Just like movie one. Just like movie four. They are just rehashing the same plot line and not moving the plot along. Sure, at the end of the movie, they escape the place that they were. But they are solving problems that the films itself create.

After the third film, we can sort of assume where the franchise is going and will go. And instead of delivering that outcome, the fourth film is almost entirely a filler plot line. At the end of the fourth film, we know where the franchise should go, and instead of getting there, it is entirely filled with a different fucking filler plot line. They create and solve issues in the movie itself at the expense of telling a story and it is downright furious.

Sure, they might have some cool sequences in them. They were movies made for 3D and IMAX screens. But they abandoned the genre of horror, retold the first plot in worse ways, and refused to give us growth, which is goddamn necessary that late in to a franchise.

I can hope and hope amongst all things that the next film, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, will bring us the plot we have been looking forward to. But I honestly am just assuming it will also end on a bad cliffhanger and not actually be the final movie. Because money. And dicks.

I don’t hate Sacha Baron Cohen as an actor, I think he can be amazing. He just lets himself get into a lot of shitty roles. He still always gives it his all.

The Brothers Grimsby is one of those shitty roles. I didn’t really know what it was about. But it did have a bit of genius advertisement campaign.

It went on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to show a clip, but made sure to show a clip that could not be shown on TV. A gross, over the top, cringey clip. But since it couldn’t be shown, instead they just showed the audience flipping their shit. Of course that went rival, and hey, probably more people went to see the movie. Good job PR company.

Oh. Um. And this is a bad job, PR Company.

Nobby (Sacha Baron Cohen) is a simple man living in the small town of Grimsby. He has a wife (Rebel Wilson), 11 kids, and an empty room. The room is for his brother, Sebastian (Mark Strong). A long long time ago they were separated thanks to the foster system, but Nobby knew that one day he would meet his brother again, and damn it, he needed a room for him.

Nobby likes to drink, watch football, and party. But then he finds out the location of his brother! He has to go to a big charity event to find him, but when he does he gives him the biggest of brotherly hugs. This causes Sebastian, a trained government assassin, to kill the wrong target and get himself into noodles of trouble.

Now Sebastian has to go on the run, while dealing with his incompetent brother. His brother being there is also his saving grace, because no one knows he exists, so it gives him a place to hide and let all of this blow over.

Also starring in this cesspool: Ian McShane, Penelope Cruz, Sam Hazeldine, Isla Fisher, Scott Adkins, Annabelle Wallis, Gabourey Sidibe, and poor Barkhad Abdi, who is just willing to take any job really.

I’m not drunk, you’re a pool table!

Want to know what the gross scene was that they showed the audience? Fine. Strong and Cohen climb into the vagina of an Elephant to hide from pursuers. While hiding, a male elephant decides to go for it and so they are crammed in there, with a large elephant penis coming in an out. Cohen knows it can last for hours, so they actively try to help the penis ejaculate to make it end. And it of course ends with elephant semen. But wait, there ends up being a huge line of elephants ready to jump on, giving them hours of cramped in a vagina, ejaculating elephants fun.

Okay so typed out that is terrible. Watching it is gross (but don’t worry, it doesn’t look incredibly realistic, it just looks stupid and a little gross). Having gross scenes in a movie does not make the movie terrible, being overall terrible and unfunny does that.

There are quite a few “outlandish” scenes in the film that will make an ordinary viewer just want to turn it off. A very long joke about sucking out venom out of a penis. The first picture alludes to the seduction of a woman who doesn’t have the normal standard of beauty. Jokes about AIDS and Trump (before it was fashionable, still dumb jokes) and of course a very weak plot line.

There is just nothing amusing or remotely interesting in this film. Cohen is over the top, he is always over the top, but the film is shit and really can hopefully be easily forgotten from my existence. After I finish typing up my worst of the year list.

A lot of hopefuls out there were hoping that Passengers would be our next great Sci-Fi film. There seems to be one every year. Last year we had The Martian, year before that was Interstellar, and before that was Gravity. We’ve consistantly had one amazing one a year that blew the rest behind.

Passengers was certainly the most advertised coming out this year, including a sweet near Christmas release. But it was too slow.

Not only did we have Arrival already this year, which clearly took the title, but we also had Midnight Special, which I think needs to be on its own pedestal as well. That’s right. Two groundbreaking, well done, science fiction films this year. And neither one of them is named Passengers.

“But we are the only one to actually be set in space! Come on, space suits!”

There is a big ship out there, named Avalon, and it is going to Homestead II. And Earth like planet that they are going to start building colonies on, because Earth is super damn crowded. The trip takes 120 years, so everyone aboard the ship is in a hibernation sleep. Five months before they get there, the crew will wake up, and four months before they get there, the 5,000 passengers will wake up. There they can start to mingle, party, hang out, start thinking of ideas, before they land. Good times.

Until it goes through an asteroid field 30 years into the trip, hitting a few big things. And one of the pods stops working, waking up the passenger inside. Jim Preston (Chris Pratt), engineer/mechanic guy, finds himself alone on a giant space station. He has computers to talk to, and a robot bartender named Arthur (Michael Sheen), but that is it. He cannot go back to sleep in the pod, and there is still 90 years left on the voyage. That’s right. He will die on that ship, old and alone, with no one to help hi.

Jim lasts a whole year almost before thinking about killing himself. But then he sees a girl in a pod, Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence). He falls in love with her, learns everything about her in her profile, and she gives him a reason to go on with his life. And then he does something else. He wakes her up. Sure, he basically condemns her to die also on this ship, but now he has a buddy who will hopefully love him back! Hooray!

Also, problems on the ship still keep happening, Laurence Fisburne is eventually in it, and action, adventure, explosions.

The finest drink in the entire galaxy.

I think inside of Passengers is an extremely solid film. It could have been a more serious drama, really deal with the ethics of his decision and how it will affect them for the rest of their lives. But Passengers didn’t want to keep it really serious. It wanted to be more romantic and more…action-y.

And the last act really does kill it. If it had none of the explosions, the deftly engineering skills, the potential of self sacrifice, the crying and screaming, it could have been a better film. It instead went a more Summer Blockbuster route and gave us a weaker story. The problem with the more action scenes is that they seemingly came out of nowhere. Oh yes, there were hints, but it jumped from a 2 or 3 to an 11 out of nowhere, just because the plot demanded it. The build up was bizarre, especially because the cause was something that started over two years ago.

You know what though? That still didn’t kill it for me. The ending after all of the action could have still had some really beautiful moments. They even hinted at it. (POTENTIAL SPOILERS). But instead of seeing any of these great growing old scenes, we are instead just transported to when the crew wakes up five months before landing, to see all the changes done to the ship, with a Lawrence voice over explaining it to them. And it just falls so flat.

So the rating here is partially for potential. Pratt and Lawrence aren’t bad, they aren’t just given enough to really work with. There are times when the emotions run real (After the reveal of what Pratt did), but they don’t fully go where they should to make it a very emotionally investing film.

Passengers could have been a crazy third amazing Sci-Fi film of the year, but instead, it just wanted that blockbuster money.

A Christmas release? Could it finally happen? Could Assassin’s Creed be the chosen one?

Ever since Super Mario Bros. we have been turning video games into movies and hoping it would finally work. Some early examples like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat at have their moments, but still fall short and feel cheesy. Other noble attempts include Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, and Final Fantasy: Advent Children is one that I personally adore. But year after years they are met with criticism.

They try and provide fan service but if they do too much they don’t make an understandable film for those who don’t play the game. If they abandon the game, fanboys get mad. And yes, most just don’t try.

But in a year with FOUR movies based on video games (Ratchet & Clank, Warcraft, The Angry Birds Movie) Assassin’s Creed has the potential to finally break the mold. It has well liked actors, a director with a vision, and it is based on a game with a decent story.

And hey look, fights! Most video game movies have these!

In this world, there is a secret order of Templars and a secret order of Assassins. The Templars wants to find the legendary Apple of Eden, which holds genetic code and if they get it, apparently they can control everyone’s free will? Crazy yeah. The Assassins don’t like that, and they want to stop them, because they like free will.

In modern times, Cal Lynch (Michael Fassbender) is getting executed in Texas for murder. His dad killed his mom way back when and he is violent too. But after his “Death”, he finds himself woken up in Spain in an Abstergo Industries compound. He is not dead! According to this doctor lady, Sofia (Marion Cotillard) he is no longer a prisoner, but if he helps them out, they will give him a new identity, wealth, and he will live out his life.

It turns out that one of Cal’s relatives in 1492 was one of those Assassin people! And that guy’s DNA also runs in his blood. Abstergo has developed a machine that will let someone experience these DNA memories as if they were real, in order to gain knowledge. They believe that Cal’s ancestor, Aguilar, was the last person to see the Apple of Eden, and they want it, damn it.

So Cal has to deal with his past anger, his current anger, and determine how much he wants to help out these strangers in exchange for a whole new life. But hey, maybe these memories on their own can give him a whole new life. A whole new…Assassin life.

Also featuring Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson, Charlotte Rampling, Michael Kenneth Williams, Michelle H. Lin, Denis Ménochet, Ariane Labed, and Essie Davis.

This whole scene feels like a “Previously on The CW” advertisement.

If I could wipe away the memory of the many hours I have spent playing these games, in order to give an unbiased review, I would. But alas it is all still a part of me, despite being a new story.

The film was an unfortunate mess. It begins with scrolling text as a quick way to introduce you to the plot, but it will make those not knowledgable with the game roll their eyes. After the exposition, we still take awhile to get to the main point of the story, where they have to give even more explanations to show how it is a story within a story. The time spent just setting things up will make the casual viewer bored or the at the very least, confused.

The ending is also a huge mess. It goes past the logical ending point to maintain some mystery and instead tacks on an additional ten minutes that drag it out needlessly. I am advocating that a more open ending would have done this film wonders for once, as it badly wants to become a franchise.

But it isn’t all bad. In a way, Assassins Creed is really just a disappointment. Fassbender is excellent in this film, he feels tortured, morally confused, and is a nice lead. The action sequences get really intense at points with a few callbacks to the series. The biggest callback are the leaps of face, which take forever to actually occur and are mostly teased out and ruined. It didn’t have too many game call backs though, which will disappoint those fans of the series.

Having the Spain portions in Spanish did add a nice element to it. Only a few real historical connections to the events though. If they had instead picked the original games story it might have allowed a better plotted movie.

It is still relatively nice to look at. It isn’t anywhere close to Macbeth levels of cinematography, but it is still above average.

Assassin’s Creed was supposed to be the chosen one of video games, especially after Warcraft. While still better than the norm, it was still unable to raise the bar that much higher on the video game film.

I wrote a shit ton for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Like, 1300 words or so. I had to explain my history with Star Wars, my avoidance of hype, and the film itself, so it was a lot to say. Overall, I enjoyed it, but it had its issues. I won’t reharp on any of that here.

I will instead just talk about Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and spin-offs. When they announced the new episodes and the spin-offs, I was honestly more excited about spin-offs. Finally, stand alone stories that don’t involve a Skywalker. Of course then they announced a Han Solo prequel, which eh, whatever I guess. And I will sound hypocritical when I say I sincerely hope one of these movies ends up being a solo Obi-Wan Kenobi film, because I loved Ewan McGregor in that role.

The first spin-off makes sense. It is something giving us a whole lot of new characters, while also keeping it relevant to the main story line. It is a safe beginning, while also allowing them to show new characters for merchandising. Erm, for diversity. That is what I meant to say.

Oh please tell me I can have a Donnie Yen action figure now?!

Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) is a brilliant scientist, and unfortunately with that, great at building weapons. He was working for the Empire, but felt pretty bad, went off grid to live with his wife and daughter as a farmer. But then, Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) finds them and forces Galen to head back to the Empire to work on this Death Star thingy. This leaves his daughter alone, parentless, and pissed off.

Now older, Jyn (Felicity Jones) is a bit of a rebel. Not a Rebel, just a rebel. And then she gets taken up by some Rebels, including Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and his sarcastic strategy robot, K-2SO (Alan Tudyk). She gets pushed into a plan by the Rebel Alliance, wanting to use her to get to her father, Galen, before the Death Star is completed to put a dent into those dirty Empire scums.

And along the way they meet the blind Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen) who loves him some force, his friend Baze Malbus (Wen Jiang) who looks like Mickey Rourke in Iron Man 2 sort of, Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed) a pilot who wants some redemption. Also featuring Forest Whitaker, Alistair Petrie, Genevieve O’Reilly, and returning Jimmy Smits and James Earl Jones.

Oh yeah, and a strong female lead above this giant group of male characters.

Despite an over 2 hour run time, Rogue One flew by like a sweet, enjoyable breeze. The new characters were all three dimensional and most importantly, I cared about them. Even the one who ended up being sort of a recurring dick.

Jyn was a complex character and not just someone who seemed naturally good at every situation. I loved, loved, loved, Yen as Chirrut and happy to see him included in such a big movie. And K-2SO was a robot for my own heart. He wasn’t as amazing as HK-47 from KOTOR, but gosh darn it, he must be my favorite droid after him.

Despite knowing how the film has to end (right into Episode IV‘s lap), the journey becomes a thing of beauty. There is danger at every turn and there is a real feel that at any point, a character might not make it. If this dealt with any character from the original trilogy, then you would know they can make it through to tell their story. But these are new people, unknowns, they are expendable. And it was refreshing to see.

There are a lot of call backs to the original movies of course. This film is almost like a giant wink to those extreme fan boys out there, and I admit that I wrote down the parts where people laughed and clapped that I didn’t understand. Don’t worry, I asked them afterwards for each reference.

Rouge One is certainly a step in the right direction and will be a wonder for Star Wars fans and regular movie goers alike. But at the end of the day, this film doesn’t offer a lot of completely new elements to the franchise just yet. Like I already said, it was a good safe story to tell, keeping us in familiar territory. Once Star Wars gets away from the Skywalkers, Solos, and Death Stars, when it can tell a truly original story set in their universe, then it might truly reach a new greatness.

But until then, this is a good great stepping stone between the trilogies, with strong characters, and a film many will enjoy.

Hell Or High Water is a review I meant to have early in August. I mean, I even drove to a theater about 35 minutes away just to see it. I heard a lot of good things and I wanted to make sure I saw it before it was hard to come across.

And apparently a lot of other people heard the same news, because it was completely sold out. Sure, it was in a dinky 3 row theater, but those 15 or so people got there before me, and I got screwed out of a trip. So I saw Sausage Party instead and forgot about this movie.

But now Oscar season is rearing its ugly head. Good films are coming out in theaters. Good films are being released. People are talking, and I had not seen this movie yet. I knew that come hell or high water, I’d have to see this movie before December, or else I might get lost in the new film Oscar rage again.

Thems the laws, you gotta just follow them.

The story is about two brothers, a smart one, Toby (Chris Pine) and a convict, Tanner (Ben Foster). They are together robbing banks, like a bunch of western assholes. But they have some rules. Never the bundles, just the loose cash, just right when they wake up so no one gets hurt, and just from one bank, Texas Midlands Bank.

You see, their mom died and they are about to lose the family farm. She owed the bank moneys from mortgages and extra money for bank reasons, and unless they get $40,000 ish before the end of the week, the bank will take their home. The same home that just had a big oil deposit found on its land. The boys would like to get the money from the oil rights, and so would the bank, which is why the bank is moving so fast. The Texas Midlands Bank.

So they figure if they rob from the banks, they can use their own money to pay off the debt and live a life of somewhat luxury after that. Decent plan. They are in the middle of nowhere Texas, so law enforcement isn’t the best. They do have a pair of Texas Rangers (Jeff Bridges, Gil Birmingham) trying to figure out what the hell their plan is, which is becoming increasingly difficult with Tanner playing the wild card.

If they are lucky people will just assume 21 Pilots are committing these robberies.

Westerns are weird. A once popular as fuck genre now only has one or two movies a year. The good news is the people taking on these western films tend to want to make them a great watch, so they put a lot of detail into the setting, cinematography, and more. I don’t know a damn thing about the director, David Mackenzie. He has directed over fifteen things, and sure enough, I have only heard of this one. So it is a nice surprise when what feels like an unknown director putting out quality work.

The story has a large cast of extras, but really only the four important characters. It is about the relationship with the brothers, the vagueness of their past, their extreme situation and a whole lot of morally gray area.

The chemistry between Foster and Pine feels natural and believable as brothers. It is one of the strongest points of the movie and should be acknowledged. It might still fall to the wayside of Bridges, old as shit, and still kicking butt. His character isn’t just a smart detective who knows everything, he is a bit bumbling, but he gets the job done and you can feel his anger at points right off of the screen. Bridges is probably a lock for a Best Supporting Actor nomination.

It has good acting, visuals, story, and chemistry. So why did I not love it like everyone else?

Honestly, I can understand a slower movie, I love a few of the slower movies this year already. It just took me so long to really feel invested in the characters. Sure, I did get invested, but the beginning with the first robberies and the chases, it didn’t do a whole lot for me. It took too long for me to care.

Hacksaw Ridge, like most movies I saw in the month of October, I went in without knowing the actual plot and without seeing a trailer. I love it.

Here is what I did know, though. I knew it was about World War II. I knew it was directed by Mel Gibson, who hasn’t directed a war film in a long time. You know, Braveheart. And I naturally assumed it was at least 2.5 hours long and it would be unexpectedly graphic.

Oh and hey, it of course has Andrew Garfield. A generally solid actor, who has been solid post Spider-Man. 99 Homes was a surprising treat and I expect great things from him here.

Like I expect him to be able to take a hit from Private muscles over there.

Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield) is a weird guy. His dad (Hugo Weaving) served in WW1 and has never been the same, making him an alcoholic abuser of both his kids and his wife (Rachel Griffiths). After an incident where he almost killed his brother (Nathaniel Buzolic) in a fight, Desmond vowed to never hurt a soul again, going full Christian.

Years later, World War II is starting and his brother had left for the war. In fact, all of Desmond’s friends left for the war. It is his duty as an American Patriot to join his friends to help stop an evil threat right? But can he do that and NOT kill? Well, he has always been interested in being a doctor but didn’t even graduate high school. After he meets and falls in love with a nurse, Dorothy Schutte (Teresa Palmer), he is able to gain some knowledge.

So he decides to sign up as a conscientious objector, refusing to even touch a gun, wanting to serve as an unarmed medic. And yeah, a lot of problems happen, in boot camp mostly, but he is able to metaphorically fight his way through and get sent to Japan to face horrifying conditions, with one goal: Save a few lives. Also featuring Vince Vaughn as the Drill Sergeant, Sam Worthington as their Captain, and Luke Bracey as fellow private and asshole.

You want your group of soldiers and commanders that also appear in this film? Well, hold on to your helmets. We got Michael Sheasby, Firass Dirani, Luke Pegler, Ben Mingay, Nico Cortez, Goran D. Kleut, Harry Greenwood, Damien Thomlinson, Ben O’Toole, Richard Pyros, Jacob Warner, Milo Gibson, and of course, Richard Roxburgh.

And countless more names play rag doll dying soldiers on both sides.

Gibson is a sunnova gun if there ever was one. Because Hacksaw Ridge is a movie that just seems to hit every note perfectly. It is cheesy and gory. It is loving and unforgiving. It is a few types of movies all rolled up in one.

The time just flew by as well. I was worried that the film would end right after he finished boot camp. Boot camp had so many issues and struggles for him to get through, after what felt like a very detailed introduction,
and also a courtroom scare. It had so much going on, and we didn’t even get him over to Japan yet! That is the main crux of the film!

Because he has to do something in order for his story to be told. They advertise he is the only person to win a medal of honor without ever firing a weapon, so he must have saved his entire division somehow in very difficult conditions. As to how difficult and what he did, well, that is what the movie is going to show. But the things he went through are basically awe inspiring to anyone who would watch, even knowing there must be some level of fib being told.

And yes, the main character is Christian. That is an extremely vital part of the film: his faith and his beliefs. We are told them again and again, but it never gets hokey, it never gets annoying. It feels real and earnest without rubbing it in our faces. This is what a Christian film should like. Something where someone’s actions speak louder than words without hearing Jesus every minute. It has been straight up probably decades since we have had an actual great movie with a strong Christian focus, and that is the most incredible fact about this film.

Desmond Doss is an amazing American hero, and Mel Gibson gave him an amazing movie for us to remember him with.