Tomorrow is my final day of a subscription to Paramount + that I got at an extremely low cost during Prime Day. I have not used the Paramount + subscription for as much as some of the other ones, but it has given me an opportunity to see a movie that I probably wouldn’t have seen in the theater. It is the first feature length film from the animated series Paw Patrol. Paw Patrol: The Movie is day and date release in theaters and on streaming and I’ve heard positive word of mouth on the film.

Ryder (Will Brisbin) and his Paw Patrol get a call for help from Adventure City because newly elected Mayor Humdinger (Ron Pardo) was causing chaos. However, returning to Adventure City caused a crisis of memory for team member Chase (Iain Armitage), the big city where he was dumped as a puppy.

Now, I am not the target audience for this movie. It is certainly targeted at a younger aged child. However, there have been movies that I said that same thing, but I gave negative reviews for because they were so dumb or poorly executed. Just because something is meant for children doesn’t give it a right to be bad.

After seeing the Paw Patrol movie, I can say that this is a good film for a family to spend watching together. It has a cute, simple story, with appealing characters, some quality animation, and several positive messages on teamwork, overcoming personal challenges, dedication and heroism.

The voice cast is solid. It includes Will Brisbin, Iain Armitage, Ron Pardo, Tyler Perry, Jimmy Kimmel, Randall Park, Kingsley Marshall, Keegan Hedley, Marsai Martin, Shayle Simons, Callum Shoniker, Lilly Bartlam, Dax Shepard and Kim Roberts.

Paw Patrol: The Movie is a film that the kids should love and one that the parents won’t hate having to sit through.

3.5 stars

Reminiscence is the new science fiction, neo-noir starring Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Ferguson. It is directed by Lisa Joy, a producer and writer from the HBO TV show Westworld.

In a dystopian futuristic world, Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman), a private investigator of the mind who uses the reminiscence to search for information through the memories of his clients. When a simple case of missing keys from a woman named Mae (Rebecca Ferguson) came into his office, Nick found that it was anything but simple. He fell for Mae and he became obsessed with her when she disappeared.

There are some good parts of the film, but, unfortunately, it is mixed in with a lot of negative. Starting off with the fact that I never bought the connection between Nick and Mae. Jackman and Ferguson are tremendous actors, but this story just did not provide them with the sufficient details to make me care about them together. Their chemistry was lacking. I do not think that is because of the acting, but because of the story.

The premise was pretty interesting, but it does feel like movies that we have already seen. There feels to be a lot of convoluted plot points that happen that are not needed. The run time is almost 2 hours and I feel every bit of the time.

There is a lot of stuff, characters in particular, that is thrown at the audience and they are not effectively explained, which makes their eventual importance less important for me. The only people who I had a real knowledge of was Nick and Mae, and not necessarily Mae. Thandiwe Newton played Nick’s partner in his reminiscence business and I did like her, but she felt underdeveloped and not used enough. She did have one bad ass fight scene with Nick, but she was someone I could have used more from. Cliff Curtis was a crooked cop at the heart of the convoluted plot that I really did not know much about and so when he was such a vital aspect of the ending, I was not as invested as I could have been.

I watched this on HBO Max this morning and I was glad that I did not have to go to the theater to see it. It is a film that feels as if it has wasted a solid cast and a potentially interesting premise for a mismanaged love story.

2.4 stars

A new biopic came out this weekend telling the story of EYG Hall of Famer Aretha Franklin, from her early days of singing in her father’s church to the recording of her best selling gospel album and documentary that went with it.

Jennifer Hudson has one of the few voices able to pull off the songs of The Queen of Soul. The remainder of the cast all do an admirable job in the biopic.

I am mixed on this movie. There were some sections of this film that I really did not like while other parts that were just tremendous. Anything dealing with the music/songs, including how they were being constructed and recorded was fire. Jennifer Hudson is remarkable and the way the film outlines the way the songs were being put together is fascinating and, at times, thrilling.

The first act of the film felt like it was a bad Lifetime movie. Forest Whitaker played Aretha’s father, C.L. Franklin. The first part of the movie rushed through what seemed like significant moments in Aretha’s life and set up several important bits that is never quite ever paid off. Again, any of the music really helped save the first half of this movie, keeping it from completely falling apart.

The third act of the movie also seemed to be too packed. It feels as if the movie tried to cover too much of Aretha’s life and that it might have benefitted from picking one time to focus in on. However, the third act was stronger than the beginning, and that was mainly because of a really great performance from Jennifer Hudson. This was the moment where Aretha finally stood up and started being the Queen.

Then the emotional “Amazing Grace” cover during the recording of Aretha’s gospel album was stunning and a powerful way to end the film.

The film did feel long, but there is supposed to have been a 3-hour cut of the movie that had been shown last year and it already cut out 45 minutes of the film. That might be the reason why I felt as if there were some things missing.

Overall, I think that the film is more good than bad. The music is unbelievable and worth the time alone. I just wish the rest of the film matched the intensity of the music.

3.1 stars

Five years ago, there was a surprisingly great horror movie called Don’t Breathe. It was the story of a group of kids targeting an old blind man’s house for robbery and being shocked when they discovered that the blind man was a certified killer. That movie turned into a survival movie for the group of kids trying to stave off this crazy old man.

It was an awesome, tense, anxiety-filled film that was a hoot to watch.

Fast forward to 2021 when get get a sequel to that epic film and my expectations were high. Sadly, it crashed down in flames. I have much to say about Don’t Breathe 2.

So The Blind Man (Stephen Lang) returned to the film, this time taking in a little girl and raising her as his daughter. He named her Phoenix (Madelyn Grace) and he kept her secluded from the world, homeschooled and isolated from other children and people. The one exception was Hernandez (Stephanie Arcilla) who would take the little girl into town if the girl passed her survival tests. It was a rare occurrence, but The Blind Man, whose name was Norman Nordstrom, seemed to trust her.

Unfortunately, a group of lowlifes, potentially involved in human organ trafficking, came across the girl and harassed her in a bathroom. The head of this group of scum was named Raylan (Brendan Sexton III) and it is not clear at first why he has such an interest in the little girl. Raylan leads his group to Norma’s house with the intent of taking the little girl.

I’m going to try to not spoil anything here, but I have several problems with the film that I want to address. The first, most glaring issue is that this film expects the audience to cheer for and support Norman after all of the terrible things that he had done in the previous movie. We saw that he was a murderer, a rapist and downright horrible monster, but here, he is taking care of this 11-year old, so he is our protagonist worthy of being cheered for. This is a colossal misjudgment on behave of the studio as I was reminded with every scene that this guy was just horrendous in the last film.

Plus, since he is the protagonist, Norman has to be shown to have more of a vulnerability so the audience could relate to him. He was not the indestructible killing machine as he was in the first movie. We have to see him suffer more to humanize him.

Allowing him to move about his own house without any trouble is one thing, but when the movie changes locations, Norman seems to still have no trouble navigating his way around and being as stealthy as ever.

There is an entire bit with a dog that is totally ridiculous, too.

The film goes out of the way to try and make Raylan even worse than Norman, so when his interest in Phoenix is revealed, they try and make it the most horrible thing possible so Norman’s transgressions look better by comparison. It did not work, by the way. It only made everybody look bad.

Madelyn Grace does a decent job for what she had to do, holding her own on the screen with the adult actors. Stephen Lang is always good, but his work in the first movie made it impossible to really support him in this one.

There are some decent kills, but they are nowhere near cool enough to base the movie on. I was very disappointed in Don’t Breathe 2 as it apparently did not understand the reasoning behind the first film’s success.

2.4 stars

For a film that was delayed and seemingly forgotten about for so long, Free Guy was damn entertaining.

It was just recently that this movie started to come back in the minds of the movie goers when there was an advertisement with Deadpool and Korg doing a trailer reaction for the Free Guy trailer. The genius of that promotion put Free Guy back into relevancy.

Guy (Ryan Reynolds) goes through the same pattern in his life: wake up, say good morning to his fish, buys the best coffee ever, meets his friend Buddy (Lil Rel Howery), walk with him to his job at the bank as a teller, laying down on the ground during a bank robbery… and he does it with a smile and a song in his heart.

However, one day, when he sees Molotov Girl aka Millie (Jodie Comer) in the real world, he falls in love and pursues her, despite her being one of the sunglasses, humanoids in the world where they can do anything they want. Guy calls them “heroes.”

After pursuing her, Guy winds up trying to do something different. It leads to him confronting the bank robber than came to the bank every day and he kills him. He had removed the robber’s sunglasses and he realizes that there is something surprising when he looks through them. The world around him is a game.

Ryan Reynolds is completely charming and likeable as Guy, The Blue Shirt Guy. The idea of an NPC (non-player character) becoming sentient and taking the place of a player is a really creative and original concept. Reynolds feels at ease through the entire movie, allowing the viewers to engage with him as our unlikely hero.

Millie and Keys (Joe Keery) in the outside world have an amazing relationship throughout the entire movie which builds to a beautiful moment at the end.

The third act of Free Guy, without spoilers, is just tremendous. The arrival of a character called The Duke is so perfect. There are also some marvelous cameos in the film that caught me completely off guard and must have come through some reshoots.

Taika Waititi is the villainous and greedy Antoine, the antagonist to not only The Blue Shirt Guy, but also Millie and Keys. Waititi is impressively sinister in the movie and does a great job of making you hate this guy.

Free Guy is a film with a huge heart. It is a fun, exciting, remarkably entertaining film with a top notch performance from Ryan Reynolds in a world that is given some real time to be built through the NPCs. While it may be a touch too long, the pay off is so satisfying that it is worth the extra time invested. I am very happy that this did not get lost in the Disney/Fox purchase.

4.4 stars

I have not seen a documentary quite like this before.

Val is the story of the life and career of actor Val Kilmer, from his early life until present day where he had recovered from throat cancer.

However, this documentary is remarkable not just because of the drama brought to the story by the lifetime of choices made by Val Kilmer, or the struggle to return to his health after losing his voice. What makes this so remarkable is the use of decades worth of home videos recorded by Kilmer himself. It reminded me of those found footage movies where you see scenes that someone is carrying a video camera around and recording everything. This is what Val Kilmer had done and he had compiled thousands of hours of footage that the documentary intertwined with footage of his current state.

It is a poignant look at an actor who had been considered a problem to work with or a troublemaker for years. Rumors and speculation of Val Kilmer being difficult to work with dogged him for much of his career in movies. You can see why some may have thought that in the footage he has recorded, but you can also see the drive and the desire to create something of which he could be proud.

Some of his early life was influenced by his brother Wesley, whom was described by Val as being remarkably creative and energetic. Wesley would be making short films and drawing. Val had said that Wesley was the talented one in their family. Wesley died when he was 16 years old, having an epileptic seizure while in the family jacuzzi, causing him to drown. The loss of his brother impacted Val’s life and career for decades.

The film documented Kilmer’s thoughts and his work on several of his classic roles including Batman, Iceman in Top Gun, the stage play he had written about Mark Twain, Doors lead man Jim Morrison, Doc Holliday in Tombstone among others. Some of the most fascinating clips included his time on one of the worst movies ever made, The Island of Dr. Moreau, where he shows an argument with the second director, John Frankenheimer, over his recording the rehearsal on his own camera. There is also an amazing piece including Marlon Brando swinging in a hammock. I have a feeling that there is a whole movie that could be made about the making of The Island of Dr. Moreau.

We get a look at Val’s family life and how his career in front of the camera really strained his relationship. Truthfully, the material on Val’s health issues are kept at a minimum. It is dealt with but it is not a focus of the film. It is a part that has been compartmentalized in his life story.

The film is narrated by a voice that sounds very much like Val Kilmer’s prior to his battle with cancer. The narration spoke as if it was in the voice of Val Kilmer and it did sound like him. It turned out that the voice was his son Jack, who does a marvelous job.

Val does a really great job in showing us Val Kilmer and where his life has led him. It is a life of both pride and depression. Pain and joy. Accomplishment and challenges. Val paints a portrait of an actor whose reputation exceeded reality, but that colored his life.

4.2 stars

James Gunn and a group of outcast, weirdo unfamiliar characters… magic!

After taking a talking racoon and a talking tree and giving the MCU a certified hit with the Guardians of the Galaxy, he wound up over at DC to give it a chance with The Suicide Squad, the second opportunity to make this group of villains work. Although the initial Suicide Squad made a decent amount of money and won an Oscar for makeup, it was considered a failed movie, believed by many to suffer from studio interference.

After seeing the film, I can’t imagine that there was any studio interference in The Suicide Squad because it is batshit crazy.

Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) is back at it, recruiting super villains for a vital mission to head into the island of Corto Maltese, where they needed to destroy a project being carried out by the military. Making a deal with the super villains where a successful mission would result with 10 years off their sentence. The drawback… they insert a bomb in their head that will be detonated if the villains try to do something besides what the mission’s parameters were.

We start off with the team led by Col. Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnaman), that included Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Savant (Michael Rooker), T.D.K. (Nathan Fillion), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), Javelin (Flula Borg), Mongal (Mayling Ng), Blackguard (Pete Davidson), and Weasel (Sean Gunn). This team did not have a great deal of success.

The other team Waller sent in included Bloodshot (Idris Elba), Peacemaker (John Cena), Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior) and King Shark (Sylvester Stallone).

Not necessarily a who’s who of the DC Universe.

Taking the oddball characters and making them special is one of James Gunn’s top skill sets, and he is at it fully here. The film is also very much a Gunn type film, meaning it is extremely violent, full of humor and bloody… oh so bloody.

Without spoiling anything specific, I will say that not everybody on the two teams will be making it out alive. Again, that should not surprise you with Gunn in an R rated film.

Since he was in the trailer, I can talk about Starro. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that Starro the Conqueror would ever appear in a live-action, full release movie. Here he was. However, I have to say that I was not wild about the look of Starro, which was the one disappointment I had with The Suicide Squad.

The cast is wonderful. Margot Robbie, who has now played Harley Quinn several times, is so at ease with her character that everything that she does is perfect. Idris Elba makes a great Bloodshot. John Cena is perfectly cast as the ultra patriot Peacemaker. Viola Davis showed the vicious side of Amanda Waller, and her crew at the headquarters was an epic surprise.

The Suicide Squad is fun, funny, violent as hell and graphically bloody. It is a great time and James Gunn showed that he can imbue characters with personality and characteristics no matter how famous the character may or may not be. The Suicide Squad is a winner.

4.7 stars

My friend Chris asked me if I had watched Blood Red Sky on Netflix and I told him I had not. To be honest, I have been souring on the movies on Netflix as it seemed that most of them are wastes of my time so I had not intended on watching it. Then Chris said it was a worthwhile watch and so I looked for some time to work it into the schedule.

I am really glad I did.

Single mother Nadja (Peri Baumeister) and her son Elias (Carl Anton Koch) are boarding a plane so Nadja can go to New York and get an experimental treatment for a rare illness that she is suffering from. In the airport, Elias meets a friendly man named Farid (Kais Setti) and they connect.

Unfortunately, the plane that they were getting on is one that is targeted by a group of terrorist, led by Berg (Dominic Purcell) for hijacking. Things go crazy after this.

I’m going to spoil the first twist because the poster does so. SPOILER Nadja’s illness is that she had been bitten by a vampire. The more blood that she drank, the worst she became. Things get out of control quite a bit after this. END OF SPOILER

This was a tense and exciting film. The action taking place on the claustrophobic environment inside the airplane really made it unsettling and I was never sure what was going to happen. The film started with the plane landing with assistance from the tower and the army looking to get the “terrorist” to release his hostages. Then we flashed back to see the story unfold. This was a solid way of starting the movie.

It turned out to be bloody and violent, all very effective. The other passengers on the plane are a variety of people, but are not that important in the overall story. They were there to throw wrenches in the works for the story. While they were interesting, none of the others stood out.

Of the villains, the one that really stood out was Eightball (Alexander Scheer), who was shown immediately to be the most crazed of the terrorists. He was doing some just evil things and you really wanted to see this guy get his comeuppance. The rest of the terrorists are fairly vanilla.

The one major issue I have with the movie is that it was too long. It was over two hours and I feel as if this could have been a much better, tighter film at 90 or 95 minutes. Still, this is a minor problem since I really did enjoy Blood Red Sky.

Blood Red Sky had an independent movie feel with some decent looking effects for our spoilers.

I guess I should thank Chris. This is a good Netflix film.

4 stars

I had absolutely zero clue what this movie was about. Not only that, but I had it in my head that the film starred Mark Wahlberg and I did not realize that it was not Wahlberg and was, in fact, Matt Damon until well into the movie. Not my best moment.

However, I really enjoyed Stillwater, so there is that.

Mat Damon (not Mark Wahlberg) played American Bill Baker, who left his hometown of Stillwater, Oklahoma to go to Marseille, France to see his daughter Allison (Abigail Breslin), who had been serving time in prison for the murder of her female lover. Allison claimed to be innocent and she wanted her father to go see a local lawyer with new information. Unfortunately, the new evidence was hearsay and the lawyer told Bill that she would not move forward with an appeal.

Bill decided that he would look into the new evidence himself, which meant searching for a young Muslim boy Akim (Idir Azougli) who had been overhead bragging about getting away with stabbing a girl.

Along the way, Bill meets Virginie (Camile Cottin) and her young daughter Maya (Lilou Siauvaud) whom he befriends. Virginie helped with translation and Bill bonds with Maya.

Some of the best scenes of the movie were between Matt Damon and Lilou Siauvaud. She was a charming young actress and she held her own against Damon. Comparing that relationship with the damaged relationship of Bill and Allison is fascinating as well.

Matt Damon is at his best here. He played a typical redneck American, but he showed so much more than the normal stereotype. He made Bill such a respectful and apparently decent individual that you can understand the pain he was going through. I know that I was hoping that the tough circumstances was not going to drive him back to alcohol, which apparently had been a problem for him in the past. When the film chose not to go in that direction, I was quite happy about it.

The film was too long. I think it should have shaved 10-15 minutes off the time, which would have made it a tighter story. However, I absolutely liked how this movie avoided the clichés that movies like this would usually fall into. You are never quite sure where the movie is heading and that is a nice change of pace.

Academy Award winning director Tom McCarthy directed Stillwater which was apparently loosely based on the story of Amanda Knox, who had been falsely imprisoned in Italy. Amanda Knox has struck back on the film, claiming that the film is profiting off her story.

Despite the controversy, as film itself, I enjoyed Stillwater. As I said, I had no idea what the film was about going in and that helped my enjoyment of the movie.

4 stars

Based on the Arthurian story, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the new movie The Green Knight debuted this weekend, written and directed by David Lowery.

The classic tale becomes a little more supernatural in the movie, though there are certainly magical elements in the original story as well. Gawain (Dev Patel) is King Arthur’s nephew and steps up to face the mysterious Green Knight (Ralph Ineson) who appeared from nowhere and challenged the knights to step up and deliver a blow. Green Knight said that he would allow anyone to deliver one blow to him and that the following Christmas, the same knight would come to the home of the Green Knight and allow him to deliver the same blow.

Gawain decapitated the Green Knight with his blow, but is shocked when the creature stood back up and rode off, head in hand, laughing.

The year passed and Sir Gawain started off on the trek across the land to find the Green Knight’s Chapel and settle his honor.

I’m going to be honest, I was bored for a good chunk of the movie. I found most of the first hour of the movie to be slow-moving and dull, and not in the way of character development either. This movie simply did not have my attention and I was finding myself watching the time.

The conclusion did not improve a bunch, though I was more engaged in the last 20 minutes or so.

The movie is utterly beautiful though. The CGI and the imagery on every scene is breathtaking and masterfully rendered. The magical creatures and the surrounding environments are exceptional to look at and gave me something to look at when I was bored with the story.

Dev Patel was his typical wonderful self. His performance was solid, even though I was not entranced with the story it was telling. Patel was one of the strengths of the film.

The Green Knight was a beautiful film to look at, but was so slow and dull, it was a difficulty watch. It is a masterfully created movie, but a tale that I could not enjoy.

2.9 stars

Based on the Disney Park ride, Jungle Cruise starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt opened tonight. Disney has made other theme park rides into major motion pictures (Pirates of the Caribbean) and this is their next attempt at finding a franchise within their park.

Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) and her brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall) were trying to get their hands on an arrowhead that they believed could lead them to an ancient tree with unparalleled healing abilities in the Amazon jungle. Lily hired boat skipper Frank Wolff (Dwayne Johnson) to take them down the Amazon following a map and the arrowhead. They are being pursued by Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons), who wanted the pedals from the tree as well.

Jungle Cruise was a fun film, with some great charisma with Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt. They are easily the best part of the film. They are in an adventure that is fun, but somewhat convoluted.

I also enjoyed Jack Whitehall in this film. His character works well in opposition to the Rock, and their friendship is earned through the film. There are a couple of great scenes between them that looks deep into their characters.

Dwayne Johnson dropping all the puns and “dad” jokes in here is a fun character trait, and, some of the jokes are massive eye rolling jokes.

Some of the supernatural elements of the story do not work as well as the rest. There are three magical beings from the past, led by Edgar Ramirez, and these characters, which are important to the plot, just feel forced.

The CGI here is not very strong. There is a big cat character in the film and it looks pretty wonky most of the time. It reminded me of the Call of the Wild dog. The three villains too were mostly CGI and those characters are difficult to see many times because their CGI is not good. Much of the setting shots are beautiful and the cinematography is excellent.

Jungle Cruise is a fun adventure with a lot of action and two outstanding lead characters. There is a good villain in Plemons. While there are story issues at times, Jungle Cruise is fine. Is it perfect? No, not even close, but as a good time, Jungle Cruise hits.

3.2 stars

The second part of the adaptation of the comic classic The Long Halloween appeared on Vudu today and I eagerly snapped it up. I had loved the first part of the two-part animated film earlier this year and I was excited to see the conclusion. It was also a benefit since I had not read the Batman classic before and I did not know how the comic resolved the mystery so I was even more looking forward to this.

I must say that I found the conclusion a little less awesome as the first part. I still loved it, but there was just something about this conclusion that left me a touch underwhelmed.

We kicked off with Bruce Wayne (Jensen Ackles) under the control of Poison Ivy (Katee Sackhoff). After several months, Catwoman (Naya Rivera) was finally able to free him, but not before several hits were carried out by the assassin Holiday. Holiday was targeting the family and employees of Carmine Falcone (Titus Welliver). Suspicion for the Holiday crimes had come around the DA Harvey Dent (Josh Duhamel). Batman and Captain James Gordon (Billy Burke) were unsure that their friend was the killer, but after a courtroom attack scarred half of Dent’s face, his darker side was coming out.

The first half of the second part felt really long. Even with some of the specific holiday deaths strung together in a montage. There was a whole section of Dent and Catwoman fighting a gunman beneath the pier at the beach that felt extraneous. The whole motive for Catwoman’s involvement was a tad wonky in my mind. I won’t spoil it here, but apparently there is some connectivity to the comics here. I did not like it.

The animation and voice work in The Long Halloween Part Two is excellent. I think the animation works extremely well for the Batman character and the setting of Gotham City.

Putting this together with part one, Batman: The Long Halloween was an excellent adaptation of one of the great Batman tales ever.

4 stars

I had not intended to go to this movie, but I decided to go to it today anyway. I’m glad I did.

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is the continuing sequel to the 2019 low budget horror hit Escape Room, picking up a few weeks after the events of the first film. The sole survivors from the last film, Taylor Russell, playing Zoey Davis and Logan Miller, playing Ben Miller, return and are trying to move on with their lives. Unfortunately, Zoe is having a difficult time doing that.

Since law enforcement is not believing their story of events, Zoey convinces Ben to head to New York to go after Minos, the evil company behind the escape rooms so they could bring them to justice.

Once in the city, they find their way trapped in a subway train with a group of other people who were also survivors of previous escape rooms by Minos. The group tries to work together to be able to escape the escape room with their lives still intact.

Let me start off with this. The movie is dumb. Yes, it is improbable. The escape rooms are fairly impossible to pull off, even for a multi-billion dollar corporation. But here is the undeniable fact. I had fun watching the characters attempt to survive the encounters.

Taylor Russell is a star. I think she is just beautiful and I enjoy her as the brains behind the survivors and the main protagonist that Minos seems to be after. I kept thinking that she could be a great actress for the MCU (Kitty Pryde, perhaps?). She made it easy to support the characters. I think the chemistry and relatability with Zoey and Ben is off the charts. Logan Miller is another actor here who I would love to see more of in the future.

Some of the other characters that were brought in for the sequel were very one dimensional, but I did enjoy Rachel (Holland Roden) who I found engagingly sassy and a nice addition to the group. I could have used more for the actors Indya Moore and Thomas Cocquerel, who had some basic flavor but were meant as sacrifices to the concept. Although, Cocquerel’s character Nathan did pull off a Dread Pirate Roberts from The Princess Bride save, so there was that (No one would surrender to the Dread Pirate Nathan!)

The escape rooms themselves are the major stars of the franchise and these are all pretty good, building suspense as clocks ticked down to the doomsday part of the room. Sure it is improbable, but F9 sent a car into space. You suspend disbelief that there are possible and hope for the heroes to escape.

There were a couple of ending twists that did not hit well, the second one especially. The first surprise was interesting, though hard to accept because of the timeline. Still, I like that they are trying.

I had some laughs. I was nervous for the characters. I tried to find the answers to the puzzles before the characters did. I had a good time. Dumb, yes, but dumb fun for sure.

3.3 stars

This weekend saw the debut on Amazon Prime of a new movie called Jolt. It looked kind of interesting so I decided I would give it a try. I was enjoying it a great deal so I thought I’d heck on where it was on Rotten Tomatoes and I was disappointed to see it only at 36%. I thought maybe it got worse as it continued, but I enjoyed this all the way through (with the exception of one scene).

Lindy (Kate Beckinsale) has a problem. Despite being beautiful, funny, smart, she suffered from a rare condition that leads to her having impulse control to the max. Her violent and homicidal reactions could only be controlled by a shock vest that she was given by her therapist, Dr. Munchin (Stanley Tucci), where she can self-shock herself when she feels the bloodlust overcoming her.

Munchin had been encouraging Lindy to get out and find a relationship where she could invest her feelings, helping to replace the anger. Against her better judgement, she gets hooked up with Justin (Jai Courtney), who seemed to be perfect for her, and everything started going great. Until, that is, when Justin is found dead, shot in the head in an alley. Lindy, angry at the loss of someone she was starting to have feelings for, dedicated her life to tracking down Justin’s killer. The cops assigned the case, Detectives Vicars (Bobby Cannavale) and Nevin (Laverne Cox), were a hurdle in Lindy’s path.

Kate Beckinsale is fantastic here. She is funny, witty, and seriously bad ass. Over the years trying to prevent the homicidal impulses, she had picked up several ‘skills’ of the trade so she was a top notch fighter as well as other items that helped her in the mission of revenge she was on. Beckinsale dominated every scene with her presences and witty repartee.

The few scenes between Beckinsale and Courtney were charming and sweet. Even though you had not known Lindy for long in the movie sense, you see just how patient and caring Justin was with her which made his death all the more painful.

There is a surprise in act three, and I had thought about it earlier in the film. Although I did not come out and say that I knew exactly what was happening, I did read the signs that were there. That did not bother me here because the twist was not as important as the journey was for Lindy.

The film used a technique that took us into Lindy’s head to see how she was imagining what she was going to do to these people who annoyed her and that was very effective and funny. There were a couple times when I was not sure if it was images in her head or if she was really doing the action. That made the whole thing feel compelling.

There was only one scene that I hated and it took place in a nursery with Lindy and Detective Nevin. I would have preferred for this scene to not be in the movie because it through too much shade onto Lindy and made me question her motives.

With that exception out of the way, the rest of the movie was fantastic and I had a blast watching it. Kate Beckinsale carried the film and she was a huge star here. The surprise cameo at the end was also weird. Oh, and there is a mid-credit scene.

4.1 stars

This one is a real mixed bag. On one hand, this is heads and shoulders better than any of those other G.I. Joe movies from 2009 and 2013. On the other hand, the bar was really low for those films so Snake Eyes had to really stumble badly to not exceed those.

Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins tells the background of one of the most popular of the characters from the G.I. Joe franchise Snake Eyes, even though it felt more of a story of Stormshadow than Snake Eyes at times.

We started out with young Snake Eyes as a child (not called Snake Eyes yet.. played here by Max Archibald) who was with his father (Steven Allerick) in a cabin. Giving a real Mortal Combat (2021) feel to it (you could almost have photocopied the scene), people arrived to try to kill his father and little Snake Eyes had to escape to save himself. His father does not make it out and Snakey had to watch the cabin burn with his father inside.

I was impressed with the performance of Max Archibald as the younger version of Snake Eyes. He had to deliver several different emotional beats and he does an excellent job.

Years later, we met underground fighter Snake Eyes (Henry Golding) who was beating the crap out of other fighters. He was approached by Kenta (Taskehiro Hira) who wanted Snake Eyes to work for him. Snake Eyes took him up on the offer and was involved in cutting up fish to hide gun shipments inside. Then, there was a traitor in their midst and Snake Eyes was given a gun to kill Tommy, the said traitor. Snake Eyes can’t do it and the two of them fought their way through all of the gang. After escaping from their clutches, Tommy (Andrew Koji, doing his best Tommy, the Green Ranger impression) offered Snake Eyes t come with him to his clan.

Tommy was the next in line to rule the clan, currently run by his grandmother (Eri Ishida), and he wanted Snake Eyes to join the clan so he could fight by his side. There are three challenges that Snake Eyes has to complete to pass the test and if he couldn’t pass it, he would die.

Snake Eyes struggled with his anger, his need for vengeance and his guilt during these trials.

I did not know this was going to happen, but we got some other members of the G.I. Joe cast making appearances here. From the Joes, Scarlett (Samara Weaving) was here and we also got the Cobra villainess, The Baroness (Úrsula Corberó) These two women were fun, but seemed out of place for a good chunk of the film.

Some positives. Henry Golding was fantastic as Snake Eyes. He is a great actor and really worked in the role. Although the character of Snake Eyes in G.I. Joe never spoke and Golding talked all the time, I feel that may be a future development for the character. I really liked Golding.

Even better was Andrew Koji, who was the perfect casting for Stormshadow. I believed in this character the entire movie. Of course, this brings up one issue I had with the film. This felt like Snake Eyes was the antagonist of his own movie. It felt like Tommy was the protagonist and he was the character who had the most story arc. I did not quite understand why the film was setting them up as such. Were we to be cheering for Snake Eyes? Because that felt wrong. Also, when Tommy turned to the dark side, that felt a bit rushed. Either way, both castings were excellent and I liked their interactions.

I have seen this criticism elsewhere and it is 100% the biggest flaw of the film. This being an action film with a lot of fighting…HOLD THE DAMN CAMERA STILL!!!! I have never felt as if I needed a Dramamine before as much as I did during EVERY fight scene in Snake Eyes. You could not see anything happening during EVERY fight. If this was a stylistic choice, it was a bad one. I have seen shaky cam before, but never as much as we see in Snake Eyes. The inability to see action scenes in an action movie ruined what could have been a passable movie. There are times when I came to dread the next fight.

As I said, this is better than The Rise of Cobra or Retaliation, but it does not reach the level that it could have been. It may be a positive step forward and maybe a sequel will imporve.

2.8 stars