I was actually looking forward to the new Mortal Kombat movie. No reason. I had only a mild interest in the video game when I was younger and the other Mortal Kombat movie left a lot to be desired. There was just something about this one that intrigued me.

Now after seeing the film on HBO Max, I realized that I was fooling myself. This was terrible.

To be fair, if you are a fan of the video game, there may be more here than I think.

This version was rated R and it was extremely bloody and violent. It is some of that blood that seems to be there for no other reason than to be gory.

MMA fighter Cole Young (Lewis Tang) is a descendent to one of the greatest ninjas of all-time, Hanzo (Hiroyuki Sanada) who had been attacked and killed by Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim) in an attempt to remove the bloodline. Now, Cole is trying to gather the heroes of earth to battle against the forces of Outworld. Head of those forces, Shang Tsung (Chin Han), is trying to destroy earth’s forces before the great tournament that would put the world’s fate in balance.

This is so dumb. I will state off the bat that the movie has some good fight scenes, though I thought the blood was a distraction. The CGI was certainly better than the original movie, which had some of the worst CGI of the time. The acting was okay. I would not push it any farther than that.

The story was weak. The dialogue was terrible. We have very little connection to any of the characters outside of the fact that they had a resemblance to the characters we know from the game. The third act featured one of the sloppiest deus ex machinas that I have seen in quite awhile.

I expect that this is one of those movies, like the Fast and the Furious franchise, that everyone says you have to understand what kind of movie it is and that you should not come into Mortal Kombat expecting much. I’ve never truly understood that thinking. Either a movie is good or it is not. It is subjective so you really shouldn’t need to clarify why you like a movie when it is a piece of garbage. The new Mortal Kombat movie is garbage, but there are plenty of people who will defend it as “fun” and that this is one of those “types” of films. I wish I found much of anything in this fun so maybe I could stick my head in the sand and pretend that this is a good movie. It is not.

1.7 stars

Conflicted.

For most of the time I was watching the Canadian horror/sci-fi film, Come True, I was mesmerized. There is a lot to like here. However, the ending of this film really takes the story in directions that…one, I did not see coming and…two, make very little sense.

18-year-old runaway Sarah Dunne (Julia Sarah Stone) sets herself up for a sleep disorder study to deal with her recurring nightmares. Soon, she discovers that the sleep study has more going on than one expects.

However, that is not what this movie is about. It is about dreams and about the nightmares that frighten us all. Or is it?

Through much of the film’s run time, Come True is beautifully shot and creates a feel of a living dream by the use of lights and imagery that is in a constant haze. It really is a lovely looking movie and one that is unlike any I have seen in quite a long time.

Narratively speaking, I have no idea exactly what happened.

Perhaps that is the purpose. Dreams can be a confusing and disjointed experience and maybe that is what this film is trying to portray. It just feels as if the third act of this movie took what was developing nicely in the first hour of the film and tossed it aside for a shock ending that is meant to be smarter than it turned out to be. The last part of this movie was a real letdown.

However, the first two acts were very strong and moved things along extremely well. There were plenty of situations that may have confused you, but it felt as if there was a progression of the story, and, again, it is beautifully shot. The acting is very solid, despite the cast being a group of actors whom I had never seen before. I really liked Julia Sarah Stone in this film. She felt as if she dominated the screen when she appeared and she carried herself like a star.

The other major role here was that of Jeremy (Landon Liboiron), but, after seeing the ending of the movie, his importance in the film may be up for debate. He was believable here.

I am happy I watched this, but I cannot shake the feeling that I was thinking that this could have been a classic film, only to have it spoiled by a nonsensical ending. After the first hour or so, I was thinking that this would be somewhere in the 4.5 stars range, but it took quite a downturn in my opinion. I’d still recommend you watch it, but temper your expectations.

3.2 stars

Benedict Cumberbatch has been making a career outside of the MCU playing characters that are real life people with gigantic stories to tell. He was Stuart Couch in the Mauritanian. He was Alan Turning in The Imitation Game. He was Billy Bulger in Black Mass. Now he is Greville Wynne in The Courier.

The Courier tells the true story of a British businessman, in the heart of the Cold War, recruited by MI6 to meet with Russian informant Colonel Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) who had vital information that dealt with world safety. Taking place around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, The Courier highlighted the courageous actions of two men inside the former Soviet Union leading to vital intelligence coming to the West.

The movie does a fantastic job of showing the relationship between Wynne and Oleg. Among the danger and the espionage happening, these two formed a bond of friendship that is put to the test later in the movie. It shows how two people from different background and lands can put aside any issues they may have and make a connection.

Benedict Cumberbatch is tremendous here, continuing his strong run of roles. He has shown quite admirably that he is more than just Doctor Strange or Sherlock Holmes. His well-roundedness is on display once again in these true stories.

This was a tale that I had never heard about and the drama behind the Cuban Missile Crisis is always intense and suspenseful. The world was quite literally on the brink of nuclear war and the way that informs this story is well done. The Courier provides us with an old school spy thriller feel and keeps you on the edge of your seat. Something happens in the third act that I was not expecting and I found myself completely engrossed in it.

The beginning of the movie was a little slow, but it ratcheted up quickly as it progressed. There was a sub story with both men and their individual marriages. in particular, Sheila (Jessie Buckley), wife of Greville Wynne who believed he was having another affair in his constant trips to the USSR. The relationships in The Courier are truly the main attraction of the movie.

This is a strong film with a story that is both tense and exceptional that was unknown enough to make it engaging.

4 stars

The new sci-fi film hitting the theaters this weekend is Voyagers, and the basic premise of the film is Lord of the Flies in outer space.

In order to find a new world to inhabit because the earth was dying, a group of children are bred and birthed for a specific purpose: to be the people who give birth to the kids who would reestablish humanity. Since the trip would take 86 years, they needed a multigenerational approach.

As these young kids are growing, they are being instructed and protected by Richard (Colin Ferrell). When strange noises start happening outside the spaceship, Richard and Zac (Fionn Whitehead) were going to find out what it was. However, Zac and Christopher (Tye Sheridan) had discovered that the blue liquid that the group was required to drink daily was a drug to suppress sexual feelings and other emotions and they decided to stop taking it.

Without the drug, Zac became more wild and uncontained. When tragedy struck, Zac and Christopher wound up on opposite sides among the crew.

Sela (Lily-Rose Depp) was the medical examiner and one of the group of kids was with Christopher. She was pretty good here though I was not sure the reason why she and Christopher had the connection they had.

This movie had a couple of moments and a fascinating premise, but not enough for this to be successful. The characters are dull and uninspiring. I could not get the idea of Lord of the Flies out of my head the entire time. I was connecting characters with the novel and that became a distraction for me.

Fact is the movie is pretty forgettable and there is nothing that stands out. It is lightweight and unremarkable.

2 stars

Melissa McCartney and Octavia Spencer gain super powers to try and stop a group of super powered sociopaths called the Miscreants in the new super hero farce/comedy Thunder Force, arriving on Netflix this weekend.

In the world, an event gave random people super powers, but, unfortunately, only people who were sociopaths. This was, obviously, not good for the people. Now, Emily (Octavia Spencer) is trying to fulfill her lifelong goal to find a process to grant super powers to regular people to fight the Miscreants.

Emily is preparing to undergo the process to give herself super strength and invisibility, but an old friend from high school, Lydia (Melissa McCarthy) accidentally winds up getting the initial injections for the super strength. She then has to complete the process or her body might explode.

Emily continues to give herself the invisibility and the pair become a super hero team called Thunder Force. They confront the Mayor who insists on being called “The King” (Bobby Cannavale), who was also a Miscreant. He has Miscreant henchmen Laser (Pom Klementieff) and The Crab (Jason Bateman).

This is really pretty dumb and really fairly thin. It is a super hero comedy that did not have many laughs. It was a typical Melissa McCarthy film with super powers. Characters are two-dimensional with motivations that are simple and not complicated. They spend plenty of time dealing with the normal super hero tropes of an origin film and creates a minor story.

It was harmless though. It gave me a few laughs here and there. Not enough of them to really enjoy the film or to make up for its complete lack of depth, but it was not the worst movie I have seen this year.

The film does not give its talented cast much to do but they do their best anyway. These actors, McCarthy and Spencer especially, are likable and fun to watch. They both have had much better material in the past however.

Not much to this one, but it is not offensive and moves along reasonably. Since it is on Netflix, it may be worth a lazy Saturday/Sunday watch.

2.4 stars

What is supposed to be the final season of Stranger Things should be hitting Netflix later this year, but that talented cast should be fine once it is over. Case in point, Caleb McLaughlin teams up opposite one Idris Elba in a modern Western premiering on Netflix this weekend, entitled Concrete Cowboy.

McLaughlin played Cole, the son to Elba’s Harp, who had been taken away from him as a child by Cole’s mother, was getting into trouble in Detroit. His mother chose to send Cole to Philadelphia for the summer to be with his estranged father. Harp was a member of a community of cowboys in the Philadelphia area, maintaining stables filled with horses. Money is tight, but the group of people are dedicated to the lifestyle.

Cole, however, does not find this situation to be happy, as he immediately hooks up with an old friend Smush (Jharrel Jerome). Smush is involved with street wise trouble and is looking to bring Cole in with him. Harp insists that Cole stay away from Smush, but Cole plays both sides.

Meanwhile, Cole has bonded with a horse named Boo that is a horse no one can handle.

The film is a decent story and has some powerful acting. Caleb McLaughlin really carries his work load with some more established actors. He had to bring plenty of layers of performance here, as the realm of emotion spread across the spectrum. He does a great job and he is the heart of the film.

Idris Elba had some moments, but he stands out the most with his scenes with McLaughlin, as a father who is trying his best to provide his emotional support despite not being there for the majority of his son’s life. He had plenty of problems he faced and came out of it a stronger person.

The secondary cast is fine, but few of them are memorable. Method Man, Byron Bowers and Lorraine Toussaint are here as well.

Based on the novel Ghetto Cowboys by Greg Neri, Concrete Cowboys provides a fascinating look at the urban cowboys that exist in Philadelphia and the way their lives exist. When you add the strong father-son dynamic of the story, this movie has some very strong parts. It might be a tad overlong, but the performances keep it rolling.

3.5 stars

The second film I saw at Cinemark today was the good one. This is a revenge thriller starring Bob Odenkirk (of Better Call Saul & Breaking Bad fame). Odenkirk may not seem like an actor who would fit as an action star, but he proves his worth in this movie.

Odenkirk played Hutch Mansell, a seemingly milquetoast man, who cannot even protect his family from a pair of bumbling thieves. His monotonous life has him going through the motions daily. His life is dull.

However, the break-in triggered something that Hutch had been holding inside of him for years and he went out to hunt down the thieves. Along the way, we discover that there is more to Hutch than we had expected.

A conflict with a group of drunken Russians on a bus brought out the vicious side to Hutch and put the Russians into the hospital. This drew the attention of the brother of one of the Russian, Yulian (Aleksey Serebryakov), and set up a wild revenge story.

Bob Odenkirk is great here and brings a realness to a film that desperately needs it. His deadpan reactions really work well in the violent situations that he finds himself in. Odenkirk is an Emmy Award winner and you can see how much of a range he has. How he started as a man who did not have that spark and then as he became more and more alive as the violence increased.

Christopher Lloyd has a wonderful role as Hutch’s father David. It was fun to see Lloyd here and placing him in this situation that we may not have seen him in before, much like Odenkirk, is cool.

Written by Derek Kolstad, who also wrote the first three John Wick movies, you can definitely see the similarities to the Keanu Reeves franchise. However, the use of Bob Odenkirk brings a different level to Nobody that takes the ideas that we have seen multiple times in revenge flicks and made it entertaining.

3.8 stars

I returned to Cinemark today, fully immunized, for a double header. I have not been feeling desperate to go back to the theater though. Watching at home has been pretty convenient and comfortable. However, with a light, yet extended, weekend, I had some time to head out. So I grabbed my heavy-duty mask and headed for the theater.

Of the two film I saw, one was great, one was not.

This is the not.

A hearing-impaired girl named Alice (Cricket Brown) is visited and healed by what she believed was the Holy Virgin Mary. She also gained the ability to heal others through the prayer and belief. Disgraced journalist Gerry Fenn (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is coincidentally in the area investigating a cattle mutilation story and stumbled across an artifact that freed up a demon. Fenn connected with Alice and hoped to use her story to get back his prime job.

There are a couple of familiar faces in the church with Father Hagan (William Sadler) and Bishop Gyles (Cary Elwes). I have to say, there were two moments where I was quoting The Princess Bride because of the familiarity of the scenes. And not in a good way.

Sadly, there is a lot of dumb here. Characters who are dumb doing things that are dumb. Jeffrey Dean Morgan feels as if his character is remarkably inconsistent and has a back story that is touch on, but not developed in any way. Alice is even less of a developed character.

The whole religious line of the story is surface level at best. There might have been an idea here that the film could have said something about, but it does not. The mysterious demon was never scary and the jump scares were nothing new or original. You have seen this all over the place.

There are some seriously laughable scenes. There was one scene where one of the priests ( it was actor Diogo Morgado) was trying to light a match and the spirit/demon kept blowing it out from over his shoulder. It was hilarious. Unfortunately for the movie, it was not supposed to be funny.

There were as many eye rolls for me here as anything else. The Unholy is not a good movie.

Go listen to EYG Hall of Famers Kiss’ song Unholy. It is much more entertaining and has been going through my head since.

1.8 stars

Monster super slugfest. When you get two of the most iconic giant monsters together, monster super slugfest is what you should expect. Thankfully, Godzilla vs. Kong delivers in that department.

When Godzilla unexpectedly attacks an Apex Cybernetics technical site, CEO Walter Simmons (Demián Bichir) approached expert/author/scientist Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgård) for ideas on what to do. Nathan traveled to Skull Island to try and convince a former colleague, Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall), to use Kong, who she had been studying for years, to lead them to Hollow Earth, the legendary location believed to be the birthplace of the Titans.

Bringing Kong with them, the giant ape’s very presence attracted the attention of Godzilla, kicking off the ultimate battle of the alphas.

I believe that this movie is the best of the recent series of monster movies that include Godzilla (2014), Kong: Skull Island, and Godzilla: King of the Monsters. None of these movies were bad, per se. In fact, I liked most of them. However, they all suffered from the same misstep. The film focused way too much on the human characters and limited the amount of time with the monsters.

Admittedly, these movies require some form of human characters to hold the film together between huge monster fights, but some of the previous films may not have known exactly what the intent was of the film.

There are a couple of interesting characters here. The little deaf girl who had formed a connection with Kong, Jia (Kaylee Hottle) was one of the best. Kaylee Hottle makes her film debut in this role and she does a fantastic job. Millie Bobby Brown returns in her role as Madison from Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Kyler Chandler returns as her father with very little to do. Brian Tyree Henry plays a paranoid podcaster filled with conspiracy theories the whole way.

Godzilla vs. Kong does a much better job of balancing the humans and the monsters. The film seems to clearly have these human characters as thin plot points. They exist to put the minutes in the film as down periods. This film knows what we want.

The battles with Kong and Godzilla are some of the best of the series. The CGI and effects are beautiful and awe-inspiring. Once the film brings Kong and Godzilla together, it picks up the pace dramatically. While the first 30-45 minutes are fairly slow, the first watery fight is amazing.

The third act of the movie is just fire. Some of the best monster fights you could hope for. These battles are planned out perfectly and the choreography is on point. Yes, the plot is thin and contains plenty of holes, but it is good enough for what it needed to be. It needed to be there for an excuse to bring Kong and Godzilla face to face.

And kudos to the writers in having a clear cut winner between the two Titans while still maintaining the aura and the mystique of both of these icons.

Godzilla vs. Kong is a lot of fun and a full blown spectacle that should be enjoyed as what it is. A monster throwdown.

4 stars

One of the movies that has received some Oscar nominations that I had never seen was The Father. Sir Anthony Hopkins was nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a film that I was not 100% sure actually had been made. That’s a joke, but it has not been readily available for sure.

However, The Father arrived this weekend on streaming (specifically Vudu) and I decided that the air of mystery on this film needed to end.

Hopkins played Anthony, an elderly man, whose daughter Anne (Olivia Colman) has been taking care of him and he has been becoming confused.

However, this is not simply a movie talking about Alzheimer’s Disease or any sort of decline in mental acumen. It is more than that. The film gives us scenes from the POV of Anthony. By doing this, the film creates a enigmatic jumble of memories and scenes that change per each one and we, the audience, have no idea which one is the actual reality. This is because Anthony was not sure of which of the moments was reality either. It kept the viewers totally off balance and uncertain about what they were seeing.

Anne might be movie to France or she might be looking for someone to move in and help take care of her father or she might be living with a man or they might be living in her father’s flat or her flat or … well, you get the idea.

By choosing this style, director Florian Zeller creates a symbolic reality about what living with this horrendous disease is like and going out of the way to provide an air of confusion to the audience.

Sir Anthony Hopkins is wonderful here, never sure exactly what is going on or why he is unable to straighten the thoughts out in his head. He keeps referring to another daughter, a painter named Lucy. We never are sure what had happened to Lucy, or honestly if she ever really existed in the first place, though it seemed as if she was killed in some kind of accident. Hopkins masterfully brings all kinds of emotional moments to the haze around him in reacting to Anne and the others that come in contact with him.

Olivia Colman is excellent here too, given a difficult assignment. She plays off what Anthony does and shows how important he is to her and yet, we understand the pressures and frustrations that go along with the role. She is shown in each of the POVs with a differing reaction but equal amounts of guilt and pain.

This is a powerful story with a lot of pain and depressing moments. It might be a film that is challenging to watch and may stick with you for awhile.

4 stars