I have no idea why I keep falling for this drek, 3.5 readers. Once upon a time, there were franchises I could always count on for a good time. Fast and Furious was one of them until they let me down in May with their latest monstrosity that they owe the fans an apology and a refund for.
But the Expendables? Nah. No way Stallone would ever do us dirty, right? RIGHT?
Wrong.
But let’s back up.
Schwarzenegger and Stallone were the top action stars of the 80s, even into the early 90s. Alas, Arnie made the mistake of running for govanator of Cal-ee-forn-ya in the oughts, which I say was a mistake because he wasn’t that much of a governor and he missed out on his chance to rebrand himself as an actor and take on roles where he plays older, wiser, mentor types. Maybe even bring some of his old properties back for one last ride.
Stallone has managed to do that with style. In the past 20 years he’s given us a couple of fairly decent Rambo sequels, as well as some great Rocky sequels. But arguably his best contribution was the Expendables, a trio of action films that served as love letters to the 1980s action flicks that made him famous, the ones that former 80s kids like this writer loves.
And while many moves lamely patch themselves together with pathetic, tired cameos, the Expendables excelled at cameo fan service, giving action stars of yesteryear huge roles with plenty of room to strut their stuff for the fans who have missed them oh so long. Past outings have seen Chuck Norris, Jean Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis, AH-nold, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Harrison Ford, well, basically anyone who has ever fired a gun in a movie before has been in one of these films and given plenty of time to shine. Not just a silly walk on but time to shine.
Were these flicks low on plot? Sure, but they still had a fun, rudimentary plot. Despite a huge ensemble cavalcade of characters, everyone had something important to do for at least a few minutes. It was a rockin good time.
Now comes this mess. My first complaint is a big one. Stallone is barely in it and he’s really the main reason you’d see it in the first place. Talk about a bait and switch. It’s like being sold a ferrari only to drive it home and find out it was a bunch of cardboard prosthetics propped up and painted around a 1977 Gremlin. I really am getting sick and tired of these movies that look good in the promos only to disappoint on screen but I wonder how many times I’ll fall for it before I stop bothering to buy a ticket altogether.
Stallone’s number 2 man, Lloyd Chrismas (Jason Statham) takes the lead, avenging the death of Stallone’s character Barney Ross against a pretty insignificant villain. Past flicks gave us action film stars like Van Damme and Mel Gibson chewing up the scenery while the baddie is rudimentary. Someting bad happened years ago and there’s a secret bad guy and you know what its all so stupid it’s not worth your time.
Megan Fox gets a big part and her hotness defies logic as well as my pants but even she can’t save this stink fest. 50 Cent stops by but even if he were an entire dollar he couldn’t do much.
Missing in action are Expendable standards Terry Crews (Hail Caesar) and Jet Li. No explanation given. I assume they just read the script and there wasn’t enough money to convince them to debase themselves. I wish Stallone and Statham felt the same way. Especially Stallone. I mean, come on man. You slap your name and face on this, your fans come out thinking it’s going to be a winner only for it to be a loser cash grab? That sucks.
I don’t really understand the fizzle. Surely there are plenty of action stars who want five minutes to ride again. Or maybe this franchise already gave them that. And if they’re all too costly, then don’t ruin the franchise with a lousy flick.
STATUS: Not Shelfworthy. At some point, doesn’t Hollywood owe us a duty to not make shitty movies? Shouldn’t all these people look at this script and say this really blows and we aren’t going to hoodwink fans who loved the past three into thinking 4 is going to be equally great? So tired of this.
This review is more than meets the eye, 3.5 readers.
The first live-action Transformers film from 2007 was pretty awesome, just as a showcase of what modern CGI can do. The franchise churned out several more Michael Bay helmed flicks after that, and they always lacked something that was hard to put a finger on. The 1980s cartoon show had heart, which may sound silly about a story about giant robots who turn into cars and planes and beat each other up, but there you go.
2018’s Bumblebee managed to capture some of that heart and we find it a bit more in this film, which is part prequel yet oddly enough, a reboot of sorts. FUN SPOILER ALERT: the movie opens the door for a future flick in which the Transformers team up with that other popular 1980s franchise, GI Joe.
Not gonna lie. Me 35 years ago would have soiled my tighty whities at the idea of such a film but today I already more or less know that Hollywood will get it wrong. Maybe they might surprise me but part of the problem is that these properties worked best during a long ago time, a time when people still believed in things like American exceptionalism, good vs. evil, doing the right thing, etc.
Anyway, the Maximals (robots who turn into animals) from the 1990s Transformers: Beast Wars cartoon get their turn to shine on the big screen. I was well into my teens then and more interested in Jenny McCarthy and Carmen Electra by then, so I missed out on the maximal craze.
One complaint might be the movie is called “Rise of the Beasts” yet the beast only show up at the beginning, a bit in the middle, then have their chance to shine at the end. This is still a flick largely about that old stalwart fan favorite Optimus Prime and his BFFs like Bumbleebee and Mirage. Also, there’s a girl bot named RC which is cool though I’ll leave it to you to think about how gender works when it comes to sentient robots sans genitalia.
Perhaps one of the greatest complaints about past Transformer films is that the humans add little to nothing but filler and useless blah blah blahing that delays the next robot fight scene. Here, the human friends to the bots include Noah (Anthony Ramos) and Elena (Dominque Fishback). Noah is an ex-soldier looking for work to support his sick younger brother. Desperate for cash to fund a life saving medical procedure, he steals a car that turns out to be Mirage, which I think the franchise has done the whole “a human thinks this is a car only to discover its a robot” routine a lot but WTF it’s Transformers so of course we’ll do it again. Meanwhile, Elena is a museum intern, knowledgeable in the ways of old artifacts and her knowledge of how the MacGuffin artifact the bots are fighting over comes in handy.
Plenty of celebrity talent in the bot voices. Pete Davidson is pretty great as Mirage, such that I didn’t even know it was Pete Davidson until I read it in another review. Pete Davidson usually just shows up in most of his roles and is like, “Hi. I’m Pete Davidson” and then he just acts like Pete Davidson.
Ron Pearlman voices Optimus Primal, the robot gorilla leader of the Maximals, Michelle Yeoh lowers herself to play a talking robot bird, fan favorite Peter Cullen returns to do his John Wayne-esque Optimus Prime voice, and Peter Dinklage voices scourge, the lead henchman sent to do the dirty work of the planet chomping Unicron.
SIDENOTE: I mean, the danger is that if the MacGuffin isn’t recovered, Earth will be chomped by a hungry giant planet eating robot but you never quite become afraid of that terrible fate because of all the action on screen vying for your attention.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. At the end of the day, it’s cartoony schtick meant for kids and for that audience, it’s certainly a crowd pleaser. I’m not sure any modern Transformers movie will be able to recapture the heart of the old 1980s franchise, but the good news is it seems the people behind the latest efforts are trying.
Oh! Hey by the way, did I mention this movie is set in 1994? So if you want to kick it to a bangin’ soundtrack filled with more 1990s rap than you can shake a stick at (Wu Tang Clan is the true star of this movie) then this flick is your jam.
It’s the Twilight Zone style show for the social media age and it’s finally back after a long hiatus.
BQB here with a review of episode 1 of the long awaited sixth season.
SPOILER ALERT: This isn’t so much of a review as it is a discussion so if you haven’t seen this yet, go watch it then come back and talk.
3.5 readers, if you’re reading this then chances are, you’re a nobody. Don’t feel bad. Most of us are and the good news is there’s a lot of safety in anonymity. Unlike the rich and famous, we can get away with a lot because no one cares about what we do.
But what if your favorite streaming service were to suddenly decide that your hum-drum life makes for good TV? Such is the case for Joan (Annie Murphy) a middle-manager at a tech company. Like all of us, she had dreams once, but now she just spends her days doing her corporate board’s dirty work, firing beloved employees for no cause just to increase profits. She feels dirty about it but finds no solace in her fiance, who she views as bland. Yet, she feels damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t, for she also has an ex wild man boyfriend who she enjoyed but ultimately understands that he’ll bring disaster back into her life.
And so, poor Joan feels trapped in the mundane when one day, she turns on Streamberry, a thinly veiled Netflix replacement, to discover a show about her life with the great Salma Hayek playing her with all of her dirty laundry hung out to dry. All of her indiscretions, infidelities and immoralities are laid bare for the world to see and oddly, in record time. The show churns out episodes so fast that it seems like no sooner does Joan do some inappropriate act that she thought no one saw that sure enough, that inappropriate act is streaming for the world to see.
After her lawyer investigates, Joan discovers that part of the terms and conditions of the long contract she signed when she signed up for the streaming service was to give the company all rights to make a show about her life. Through AI, the company is picking subscribers at random, following their lives via their cell phones and home cameras and creating computer generated shows about them. No writers or actors are needed. AI just takes scenes from subscribers’ real lives and provides dramatic flourishes, while actors have signed away their CGI rights for profit.
That’s right. Salma Hayek isn’t playing Joan. CGI Salma is and real Salma thought it would a quick buck to sign those rights away. In the hopes of grabbing Hayek’s attention and getting her to put the kibosh on the show, the real Joan starts doing horrendous, unspeakable, darkly comical things to the point where the real Salma doesn’t want her likeness associated with such depravity.
Shenanigans ensue as the real Joan and real Salma team up for a clandestine attack on Streamberry’s AI computer server and I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.
This is a rare light-hearted episode of black mirror. Usually, the show is quite dark and gut punching, as characters suffer irreparable damage and loss, forever doomed to experience terrible consequences. This one is actually quite funny.
“Absurd” I thought. CGI replacing real actors? That’ll never happen. Then I went to see The Flash last night and a CGI Henry Cavill did a brief cameo as did a CGI younger version of Nicolas Cage. CGI past versions of actors from DC superhero films from long ago also stopped by. So apparently, yes, Hollywood is looking for ways to make content with computers at a cheaper rate than what they have to pay real live humans.
And low and behold there’s a writer’s strike underway, with one of the chief complaints being that human writers are worried about being replaced by CGI writers. Could a CGI writer write better fart jokes than a human writer? Time will tell.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Credit to Netflix as with this episode, they basically admit that they invented the model of churning out unenriched crap at a rapid pace, content for the sake of content, just give viewers a neverending stream of new stuff to watch without worrying if its any good.
BQB here with a review of the Flash’s standalone movie.
3.5 readers, I’m going to separate this review into three parts: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Not to be confused with the Clint Eastwood film of the same name.
THE GOOD:
Overall, this is a good film. Worth your money and your time, enjoyable to see on the big screen.
The premise? Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) aka The Flash entered the criminal forensic profession as a young lad with the hope of proving his imprisoned father’s innocence and overturn his conviction for murdering his mother.
Alas, this plan is not going well. In fact, it’s going rather badly. So bad, in fact, that the Flash angry runs so fast that he discovers the ability to run through time. Ignoring everything he learned from Back to the Future, Flashy Boy tries to save his mother’s life but in so doing, enters an alternate world, similar to his own but in many ways different.
The Justice League as he knows it never formed, so instead, to foil an attack by General Zod (Michael Shannon), he teams up with Supergirl (Sasha Calle), Batman, but the elderly form of the 1989 film version (Michael Keaton) and a younger version of himself, obviously also played by Ezra Miller.
The film’s got a lot of heart, great special effects, and its good meditation on choosing to live in the present and make good decisions going forward, rather than dwell on past mistakes and tragedies. The scars from our past, painful as they may, made us who we are and one little change would throw everything off balance.
Fans of the 1989 Batman film will rejoice as their are many fun callbacks to that film, as well as to other old movies set in the DC universe.
THE BAD
While a fun movie, there are times when it feels like it’s not the best movie Warner Brothers could have made but rather, the best movie Warner Brothers is willing to pay for.
Gal Gadot, Ben Affleck and Jason Mamoa all reprise their Wonder Woman, Batman (the middle aged version from our timeline) and Aquaman roles from the Justice League film, but in brief cameos to help The Flash on his adventure. One wonders if WB would just drum up a great script and part with boku cash, they might be able to get the band back together for another go around.
But since they don’t want to, you get the Flash – and an alternate Justice League based in an alternate reality including Supergirl instead of Superman and 1989 Batman instead of Modern Batman, presumably because Calle and Keaton are cheaper than Henry Cavil and Ben Affleck.
THE UGLY
Ezra Miller has a lot of disturbing pervy allegations against him, so much so that it’s hard to believe this movie wouldn’t have been shelved if they’d been levied against a straight actor. The public will forgive WB for releasing the film this go around, though let’s face it, we’re all such lemmings we’d probably sit through anything released on a Friday night at our local cineplex. At any rate, WB spent big bucks making this movie and needed to get a profit by releasing it. However, in today’s “metoo” environment, I just can’t see WB allowing Miller to continue on as the Flash in a Flash sequel or any other DC movies.
A lot of squandered talent here because Miller really does play the role well. While we’ve seen many versions of Batman and Superman and we all have our favorites, I think Miller really captured the essence of the character as a spazzed out nerd, overworked and underappreciated, constantly dealing with the stress of superlife while suffering from anxiety and panic like the rest of us would in such a situation.
STATUS: Shelfworthy, though I get the impression that DC execs must have watched the last Spiderman movie where three film versions of Spidey teamed up and said “We need to do that!” There are times when the cameos of past DC film characters are a fun walk down memory lane and other times when you wonder why a studio gets to render CGI versions of long deceased actors into perpetuity.
Then again, there are a few CGI cameos from the likenesses of actors who are still alive and young enough to act but IDK why they’re digital except it cost less than it would to pay them to come to the set I suppose. I could be wrong but this might be the first film to capitalize on that.
SIDENOTE: 1989 Batman came out 34 years ago, but I remember being a little kid in the theater watching it with a sense of wonder like it was yesterday. Then I blinked and now I’m a middle aged geezer watching a film that’s partly an homage to it. Boy, this life went far too fast but I’d point out while movies today tend to be reboots, rehashes, and homages to older films, I wonder if 34 years from now, there will be many rehashes of films from today, when they rely so heavily on the nostalgia of past films now?
The bad news is that the DCU cinematic is in a sorry state of affairs. Warner Brothers, IMO, screwed the pooch, opting to rush flicks out in a frenzied attempt to compete with Marvel, rather than go the slow route and build a coherent universe where all the films connect to one another, as Marvel made. They might have lost profits by going slow in the beginning but now, as the Marvel universe begins to slow down and fizzle out, DCU would be hitting its stride.
Where DCU has done its best is with characters that heretofore never had much in the way of movie fanfare. Thus Wonder Woman and Aquaman have been knocking it out of the park. Meanwhile, Shazam, who is, one might argue, DC’s joke character (like how Antman is Marvel’s joke character), is also great. You would think old standards like Batman and Superman would be best but they’ve been done so much that apparently no one knows how to weave them into this world.
For those of you who don’t remember the first Shazam, Billy Badsen is a foster kid, very sad and lonely when a wizard bestows upon him god-like superpowers. By saying “Shazam!” he turns from wayward boy to adult champion (Asher Angel plays young Billy while Zachary Levi plays Shazam Billy.)
The cool part of a sequel is it gets to build the universe. You already learned the rules from the first film so now the writers can waste no time inviting you to play in the sandbox. Billy and his foster family of siblings all have Shazam powers now and they use them to save Philadelphia from catastrophe and villainy. Alas, they are often unappreciated as the populace wonders who appointed them to watch over the city and the news media focuses on their mistakes rather than all the lives they save.
Enter into this mix Hespera and Kalypso (Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu), daughters of the titan Atlas, who have a bone to pick with the Shazam family or Shazamily for an inadvertent mistake they made in the first film. The world, of course, is at stake and the sisters have all kinds of ghastly powers from being able to make people go insane to conjuring up dragons and monsters.
It’s up to the Shazamily to save the day and they’ll do so while navigating the pitfalls of growing up. When you have a movie about kids who sometimes operate in adult bodies, there’s always a line that has to be straddled about what is and is not appropriate, and the writers and actors walk it well with various jokes where the kids in adult bodies and adult actors playing those kids come across as naive and not understanding of various situations where an actual adult would know better.
Djimon Hounsou reprises his role as the Wizard who gave the kids their powers, at times glad and disappointed he did, depending on how well the battles are going.
Perhaps you might remember there was a Superman from the neck down cameo in the last film and at that time I opined it kinda sucked that WB/DC isn’t able to bring all their talent together in the way Marvel/Disney did. There’s a cameo from another top hero, this time from the neck up, indicating Shazam has convinced the execs that such appearances are worth the money. Still, while it’s a good movie, I just think DC missed an opportunity to really build a world the way Marvel did.
BQB here with a review of the Terminator’s foray into Netflix television.
Every man has a soft spot in their hearts for the top action hero of his childhood. I love Arnold Schwarzenegger just as my father loved John Wayne before me.
I always thought Arnold made a big mistake when he ran for governor of Cal-ee-for-ya. First of all, he wasn’t much of a governor and second, he missed the chance to reinvent himself in the 2000s, as his old frenemy Sly did.
But better late than never in this, Gov-a-nator’s first TV series. Seems blasphemous. Anything not a movie is surely below our favorite commando.
The premise? Luke Brunner (Arnie) is on the verge of retirement, both in his covert and overt lives. That’s right. He pretends to co-own a fitness equipment supply business with his BFF Barry (Milan Carter) while in reality, Luke is a veteran, globe-trotting CIA agent and Barry is his handler/computer expert.
His ex-wife Tally (Fabiana Udenio) and daughter Emma (Monica Barbaro) have long grown accustomed to Luke never being there for the important events in life. In fact, it’s starting to feel like Emma is following in her father’s footsteps as her relationship with boyfriend Carter (Jay Beruchel) is growing rocky due to her globetrotting job for a charity that brings water systems to third world countries.
When their paths cross on one last assignment, Luke realizes he has more in common with his daughter than he thought. Yup. The water job is just a cover for the fact that Emma is also in the CIA. The two have been CIA agents, lying to each other and believing each other’s false covers for years.
Ironically, the plot is pretty close to True Lies, one of the last great action films that Arnold ever made in his prime. Network TV just put out a True Lies TV show reboot that fizzled, so one wonders had that not happened, maybe Netflix could have ponied up the cash to reunite Arnold with Jamie Lee Curtis and Eliza Dushku so we can see what the Tasker family is up to these days.
Oh right. Netflix wouldn’t pony up THAT much money. But hey, at least Tom Arnold, who played Arnie’s BFF in True Lies, stops by in a cameo. IMO, True Lies and this part are the Tom Arnold’s funniest roles.
Rounding out the cast are two spies that work for Luke – Aldon and Roo (Travis Van Winkle and Fortune, he a stereotypical hunky studmuffin self-absorbed pretty boy type and she an out and proud lesbian with a mouth that delivers a quip a minute. The odd couple so odd it works friendship between these two is a highlight of the show.
As you might expect, Luke and Emma put their shock at discovering the other’s lies behind them quick and join forces to take down an international villain, with Luke’s team playing back up. The series moves about, from international adventures to shenanigans as father and daughter struggle to keep their lies straight with family.
Structurally, the show reminds me a lot of NCIS, where there’s an intrepid tough guy Gibbs, surrounded with comic relief underlings like Abby and McGee…except Arnold pumps a lot of comedic iron himself. An episode where he must force himself to look away as his daughter “honeypots” herself i.e. dances the wild mambo with a villain to get some world saving information is particularly funny. Another scene where a CIA shrink forces father and daughter to communicate with puppets that are replicas of themselves is funnier.
Sure, there are plotholes galore. It’s hard to believe a father and daughter would be able to learn the other has been lying to them for so long and be able to instantly get over it, but we don’t have time for them to go to a few years of therapy. Strangely, some of Luke’s CIA counterparts were always aware of Emma’s CIA status but never told him and he isn’t pissed at them either.
Special effects wise, its typical Netflix fare. Better than your average network show but not good enough to be a major motion picture.
At first, Barbaro comes across as one of many standard issue Netflix actresses – hot and gets the job done but you’ll forget her next year – except, she shines here with a few raunchy one liners you wouldn’t expect to come out of the mouth of a classy babe. Fun fact, she was the fly-girl in last year’s Top Gun: Maverick.
Meanwhile, Fortune Feimster gets her long awaited moment in the sun as Roo. She has long stolen the show with minor parts where she does the funny lesbian who says obnoxious, rude statements with oodles of misguided confidence. I’m not sure I totally buy her as CIA agent material because, you know, she’s fat but then again, it’s a solid, linebacker fat. She could really clothesline a dude and walk away no worse for wear.
Perhaps one criticism is that while the show is very funny, there are times when the humor makes it hard to believe these people are CIA agents. Everyone other than Luke and Emma seem to exist for comic relief and surely there needs to be a few more serious people on a CIA spy team.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. I agree with Luke that all these damn kids these days just assume everyone born before 1992 is an idiot.
BQB here with a review of Disney’s latest live action remake of one of their classic movies.
Ah, the Little Mermaid, that classic fish out of water (pun intended) story of whether or not the grass is really greener on the other side of the fence, or as Sebastian the Crab tells us, the seaweed isn’t always greener in somebody else’s lake.
It’s been widely lampooned online, from the dead-eyed emotionless talking animals (I can’t tell if Scuttle and Flounder like Ariel or want to kill her and eat her body) to the casting of an African American actress (much ado about nothing), it seemed like this would be more of Disney’s wokesterism run amuck.
But I gotta be honest. Even an only anti-woke curmudgeon like myself enjoyed it. The fun songs, the pageantry, the bright colors, the animation effects that take people and turn them into mermaids, it was all a lot of fun.
It’s the same old plot. King Triton’s (Javier Bardem) youngest daughter/princess, Ariel (Hallie Bailey), is a mermaid obsessed with the surface world. That’s a dangerous place, warns Triton, who forbids her from visiting the surface ever again, but kids will be kids and Ariel continues to defy her old man with BFFs Flounder and Scuttle (Awkwafina and Jacob Tremblay) while royal lackey Sebastian (Daveed Diggs) tags along.
When Ariel rescues Prince Eric from a shipwreck and restores him to life with her magic voice, a romance blooms but alas it’s not to be, you know, because I don’t want to come right out and explain it to you but he’s a dude and her lady business is all mackerel, just for the halibut (pa rum pum pum.) Oh, what do you know? I did spell it out for you.
Alas, Ariel is tricked into striking a devil’s bargain with sea hag Ursula (Melissa McCarthy), trading her voice for legs. Creepo that she is, Ursula puts her thumb on the scales, and it’s a mad cap race for the bird, the fish and the crab to help the now human mermaid woo the prince into a smooch before the passing of three days.
Hallie Bailey captures a lot of that Ariel charm, a combination of ambition and naivete, where the youth really want something but have idea the fire they’ll have to walk through to get it, or the burns they’ll suffer and maybe even inflict on others to get there. Diggs does a fine Sebastian impression. Jonah Hauer King is a pretty standard Prince Eric, but plays Ariel’s match, as he too wants more than what his family wants for him.
Jacob Tremblay is a good Flounder though are fishy friend doesn’t get a lot to do, I can’t remember if he had a lot to do in the original. Scuttle gets a gender swap, which I squawked at, at first, but then I mean, I’m not knocking Awkwafina, but come on. She does sound a little bit like a bird. She gets to flex her comedy rap muscles too.
Hallie Bailey really does shine in the role and doesn’t deserve the crap she’s getting. Her renditions of classic songs like “I Want to Be a Part of Your World) match the quality of the original.
Whether it’s the original or the remake, I always found The Little Mermaid to be one of the most bittersweet of Disney flicks, as it mimics a lot of what most kids go through as they grow up. They have things they want to do but then there’s also what their parents want them to do. Their parents want them to do things that are largely considered the safest route, because they’re older and have been knocked around by the world and since it didn’t kill them, they came out wiser for it. The kids want to do something else but are young, dumb and trusting, easily taken advantage of by the unscrupulous. If they aren’t lucky enough to navigate such dangerous waters to achieve their wildest dreams, then they do may become the old world weary parent urging their offspring to be practical.
Is the seaweed always greener in somebody else’s lake? Maybe. Maybe not. The problem is a) you know the seaweed in your lake and you can’t help but see all its faults, so to you it stinks but you don’t see the greenery another might see. b) the seaweed elsewhere might be truly green, but you won’t find out until you’ve abandoned your lake and the family the comes with it.
That and there’s the whole Ariel has to change and become a human thing. It’s what she wants and um, well changing your body from one form to another takes on a whole new controversial meaning today, but one might argue that Ariel should accept herself as the half-lady, half-tuna, all mer-woman being that God made her as and if Eric doesn’t want any scales on his man business then that’s his problem.
It’s either a tale about a young woman who bravely defies the odds to follow her dreams or a young woman who completely changes her entire self to make a dude happy, depending on how you look at it.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. I know a lot of people wonder why Disney keeps making live action remakes. I think it’s just to keep their famous core IP properties going and introduce them to new generations.
Yowza. What a stinkburger with extra turd fries this franchise has become.
BQB here with a review of this drek.
Believe it or not, 3.5 readers, but there was a time when for me, a new Fast and Furious movie was the action flick gold standard. I went it believing I would have a great time watching the wacky car stunt mayhem unfold across the big screen and ever since 2011, when the franchise reinvented itself, the flicks never failed to disappoint.
The first, which came out in what, 2001? It was new and original. It was quite toned down compared to today’s installments, but no one had really ever made a good movie about underworld street racing before. Flicks 2 and 3 were so-so, though 2 didn’t have Vin Diesel and 3 didn’t have Vin or Paul Walker. 4 tried to get the band back together but was kinda meh.
But then low and behold, 5, released in 2011, brought us to Rio, where the crew steals a villain’s ill-gotten loot safe by hooking it up to cables and dragging it down the highway whilst attached to twin Dodge Chargers with the Rock chasing them and boy howdy, did that ever signal that the series finally found a way to kick ass.
The next few flicks, all the way through 8, upped the game. They were always over the top and at times, quite stupid if you bothered to think about the physics and logistics of all the out of control stunts, but this new world of street racers and car crooks turned into a multi-ethnic, diverse group of hip hop spies working for the government to take down villains whilst driving awesome cars really, really fast was a lot of fun.
I was disappointed with Fast 9. Jason Statham and the Rock weren’t in it and their absence was felt, such that I realized they had been carrying the flicks on the backs for quite some time. Also, the metoo era had begun, so the movie was completely devoid of the scantily clad female tushies shaking around at underground street racing competitions, the loss of which were a blow to me, because where else will I get to see underground street racing tushies?
Ah, but then the Fast X trailers came out this year and they looked good. I was prepared to forgive the franchise for one stinker. Jason Statham was even featured in the trailers and he’s a personal fave.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. This one cranks up the stink to eleven, so let’s dive in and get this over with.
The film takes us back to Fast Five, the movie that took the franchise off life support and made it awesome. As it turns out, the Brazilian villain bested by Dom and company had a heretofore unbeknownst to us son played by Jason Mamoa, who at the time was really pissed off at the fast gang for his father’s death and vows revenge.
Why the revenge plot took 12 years from 2011 to 2023? Your guess is as good as mine but at any rate, son comes back to destroy and humiliate the fast crew at every turn. To his credit, Mamoa is the one saving grace of this film. We’re used to him being quiet, stoic and angry in other movies but here, he reminds me of the Joker, but a twisted version of the criminal clown who pumps iron and pops steroids. Constantly laughing, prancing about, cracking funny jokes and one liners – Mamoa chews scenery with glee and it was fun to watch him nail a completely different style than what he is used to.
But it’s not enough to bring the film from stink to pink.
Cameos abound. I noticed this trend in 9 and it continues in 10, I think largely because the loss of Statham and The Rock left a void they’re trying to desperately fill. Sometimes these cameos come in the form of the return of long lost characters who played minor roles in the films like, over ten years ago, and I supposed if we were true fans we’d remember them but we don’t. Helen Mirren, who played Jason Statham’s mother, stops by though if she hadn’t, you wouldn’t have missed it.
Other times, there are new characters played by famous celebrities, often playing relatives of characters once played by celebrities who apparently now want no part of this bloated behemoth. Remember Mr. Nobody? Kurt Russell’s fun spy who recruits the fast gang to work for the government? He’s been replaced by his daughter, Miss Nobody, played by Brie Larson.
Remember Dom’s Brazilian girlfriend Elena who died a few flicks back? She’s got a younger sister now, played by Daniella Melchior. I’ll give the film some credit in that Daniella looks like she could be related to Elena while Brie doesn’t look like she could be related to Kurt Russell.
BTW, in case you forgot Elena, Dom longingly glares at a photo of her on the wall, a photo that looks like it is a publicity shot of Elena in full police gear taken to promo one of the past movies. Dom misses Paul Walker too and has several similar, well-produced publicity style photos of Paul hanging around his shop. I miss Paul Walker too, one of many reasons being that if he were alive, I doubt he would have allowed this franchise to become so stinky.
Rita Moreno, really for no reason, stops by one of those oft parodied “It’s all about family” barbecues as a long lost Toretto auntie, to give the gang a pep talk. Like several other cameo characters, if you’d gone to the bathroom during her scene, you wouldn’t have missed.
Really, from what I gather, Universal must have decided to go with a strategy where they skimped on the writers and just hired a bunch of famous folk to stop by and have unnecessary chats with Dom every five minutes.
There are two other tropes abundant in this flick that I didn’t care for:
#1 – Like that crappy Matrix sequel that everyone hated, this film is kind of meta and refers to itself and past sequels often, doing highlight reels of past films. Done well, flashbacks are fine but there’s a lot of them such that the movie becomes a promo for itself.
#2 – The gang splits up and goes on a lot of side-quests. Perhaps you noticed the fan backlash for the recent season 3 of the Mandalorian, where there is an incoherent plot, where either Mando or friends of Mando go on side-quests all eventually leading up to a weak story line. (Think of a video game where the end goal is to defeat a villain, but first you must go on a mission to find a weapon to defeat the villain, then you must go on another side quest to find a friend who will help you defeat the villain and so on.)
Here, the Fast gang goes on a number of side-quests. Letty and Cypher get whisked away to Antarctica, prisoners of Nobody’s elusive “agency.” Ramsey, Roman, Tej and Han go to London on a mission to buy gear the gang needs. John Cena’s Uncle Jake goes on a superfluous road trip with “Little B,” Dom’s son named after Brian. Ultimately, if you’re a cynic, you begin to wonder if the point of all these side missions isn’t just a ploy to make production easier and cheaper in that the cast can come to set for less time in smaller numbers and no one is paying for, say, Dwayne the Rock Johnson to hang out on set all day for weeks at a time.
I feared that streaming would turn movies cheap and sucky and my fears are coming true.
Was Statham in this? Yes, for absolutely no reason and for all of five minutes, despite what the trailers show. Spoiler alert: the Rock is in it too for a quick post credits scene. Big cameos. Big stars stop by quickly. It looks like the studio can’t come up with a script good enough to spend the money needed for big celebs to come to the set and be involved for more than five minutes.
STATUS: Borderline shelf-worthy, but it goes way, way back on the shelf so I won’t be embarrassed by it, and it only gets a spot on the shelf due to Mamoa’s fun performance. This film is billed as the first of a franchise concluding trio and it ends on a cliffhanger which frankly felt less like a cliffhanger and more like the chimps on typewriters they hired to be writers decided the movie got too long and it needs to be over now so we’ll end it here and pick it up in the next trainwreck.
I say this with love because I loved films 5-8. This can get better if they really put the effort in. Or then again, maybe it can’t. Movies are made by and geared toward the young and this generation doesn’t care for machismo or fast cars or scantily clad women unless it’s the dudes dressing like scantily clad women, so the glory days of the Fast and Furious franchise may be over.
But if they rub some brain cells together, I think they could come up with some great scripts and even they can’t get big stars like the Rock or Statham to be in it for more than five minutes, then they could go in a new direction with entirely new characters, that’s fine but they have to bring the story. I know the past stories were ridiculous too, but they were still better stories.
One more sidenote – the franchise may be suffering from the fact that the car stunts have become played out. We’ve seen cars jump out of planes. We’ve seen cars ransack big cities. We’ve seen cars flip around on cables. We’ve seen cars heist big things of value and cars narrowly jump across great divides. We’ve even seen cars fly into outer space. Is there something new for the cars to do? I don’t know but come on Hollywood, you can think of something.
How utterly controversial…had this movie been released in 1953.
BQB here with a review of this silly rom com flick.
Let me say this at the outset. I had no intention of seeing this movie. I’m sure I would have eventually caught it on streaming, but to actually go see it in the theater? No. I went to my local multi-plex last night in the hopes of seeing Fast X only to find it was sold out. Figuring I’m there so WTF, I bought a ticket to this delightful semi-trainwreck and before I poop all over it, I’ll say that I bought one of the last tickets before it too was sold out, so hey, Old Seabass must have down something right.
In the 1990s, at the height of Jerry Seinfeld’s fame, Jerry most likely could have gotten any studio to greenlight any flick he wanted. Ah, but Jerry knew himself. He knew he was no leading man or great thespian. His talent lied in stand-up comedy and his sitcom was but a mere vehicle for his observational humor. The characters never grew. They never changed. They never got better. There was never a very special episode. It was just a series of situations highlighting the ironic stupidity of life. So popular was the show that NBC famously offered Jerry millions for a season 10 but at that point, even Jerry knew the show was getting over the hill and it was time to move on.
I’m not sure Sebastian Manisculco has gotten that memo. (Then again, as great as a standup comic Sebastian is, I’m not sure he’ll ever reach Seinfeld heights, so I can’t blame him for cashing in on this flick.)
As a comic, Sebastian nails his routines and is riotously funny. As an actor? Let’s just say that while there might be an unproduced script out there somewhere that would launch Sebastian into the stratosphere as an actor, he hasn’t found it yet, and I have doubts as to whether this movie is it. Note that I say I have doubts. To me, it felt like a glorified Hallmark Channel movie, with just enough sass that your grandma might think it is edgy. Frankly, it reminded me a lot of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, another movie where a WASP falls in love with someone from Greece, Italy’s Mediterranean neighbor, and there’s a a culture clash to overcome as the extended family gets involved. MBFGW was the surprise hit of the early 2000s, and I’ll admit I observed a packed theater laughing at his schtick, so you never know.
But if you forced me to bet, I’d bet not.
The plot? Middle-aged Sebastian falls in love with Ellie Collins (Leslie Bibb with a different haircut that made me not recognize her until the credits rolled.) We know they are in love not because we see the romance blossom, but because Sebastian narrates this and practically every other plot point of the film. There is a whole lot of narration, such that you wonder if Seabass will start narrating his bowel movements any minute now.
Sebastian plays a semi-fictional version of himself. I assume he brought a lot of bits from his personal life to this movie. He too is the son of a hard working Italian-American family and married an artist, like Ellie. How much of the film mirrors his real life and how much is made up to be funny I don’t know. I’m not a Manisculco historian.
The great Robert DeNiro plays the film version of Sebastian’s father, Salvo, a hard-working self made man who immigrated to America 50 years ago, got married, had a son and built a career as a popular hair stylist in Chicago. Salvo has no trace of an Italian accent, but that’s ok. We’ll let that slide because Robby D faking one would suck.
Reminiscent of his role in Meet the Parents, DeNiro keeps the movie afloat with his no-nonsense style. He tags along with his son on a Fourth of July weekend to the Collins family’s Virginia estate, one of many as they are heirs to a vast hotel empire. He does so as a condition of turning over his late wife’s engagement ring, agreeing to turn it over to Sebastian so he can use it to propose to Ellie if he approves the family.
The culture clash ensues. The Collins live an extravagant lifestyle. Mom (Kim Cattrall) is a Senator and if there is one good thing to come out of this movie, it might be a Kim Cattrall comeback in that she’s so fabulous as Ellie’s tough talking mother that you wonder why Hollywood hasn’t utilized her more in recent years. Then again, she was at the height of her fame in the 1980s and this film feels like it should have been made in the 80s.
Fans of Workaholics will be happy to Anders Holm as Ellie’s frat boy dufus older brother, who plays the part of a dum-dum born on home plate yet acts as though he personally hit the home run well. Brett Dier plays Ellie’s clueless younger brother Doug, a dippy hippy who loves kombucha, bowl music and socialism. David Rasche rounds out the cast as the father of the henpecked father of the family.
You know, I could go on. The film has some fun moments but nothing that made me laugh out loud. There’s no great conflict to overcome. Similar culture clash rom coms usually have one family member who takes an “over my dead body” stance when it comes to accepting a relative’s significant other, but that never happens here. The Collins are built up as this obscenely stuck-up rich family, but then they pretty much accept Sebastian, warts and all. Salvo has a clear disdain for all the excess but ultimately comes to like his new in-laws and the only real controversy comes from him being an old widower afraid his only son will move away with his new wife and never see him again.
STATUS: Moderately shelf-worthy, but I wouldn’t bother seeing it in theater. I did it so you don’t have to. It’ll be worth a watch when it comes to streaming, but it’s one of those movies where you could do your laundry while its on and still get the gist.
I can’t jump but it’s not because I’m white. It’s because I like pizza too much.
BQB here with a review of the Hulu remake of the 1990s comedy classic.
I have never seen 1992’s White Men Can’t Jump. I have no idea why. It’s just one of several movies I never saw and I never think of it when I’m scrolling through the various streaming services, unable to find anything appealing.
And therein lies the rub. The reviews are in and the critics agree this flick is a pale imitation of its original predecessor. I on the other hand, liked it but maybe I wouldn’t had I seen the Woody Harrelson/Wesley Snipes original.
Jack Harlow (who is apparently, a rapper and I only know this because I’m so old now that I learn of the existence of new celebrities when I see them for the first time hosting SNL instead of the past, when I was hip and knew who they were years before Lorne Michaels noticed them) and Sinqua Walls play the odd couple duo of Jeremy and Kamal, two young men who in many ways, could not be more different, yet they bond and become fast friends over their shared love of basketball.
Both were once stars whose careers were tragically cut short. Kamal was a high school all-star on the way to the NBA when a lost temper incident with an unruly fan cost him everything. Jeremy was a college player on the way to the NBA when an injury blew his knee out.
Now they’re in their late 20s, far from being washed up in most respects, though when it comes to sports, they’re circling the drain. Kamal has long accepted he’ll never play with the greats, but is rife with bitterness as he works a menial job and lives in poverty, depressed over what he lost.
Meanwhile Jeremy is cluelessly optimistic, popping all manner of dangerous pills in the unlikely hope of curing his knee and getting back to the game before its too late.
Both in need of dough, they team up and start hustling in street games for money, winning bigger and better bets, all in the hopes of winning the entry fee to a big neighborhood tournament with a hefty grand prize, not to mention public exposure that could turn their hoop dreams into reality.
I know very little about sports, so a lot of the technical details about b-ball went over my head. I have, late in life, become a health food junkie in the past 6 months, so I recognized a little bit of myself in Jeremy as he runs around preaching the benefits of veggies and turmeric. (Yes, he admits he is a walking contradiction as he pops pills but is also a vegetarian.)
You know what I liked most about this film? It was woke without being preachy. Two dudes who come from very different backgrounds who can’t stand each other at first but they grow closer over a shared dream and a shared love of something. Most streaming films these days (I’m looking at you, Netflix) feel a need to spoon feed the woke message to the viewer.
Here, it’s self explanatory. Jeremy helps Kamal make his comeback with yoga, meditation and green drinks while Kamal helps Jeremy navigate a whole new world of street ball, trash talking and not saying the wrong thing that will get his butt kicked.
In short, we’re all more alike than we are different. If we share a love of something, we’re even more alike and if we listen to each other, we can learn from each other. We have all experienced different things in life and we have a lot to teach each other.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy, but I really need to watch the original now. P.S. – all the bright colors of the court in the final scene really pop on an HDTV.
Double PS: This is, I believe, the last film starring the late, great Lance Reddick who passed too soon in March. Lance stars as Kamal’s dying father Benji, who Kamal feels he has terribly disappointed, despite Benji’s best efforts to convince Kamal this is not the case.
SPOILER ALERT: It’s eerie that in the last two films Lance starred in, his characters die. His character, Charon the Concierge, dies unexpectedly in the recently released John Wick 4. I always liked him in the Wire. RIP Lance.
Bookshelf Battle 