Month: November 2019

With the end of the year right around the corner(albeit a few blocks away), it’s about time I started going over my favorite movies of the year.  There were a lot of great films to come out this year, both theatrically and direct-to-video.  But before I do that, I have to acknowledge that there were some…..questionable films released this year.  Obviously, movie studios need to make money, so some tend to rely on established franchises with sequels and reboots.  But for every great film released this year, there is a total stinker to mock it.  Yeah, there were….a few of them here in the States, but there were also some that were from other countries, but weren’t released on video until this year, so they count.  So, let’s dig into the gutter of 2019 and see what’s been pushed in there.

The Worst: Kung-Fu League

Oh, god.  Where do I begin with this one?  As a huge fan of martial arts movies, I’ve seen a lot of great films.  From Enter the Dragon to The Raid, there is an enormous amount of fantastic martial arts films to choose from.  Unfortunately, for every Enter the Dragon, you get a Remo Williams.  Kung-Fu League is easily the worst movie I’ve seen this year and one of the worst martial arts movies I’ve ever seen.  The concept is not a terrible one:  You have four famous characters from Chinese cinema, three of whom are actual historical figures, and you put them into one movie together:  Wong Fei Hung, Ip Man, Huo Yuan Jia, and Chen Zhen(the fictional character).  So do we get some righteous epic action in Kung Fu League?  NO!  What we get is a limp-dick romantic action-comedy that fails at nearly everything that it’s trying to go for.  There are one or two fights in the film that are decent, but everything else is cheap and horrendously obvious wire-fu.  The jokes don’t land and the romantic aspect of the film is incredibly weak and awkward.  The final battle is so poorly conceived and executed it’s not even funny.  Considering the talent involved here, I would have expected something more competent than what we actually got.  This was a COMPLETE waste of an interesting concept.  The ghost of Grumpy Cat is NOT amused.

I Spit on Your Grave: Deja Vu

If you wanted to create a sequel to one of the most notorious and savage films from the 70s, how would you do it?  Would you take a year or two and come up with a legitimate story about the original film’s female lead and how she manages to cope with the trauma that she suffered?  Or would you rather wait 40 years before attempting a story like that?  I Spit on Your Grave: Deja Vu is the only sequel to 1976’s I Spit on Your Grave.  There was a remake in 2010 that was followed up by two sequels, but I’m not talking about those.  No, Deja Vu is a film that really had no business being made.  The original film was extremely shocking and brutal with a sexual assault that lasted 30 minutes.  It was incredibly rough to watch, but the revenge sequence was pretty satisfying, even though the film was criticized for that as well.  If you were a going to make a sequel to a film like that, wouldn’t you want to try and push the envelope even further?  Not only does Deja Vu NOT push the envelope further, it is actually rather tame in comparison.  It’s also dull as ditch-water, because the film’s director, Meir Zarchi, doesn’t know when to cut a shot.  There are sequences that go on for far too long with nothing happening in between.  The film also runs at two and a half hours.  Not only is it boring, a lot of the acting is incredibly awful, with the exception of the film’s two leads, Camille Keaton and Jamie Bernadette.  That and the effects are practical, mostly.  There is nothing truly shocking about this film except for the fact that it even got made in the first place.

Aladdin

I’m a huge fan of Disney’s animated films, particularly the ones from the mid-90s on back.  One of my favorite animated films was Aladdin.  Why?  For one, it was colorful, fun, had catchy music and above all, it had Robin Williams as the Genie.  In fact, he’s the reason the animated film was so good.  When he passed away and it was announced that a live-action adaptation was announced, who would play the Genie?  My only thought was Will Smith, and apparently, the execs at Disney thought the same thing.  He’s good.  Naomi Scott as Princess Jasmine is good.  Everything else sucks, though.  The music is not as good as the original, even though some of the newer versions aren’t awful.  The costumes and set designs look extremely cheap and artificial as the film was apparently trying to be it’s own Bollywood film.  The character of Aladdin is one of the most generic portrayals I’ve ever seen for a character like that, but one of the biggest sins this movie committed was the portrayal of Jafar.  He’s nowhere near as threatening as the animated character.  He doesn’t have the gravelly voice and intimidating demeanor that the original version had.  Ultimately, the live-action version of Aladdin fails on nearly every level.  I was debating whether or not I should put The Lion King on this list, but at least that film was astounding from a visual and technical perspective and the music was still good…mostly, but this…abomination was a disaster.

Hellboy

I don’t know what it is about Hellboy that makes these movies so unmarketable.  The original Guillermo Del Toro film is one of the coolest superhero movies I’ve ever seen, with an outstanding performance from Ron Perlman.  The sequel wasn’t half-bad either, but apparently neither of those films did well enough to warrant a third film, so Lionsgate snaps up the rights to the character and pushes forward with a hard R-rated reboot.  At the helm is noted British horror film director Neil Marshall with Stranger Thing’s David Harbour as Hellboy himself.  Despite me coming down really hard on the film in my review, I’ve learned to start liking the film more and more with each viewing.  But the problems with the film’s production are increasingly self-evident.  From what I’ve read, the film’s production was very troubled.  It’s too bad, there were some things in this film that were legitimately cool.  The Baba Yaga sequence was genuinely creepy and a lot of the action was pretty good.  The problem was the tone of the film was all over the place and the film’s soundtrack was very schizophrenic and not in a good way.

Terminator: Dark Fate

This one had a lot of promise.  There was legitimate interest in the film because James Cameron had returned to write and produce the film with Linda Hamilton reprising her role as Sarah Connor.  Seeing Linda and Arnold Schwarzenegger on screen together for the first time in nearly 30 years was something that I was looking forward to and for the most part I wasn’t disappointed in that regard.  While I gave the film a solid 8/10, I can’t help but shake the feeling that this film was mismanaged right from the get go.  For one, Tim Miller was directing and while he did a fantastic job with Deadpool, he couldn’t stop himself from butting heads with Jim Cameron, the creator of Terminator.  The opening sequence of the film pissed off a lot of people and the story line was basically a carbon-copy of the far superior Terminator 2.  While I’m grateful, this film bypasses the previous three movies, it’s just not good enough to justify its own existence.  Again, I enjoyed it a great deal.  It had some really awesome action and the performance of the lead actors was great, but nobody’s going to remember this movie as evidenced by the dismal box-office results.

Game of Thrones: Season 8

Ending an epic show like Game of Thrones is not a task that I would ever ask for.  This is a show that people have adored since 2011 with incredible stories, mind-blowing effects and epic battles.  But it was also a show that wasn’t afraid to subvert your expectations and go in directions that nobody could ever see coming.  It would be around the 5th season where the show would begin deviating from the books, because George R.R. Martin hasn’t finished them, so the show-runners, D.B. Weiss and David Benioff would head off in their own direction with the final three seasons with some input from Martin, but you can absolutely tell from season 6 onward that the show is having issues.  They would also shorten the final two seasons.  Season 7 would have 7 episodes and season 8 would have 6, but the episodes are a bit longer.  By doing that, Weiss and Benioff wrote themselves into a corner that they couldn’t get out of.  Certain plots were rushed and a number of characters didn’t have satisfying conclusions.  I’m not going to spoil it for those who haven’t seen it, but after spending 7 seasons with a lot of these characters, season 8 feels like a slap in the face.  I didn’t hate it entirely, as the production values are beyond anything that I’ve ever seen in a TV show before.  There’s a lot of good things in this season, but those are overshadowed by writing that feels rushed and completely antithetical to what they were initially trying to do.  Ending a story as grand as Game of Thrones was NEVER going to be an easy task, but I, like a lot of people, didn’t think this was the way it should’ve happened.

There are a number of other films out there that I think weren’t as good as they should have been, but these were the ones that really stuck out for me, even though Game of Thrones is actually a TV show, but it still counts.  My list, MY rules.  Every year is going to have movies that not everybody is going to like.  As fair as I try to be, there are going to be films that I find disappointing or some that I genuinely hate.  Most of the selections on this list I don’t completely hate, except for Kung Fu League.  I try to find the positives in nearly everything that I see, but sometimes, I just don’t find them.  While I believe that the late Grumpy Cat would approve of this post, I’m pretty sure he would still hate everything.  All hail Grumpy Cat(RIP)!!

Released: January 2018

Director: Miguel Angel Vivas

Run Time: 89 Minutes

Not Rated

Distributor: Embankment Films

Genre: Horror Thriller

Cast:
Rachel Nichols: Sarah Clark
Laura Harring: Madeleine
Ben Temple: Isaac
Gillian Apter: Sarah’s Mom

I’ve always been a huge fan of horror movies.  It’s a genre that I’ve followed since I was a kid.  I didn’t really start getting into horror, though, until 2005 when House of Wax was released to theaters.  A couple years after that, though, I started hearing about this French slasher flick called High Tension.  That was my introduction not just to Alexandre Aja’s films, but to French horror in general.  High Tension was one of the most violent and brutal horror movies that I saw up to that point, and I was utterly entranced by it.  So, I began to pay more attention to horror films from France like Irreversible, Frontiere(s), and Martyrs.  There was another one that was released back in 2006/2007 which ended up being one of the goriest movies I’ve ever seen: Inside(À l’intérieur).  It was shocking, bold, and brutal.  It was widely regarded as one of the best horror films of the decade.  When it was announced that Martyrs was getting an American remake, people were skeptical(and rightly so), but some were also afraid that Inside was also getting the remake treatment.  Well, it did, and…..it’s a shadow of the what the original film was.

Inside follows Sarah Clark, an expectant mother whose husband was killed in a brutal car crash months prior.  Still reeling from the tragedy, Sarah lives alone with her dog when a mysterious woman knocks on her front door.  Sarah turns the woman away and goes back to bed only to discover that the woman has broken into her house and is attempting to steal her unborn child.  A cat-and-mouse battle for survival begins as Sarah tries to protect the one thing that matters most.  It’s a simple set-up for a horror movie so it doesn’t really require a lot of thought.  Simplicity is a good thing in a lot of horror movies.  What makes Inside’s story so interesting, both in the remake and the original film, is that things like this have actually happened.  I would imagine this scenario would be a living nightmare for an expectant mother as it would be for any family.  The problem with the story in THIS version of the film is that certain elements were changed or removed entirely to accommodate delicate American sensibilities.  The final act of the film in particular takes a far more conventional and predictable approach to the story’s conclusion and as a result, it feels less impactful than the original French film.  This version’s story isn’t the only thing that makes it an inferior film, though.

I’m just going to say it:  The new Inside is extremely tame in terms of its violence.  Make no mistake, it’s still pretty violent with some stabbings and shootings, but it still feels very restrained.  The original film really let the blood flow.  In fact, the gore in the original film was medically accurate(as far as I know), so it had that extremely visceral punch that this movie doesn’t have.  There’s a reason why some of these French horror flicks have earned the label “extreme.”  They pull absolutely no punches in terms of violence and brutality.  They also didn’t shy away from nihilistic endings or situations, and that’s what made those films so damned interesting.  Easy to sit, through?  No, but at least the French had the balls to go all the way with what they were intending, and that illustrates one of the key differences between American and French film-makers.  French film-makers actually trust their audiences to be able to handle the stuff that’s being thrown at them.  American film-makers?  They’re constantly treating us with kids’ gloves, even though our audiences are more than capable of handling some extreme material.  Part of what made the original Inside so memorable was its level of violence, but this new one feels very conventional in that regard and that’s not really a good thing.  What the film does have going for it, though, is intensity.  Even if you know what’s coming, it’s still got you on the edge of your seat and that’s not a bad thing.

The performances here are actually pretty damn good, if I do say so myself.  Rachel Nichols plays the pregnant Sarah, and she absolutely goes for it, despite the absurdity of the final act.  She’s fantastic as a pregnant woman that’s not only fighting her life, but that of her unborn child, even when she’s having contractions and is about to go into labor.  It’s insane, but it was still handled better in the original picture.  Laura Herring plays The Woman.  Her performance is very different from that Beatrice Dalle, who played the character in the previous film.  Instead of going completely psychotic, Herring tones it down quite a bit for this film, and while I don’t think it works as well, she’s still an intimidating presence.  While the main leads are convincing, no one else is.  The writing of these side characters is ludicrously stupid.  I mean, the cops that show up do the stupidest damn things that I’ve seen fictional cops do.  You may as well have stuck a piece of paper on their backs saying, “Keystone.”

If you’re not in the mood for over-top brutality and gore, then you might actually find some enjoyment here.  Myself, I enjoyed it a bit, but I just couldn’t shake the fact that a superior version of the film exists.  This reminds me a lot of the American remake of Martyrs:  A watered-down and more sanitized version of a film that was designed to shock and provoke.  As it stands, the new Inside is nothing more than your average conventional thriller, and while it isn’t a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination, it just doesn’t hold a candle to the French version.  It just seems to me that American film-makers just aren’t understanding why these French horror flicks are so memorable.  It’s either that, or they don’t want to offend people’s sensibilities.  Grab a pair, will ya?  Trust your audience to handle the material.  Will they all handle it well?  No, but more often than not, you’re going to find that audiences tend to be a bit more receptive when they aren’t being treated like children.

My Final Recommendation: Sacrebleu!  Another inferior American re-make! 6/10

In an age where movie sequels and remakes basically rule the box-office, we’ve been seeing a number of sequels being made to film franchises that have been around for decades.  Whether its Star Wars, Terminator, or Alien, unexpected sequels are being made for franchises that really didn’t need them.  Don’t misunderstand, I’m grateful that some of these sequels exist, but at the same time, there are times when it feels like it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense making a follow-up film to a series that we thought had closure way back in the day.  I know that film-makers are trying to cash in on nostalgia, and while I appreciate that on a certain level, nostalgia cannot be a main reason for making a sequel years, even decades after the previous film.  I’ve gone on record with my opinions about remakes and sequels ad nauseum, so I won’t blather on about how I feel about sequels.  Instead, I’m going to be taking a look at film franchises that have grown very long in the tooth and need to be put to rest, at least for the time being until film-makers can actually justify bringing these films back from the dead.

Terminator

I’m going to start with the most recent release: Terminator.  Terminator: Dark Fate was released last Friday, November 1st to mixed reviews.  Some people really enjoyed it, some people absolutely hated it, and both sides have valid reasons.  Myself, I rather enjoyed Dark Fate a bit.  That being said, the one thing that everybody can agree on, is that Dark Fate still falls extremely short of the standard that the original two films set.  Why?  I believe it was James Cameron’s lack of direct involvement, in my opinion.  Granted, the man is really busy with his Avatar sequels, but he did step into the writing and producing roles for this film.  Unfortunately, people aren’t going to see it because a lot of them are huge Terminator fans and what they see is nothing more than a re-hash of superior of films, and that is true.  As a result, Dark Fate has only brought in 29 million dollars domestically 94 million dollars internationally.  The total comes in at a lot less than the 185 million bucks that it cost to make the movie.  In other words:  Terminator: Dark Fate bombed.  Big time.  I don’t think it was just the SJW angle the film had, even though that was it, but I think it was more along the lines of franchise fatigue.  The previous three films failed to rejuvenate a franchise that by all rights, should have ended with Terminator 2.  Two of those films were intended to jump start new trilogies, but they failed to get off the ground, so we have another attempt at restarting the franchise, but it looks like the film series has stalled.  It just goes to prove that even though James Cameron has his name on a movie, it doesn’t always guarantee success.

Rambo

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a huge fan of the Rambo films, even though the second and third films got really freakin’ cheesy.  The original film is an absolute classic in every sense of the word, but that’s because the film was more than just an action film, it was a character study into how a Vietnam veteran is treated by everybody else and his response to that kind of treatment.  The 4th film, took on a more real-world scenario dealing with Burma and the atrocities that were happening there.  It was still a Rambo film, though, so it had over-the-top action and violence.  Given how the 4th film ended with the character coming home to his father’s farm in Arizona, most people would’ve expected that to be the end of it.  Nope.  Apparently, Sylvester Stallone had at least one more film in him before hanging up the knife.  Now, we have Rambo: Last Blood.  While I thought the film was an absolute blast, the story and the writing here were paper-thin.  I liked the interaction’s between Stallone’s Rambo and Yvette Monreal’s Gabrielle, but considering what ultimately happens to Gabby half-way through the film, I thought I would have cared a lot more about the characters than I did.  While most audiences really dug the film, and I did too, Last Blood feels very tacked on with some really weak villains.  I honestly don’t think it really needed to be made, since there was really nothing to say.  It seems that Last Blood was intended to be Rambo’s last ride, and I hope it is.  It was a film that nobody really asked for and the box office numbers are a testament to that.  Last Blood wasn’t a complete bomb, but it wasn’t a success, either.

Star Wars

I can’t believe that I’m putting Star Wars on this list, but I am.  I grew up watching Star Wars.  It is one of my favorite film series of all time, which is why I want Disney to take a long hard look at what they intend to do with Star Wars after Episode IX.  There are a lot of stories to be told in the Star Wars universe, and we’ve got The Mandalorian and Obi-Wan series to prove that.  I enjoyed the hell out of The Last Jedi and to a much lesser extent, the Han Solo film, but a lot of people didn’t.  In fact, Solo’s box-office performance was so underwhelming that it forced Disney to re-adjust how they handle the franchise.  Certain projects were cancelled and some film-makers were either forced or chose to move on to other projects.  Recently, the Game of Thrones writers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, who were contracted to create their own Star Wars trilogy, left the project to pursue projects that were being produced by Netflix.  The stranglehold that Disney has on Star Wars is unbelievable.  Considering people’s reactions to Solo and The Last Jedi, I would’ve thought that Disney would have learned to be a bit more respectful to the series.  I still plan on seeing The Rise of Skywalker next month, if only to close out the Skywalker saga.  Honestly, I think Disney needs to give the Star Wars films a rest.  They’ve been going hard with yearly releases and that hasn’t helped the franchise one bit.  Again, we’re starting to see audiences suffer from some fatigue when it comes to Star Wars.  I know I am, and I’m far more forgiving than your average fan.

Predator

The original Predator with Arnold Schwarzenegger is one of my favorite 80s action/sci-fi flicks.  It’s a simple popcorn film that hits all the right notes.  It starts off as your typical Commando-style film, but evolves into a seriously slasher-like/horror film that features one of the most iconic movie monsters of all time.  The second film, while not as good as the original, still managed to be quite entertaining.  The third film which brings more characters to a different planet, was still a pretty good time, despite issues with casting and some of the CGI effects.  The fourth film, The Predator is everything that is wrong with this franchise, and it was directed by Shane Black, who starred in the original film.  I would’ve expected him to kind of adhere to the relative seriousness of the first movie, even though it had its comedic moments.  Instead, the movie we got last year was a laugh-a-minute CGI-fest whose jokes rarely landed.  From what I understand, there was a lot of interference from the studio to the point where the final act of the film had to be re-written and re-shot, so the movie that were somewhat promised wasn’t the one we got.  I didn’t hate the film completely, but it was definitely the worst of the bunch.  Now that Fox is owned by Disney, MAYBE we’ll get a decent movie, but I’m willing to wait until they get somebody that will actually respect the franchise.

Tremors

Tremors is absolutely one of my favorite monster movies of all time.  Not only was it scary at times, it was also hilarious.  The blending of horror and comedy was so perfect that the film became an instant cult classic.  It was very reminiscent of the creature features of the 1950s.  Nobody expected a sequel, because they thought it was going to be a one-and-done kind of film.  Now, 29 years later, we got an announcement that for a SEVENTH film, Tremors: Island Fury.  I’m not going to lie, I really enjoyed the sequels(all of which were direct-to-video, by the way), and there is definitely an audience for more films.  That being said, how many more different ways can Burt Gummer blast the bejeezus out of them Graboids?  Michael Gross is fantastic in ALL of those movies, by the way, and he’s really the reason why I keep watching them, but I just want them to stop for a while.  I’m also still pissed off that the latest Tremors series starring Kevin Bacon was cancelled before the first episode even aired.  Fuck you, SyFy.

Saw

The original Saw is one of the most unique thrillers that I’ve ever seen.  This low-budget flick took place mostly inside one room with two people  chained at opposite sides of the room.  The tension comes from not knowing why they are there and how they can escape.  It is a smartly written and well-directed little chiller that didn’t rely on the over-the-top gore that the series would ultimately be known for.  It was still violent, but the extreme gore was mostly off-screen.  Unfortunately, the yearly series would progressively get more violent and gory as each film was released.  Not only that, each subsequent film after the third would try to connect to the original film in some pretty outlandish and unbelievable ways.  These movies just got really freaking ridiculous.  From what I understand, comedian Chris Rock is going to be writing and producing a new Saw film that’s apparently going to reboot the series.  Why?  I’m a huge fan of the horror genre, but I honestly wish that these film-makers would take a risk on a new idea instead of trying to re-hash something that came before.  After Saw VII came and went, I was kind of glad they left the series behind, at least until Jigsaw came out a couple of years ago.

I didn’t create this list to hate on these movies, far from it.  I actually really like a lot of these movies, but I’m looking at how the quality of writing for some of these films are getting worse and worse with each title.  Will film-makers stop making sequels because I asked them to?  Not a chance in hell, but that’s not going to stop me from pointing out the fact that people are not necessarily getting excited about sequels anymore.  I know I’m getting a little sick of them.  But what do you folks think?  Do you agree that some of these franchises need to hit the brakes for a little while, or are you okay with them cranking out more and more titles?  Let me know in the comments.

Released: November 2019

Director: Tim Miller

Rated R

Run Time: 128 Minutes

Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Genre: Action/Science Fiction

Cast:
Linda Hamilton: Sarah Connor
Arnold Schwarzenegger: T-800/Carl
Mackenzie Davis: Grace
Natalia Reyes: Dani Ramos
Gabriel Luna: Gabriel/Rev-9

For a movie buff, these are interesting times we live in.  We’ve got franchises that date back over 40 years that are still seeing new entries.  Star Wars is coming up on 11 movies with Episode IX being released next month.  The Alien franchise has about 8 movies to its name, if you include the Alien Vs. Predator films(I do, by the way).  Rambo just had a new film back in September, and Ghostbusters is getting an official sequel to the original two films.  So, why are we now seeing sequels to certain franchises that have been around for decades?  Hard to say, but I’m guessing that film-makers want to take these older franchises and hand them off to a new generation of film-goers and film-makers.  Understandable, if sometimes ill-advised.  The Terminator franchise is among my favorite franchises in science fiction.  The original two films set a standard for the genre that is very difficult to beat.  Terminator 2 itself set a high bar for what a sequel should and can be.  Sadly, the franchise has been in a bit of a downward spiral over the past 20 years.  Now, we have a new entry:  Terminator: Dark Fate.  Is this film a worthy follow-up, or is it just another generic action film in an ailing franchise?

Terminator: Dark Fate opens in 1998 as Sarah Connor and her son, John, are enjoying an afternoon at a beach in Mexico, when they come under attack from a T-800 model Terminator.  22 years later, a strange woman falls out of a mysterious blue orb of energy that appears over a free-way.  The woman’s name is Grace, and she’s arrived to protect young Dani Ramos, who is supposed to be the new leader of the human resistance in the future.  At the same time, another orb appears and out drops a new vicious breed of Terminator, the Rev-9.  Dani Ramos and her brother are attacked at a factory by the new machine when Grace intervenes and tries to rescue Dani.  Escaping the Rev-9, they encounter Sarah Connor, who has been hunting Terminators for the past two decades.  Is any of this sounding familiar?  If you’ve seen the original two films, then you know exactly where this is going.  It’s the same kind of story that’s been told in previous films.  Exact same kind of story with almost the exact same kind of resolution.  I’m not saying that it’s bad, it’s just that they really didn’t take any risks outside of the opening sequence.  Even then, it was kind of….eh.  Instead of Skynet, they are fighting Legion.  From a story-telling standpoint, Dark Fate is not quite the Terminator film that I was anticipating, and many hardcore fans of the franchise weren’t.   This is a Terminator for the next generation.  It really is, and I have no problems with it.  It does skip over the previous three films, so that’s a plus.  I’m curious as to where they are going to go with it.

One of the reasons why I was interested in seeing this movie was the fact that Linda Hamilton came back as Sarah Connor.  She was absolutely fantastic.  She owns the character and knows her better than anybody else.  Her reactions to everything going on around her is exactly the kind of thing that would expect from the character.  She’s still the bad-ass that she was in Terminator 2, even she is older.  She’s still got it.  Arnold Schwarzenegger puts in his best performance in a Terminator film.  His character arc is actually VERY interesting.  How his character of Carl has evolved since the beginning of the film is actually pretty nifty.  The new characters are also fairly interesting.  Mackenzie Davis plays Grace, an augmented human from 2042.  Her character is super strong and fast, but it comes at a cost of her metabolism exhausting her after extreme bursts of energy.  She’s great.  Not only can she handle the action sequences extremely well, but her character has more depth to her than the film trailers would have you believe.  Natalia Reyes plays Dani Ramos, the young girl that Grace was sent to protect.  Dani is this film’s John Connor, or rather the role that John Connor was supposed to be.  I think Natalia did pretty well with what she was given, but what she was given wasn’t that great.  She can handle her own amongst the other characters in the film, but she feels kind of average as a character.  Gabriel Luna plays the new Terminator, the Rev-9.  He was fine, but when stacked up to somebody like Robert Patrick from T2, he just doesn’t feel as threatening.  Overall, the acting is pretty good across the board with Linda and Arnold being the obvious standouts.

I have to admit, that I actually really like the new Rev-9 Terminator.  I had my issues with Gabriel Luna not coming across as really threatening in his performance, but the character is definitely not something you want to tangle with.  The Rev-9 is not just the endo-skeletion, but it also has this new liquid-metal covering that operates as a separate entity, which means double trouble for our characters.  It borrows some elements from the first Terminator 3, but it’s still its own thing.  It looks fantastic as far as the actual machine goes.  Some of the CGI work is actually rather impressive, if not groundbreaking.  In fact, there’s nothing truly groundbreaking about what this film is doing.  It doesn’t really push new technology as far as visual effects are concerned, and in fact, a lot of the action sequences in the film are CGI-heavy.  Honestly, I don’t think they could’ve done those scenes without CGI, at least not safely, but some of that CGI-work is pretty shoddy.  The action sequences are very thrilling and you can see what’s going on, but some of the CGI feels unfinished.  I also don’t think there’s an action sequence that comes across as iconic like in the original two films.  In the second film, you had a lot of really cool action set-pieces that stood out from anything that you’ve seen before, such as Arnold shooting the frozen T-1000 into a million pieces.  There’s nothing like that here, and that’s a shame.

Is Terminator: Dark Fate better than the previous three films?  Yeah, but like a lot of people have said, the bar those films set was so low, that the only direction that Dark Fate could was up.  The question you should be asking is this:  Is Dark Fate a worthy sequel to Terminator 2?  Hard to say.  It’s going to be up to you, the audience, to figure that one out for yourself.  A lot of people have compared this film to The Force Awakens, and I’m not really seeing the comparison.  In fact, I don’t think that is a proper comparison.  If you’re going to compare films, than you need to compare Dark Fate with Alien 3.  It’s not a bad movie, far from it, but it does things that’s going to piss off a lot of fans.  The opening sequence to Dark Fate is one of those things that people are not going to be happy about.  I’m a very forgiving fan when it comes to movies, so it’s because of that quality that I can recommend people to check out Terminator: Dark Fate, but I can also understand people who prefer the original two films over everything else that’s been released.  So do I, but I’m not dismissing any the previous films entirely, because each film has its own strengths.  Dark Fate, I think, is absolutely worth watching, if only for Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Everything else is icing on the cake as far as I’m concerned.  I like the new female characters.  They are mostly well-written and strongly performed, and we have a vicious Terminator that really does seem indestructible.  So, yeah, Dark Fate was a lot better than I was expecting it to be, but it’s far from great.  It’s definitely got some issues that bring it down a couple of notches, but I would say definitely check it out in theaters.

My Final Recommendation: There is no fate but what we make for ourselves, except when you’re making Terminator movies. 8/10.