Month: August 2021

Released: July 2021

Director: Robert Schwentke

Rated PG-13

Run Time: 121 Minutes

Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Genre: Action

Cast:
Henry Golding: Snake Eyes
Andrew Koji: Tommy
Haruke Abe: Akiko
Takehiro Hira: Kenta
Iko Uwais: Hard Master
Peter Mensah: Blind Master
Ursula Corbero: Baroness
Samara Weaving: Scarlett

It’s a general rule of thumb that ninjas are awesome.  It doesn’t matter if they show up in the day or at night.  Ninjas. Are. Awesome.  While ninjas have shown up in movies since the 60s, they really hit their peak in the 80s with movies like Enter The Ninja, Revenge of the Ninja, Nine Deaths of the Ninja, Pray for Death, and American Ninja.  You can thank the popularity of ninjas during the 1980s because of one man: Sho Kosugi.  He’s played both good and evil ninjas and he was one of the best action stars to come out of Japan at that time.  That didn’t mean that those ninja movies were good.  Most of them weren’t.  But I’ll be damned if they weren’t fun.  But the ninja movie disappeared after the 90s.  I’m not exaggerating, the popularity of those kinds of movies just dropped like a rock, and we wouldn’t see our first ninja on film until The Last Samurai, and that was only for about 5-6 minutes.  After that, we got Ninja Assassin in 2009, which was a lot of fun, and a Scott Adkins-led Ninja, which had its moments, but wasn’t that great.  The follow-up, Ninja: Shadow of A Tear was a much better movie.  But other movies also had ninjas, namely G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra and G.I. Joe: Retaliation.  Those ninjas went by the name of Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow.  Snake Eyes was clad entirely in black while Storm Shadow was dressed in white.  Snake Eyes was played by Darth Maul himself, Ray Park and Storm Shadow was played by Korean star Byung-Hun Lee.  The less said about the first film, the better.  I enjoyed Retaliation quite a bit more.  The problem with those movies was that best parts involved Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes.  The rivalry between those two characters was outstanding.  So, eight years later, we get a NEW G.I Joe film, Snake Eyes(not to be confused with the Nicolas Cage movie of the same name).

Snake Eyes follows the title character as he witnesses the murder of his father as a child.  He grows up hunting the man who murdered his father when he’s offered a job by the head of a Yakuza gang.  After saving the life of Tommy, who is a member of a local ninja clan, Snake Eyes is recruited by the clan to help defend Japan against any who threaten it.  As I mentioned in my introduction, the best parts of the G.I. Joe movies was Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes.  This is an origin story of not just Snake Eyes but Storm Shadow as well.  It shows their relationship when they were brothers-in-arms to when they end up on opposite sides.  The relationship between the two characters really has been at the heart of the previous movies, but this movie actually explores that in detail, and in that regard, the movie works.  However, the story surrounding them isn’t very good.  It IS an origin story, and quite frankly, I think people have had enough of those.  Not only that, things happen in this movie that make you question people’s motives.  Ultimately, it’s just a reason to see two ninjas going to town on bad guys with swords and guns.

There’s two aspects of this film that knee-cap this movie completely, and these aspects are the most important parts of the film:  The writing, the characters, and the action.  I’m going to discuss the writing and the characters first.  For a movie called Snake Eyes, it goes out of its way to make you hate the lead character.  I’m not kidding.  Snake Eyes is a total jack-ass.  I’m not blaming Henry Golding for it.  He’s fantastic, but his character is poorly written.  This guy is clearly out for revenge and he’s willing to screw over his allies to get what he wants.  More than once.  Every time you think he has a change of heart, he goes against the clan and betrays Tommy on multiple occasions.  I’m sorry, how are you supposed to sympathize with a character that’s more than willing to betray his allies for a chance at revenge?  In fact, the movie makes it clear that Tommy, who will become Storm Shadow, is the one that the audience should be siding with.  This is a fundamental failure of the script and its writers to craft a compelling lead character.  Every other character in the film is paper-thin.  We don’t get to learn any more about Hard Master or Blind Master, and we certainly don’t learn a whole lot about Akiko.  Since this is supposed to be a G.I. Joe movie, where are Cobra and the Joes?  With the exception of the Baroness and Scarlett, those organizations are given barely more than lip-service, and even those two characters aren’t that important.  In fact, you could remove Baroness and Scarlett, and you wouldn’t lose anything from the movie.  At all.  That’s how pointless they are.  As you can probably tell, I hate the writing in this movie.  It’s abysmal.

Since this is a G.I. Joe movie that involves ninjas, you would think the action would be spectacular, right?  Right?  Not entirely.  The fight choreography here is actually really good, when you can see it.  For reasons that escape me, the director and the director of photography opted for shaky-cam instead of making it…I don’t know, easy to see.  The camera-work is not the worst I’ve seen in a movie like this, but it really does get in the way of being to see what these guys are truly capable of in terms of staging the action.  When you can see it, it’s fantastic, especially towards the end of the film.  It’s weird because Bojan Bazelli, the DP, is usually really good about letting the audience see what’s going on in most of his movies.  Robert Schwentke, the director, is clearly not experienced in shooting close-quarters combat with swords.  The guy that did the fight choreography, Kenji Tanigaki, knows what he’s doing.  He’s done outstanding work in movies like Rurouni Kenshin, Enter the Fat Dragon, and Wuxia(Dragon).  The car chases and stunt sequences are all really good, but again, the camera-work gets in the way.  People really need to stop looking at the Bourne movies for how to shoot fight scenes.  You only do shaky-cam when you want to hide bad choreography, but I didn’t see any bad choreography here.  Just bad angles and close-ups…and shakiness.

In terms of acting, everybody does a pretty good job, but the two standouts are Henry Golding as Snake Eyes and Andrew Koji as Tommy.  You really do buy into the friendship that these two have which becomes a rivalry.  Iko Uwais is completely under-used as Hard Master, and that sucks, because Uwais is a hell of a martial artist and actor.  Peter Mensah is great as Blind Master, but again, he’s not given a whole lot to chew on.  The main villain of the movie, Kenta, is your run-of-the-mill outcast that feels betrayed by the clan that he was a part of.  While Takehiro Hira does what he can with what he’s given, the character is incredibly thin, and the motivation for the character isn’t anything more than taking revenge.  Yay?  Samara Weaving is totally wasted here.  She’s a fantastic actress, but her character of Scarlett is only there to provide exposition and occasionally fight.  There’s no depth, no motivation, and the character is incredibly bland.  The same thing goes for Ursula Corbero’s Baroness.  Baroness is supposed to be the right-hand woman of Cobra Commander, but not only do we not see HIM at all, but her motivations are also flimsy.  It’s like the writers didn’t even try to make these characters have any kind of depth.

Is Snake Eyes a bad movie?  It’s not entirely without merit, but it is not a good movie, and to be honest, I don’t think people were really excited for it.  It sets up for further adventures, but the likelihood of that happening is slim-to-none.  First of all, G.I. Joe hasn’t been popular since the 80s, so most people really weren’t interested.  On top of that, this movie was also released during a global pandemic, so the box-office intake was much less than it would have been if it was released during normal times, but even then, I feel it would’ve bombed.  It’s just not that good.  I understand that Paramount and the film-makers were attempting to reboot the franchise and start a new cinematic universe, but if your first movie isn’t good enough, a cinematic universe just isn’t going to happen.  Look at what happened with 2017’s The Mummy.  Besides, not everything needs to have a cinematic universe.  Marvel got away with it, because they smart about it, and made sure Iron Man was the best movie it could be before moving on from that.  So, yeah, Snake Eyes isn’t terrible, but there were some really bad decisions made here, especially in terms of the action.  If they had made the action more watchable with less shaky-cam, this would’ve been a more passable action flick.  As it stands, it does nothing to improve on any of the other movies.  Besides, I prefer Ray Park as Snake Eyes, anyway.

Released: April 2012

Director: Drew Goddard

Run Time: 95 Minutes

Rated R

Distributor: Lionsgate Studios

Genre: Horror/Comedy

Cast:
Kristen Donnelly: Dana
Chris Hemsworth: Curt
Anna Hutchison: Jules
Fran Kranz: Marty
Jesse Williams: Holden
Richard Jenkins: Sitterson
Bradley Whitford: Hadley

There are many things in this world that truly go together: Peanut butter and chocolate, bacon and eggs, death and taxes, politics and corruption.  What about horror and comedy?  Surprisingly, these two go together VERY well, yet only in the hands of somebody who truly understands both.  I’ve mentioned on many occasions that horror is one of the most versatile genres in movies.  Comedy’s the other one.  There is a clear line between horror and comedy, but weirdly enough, the two genres are very similar in many ways.  They tend to follow the same kind of beats in how to get a reaction out of people, but the intention is simply a matter of degrees.  Do you want to the audience to scream or to laugh?  You CAN get both, but it takes a real artist to pull it off well.  Let’s go all the way back to Ghostbusters from 1984.  That’s a horror movie that also worked as a comedy because of how well it was written.  All the crazy situations were played straight as if it was a real situation.  It also scared people because of the creature and ghost designs.  Evil Dead II by Sam Raimi took the original movie and made it into a splat-tastic comedy.  There were some legitimately freaky moments, but those moments were balanced out by moments of levity, which were provided by Bruce Campbell’s character.  The trick in making a horror-comedy work is to make sure the horror side of it works.  The comedy will come later.  I’ve seen to many attempts at trying to be funny when the horror side of things fails entirely.  There’s a precarious balance that has to be kept in order for the combination to work.  What I bring to you today is one of my personal favorites in the genre: The Cabin in The Woods.

The Cabin in The Woods follows a group of college students as they head up into the mountains to an isolated cabin in the woods(see what I did there?)to have a good time.  That is really all that I can say about the film’s plot without really spoiling it.  Suffice to say, The Cabin in The Woods is one of the smartest horror movies I’ve seen in years.  Everybody and their grandma should be familiar with the standard horror movie tropes about who dies in what order.  It’s pretty standard across most slasher movies.  What Cabin offers is a very unique and awesome explanation for WHY that is.  It also explains why some of these characters make the boneheaded decisions that they do.  There is a government organization that makes sure that things happen the way they do, and that’s as far as spoilers go.  While horror comedies can be funny because of the situations, Cabin is hilarious because of all the ways that it pokes fun at the audience and their expectations of what a horror movie should be.  While the first half of the movie plays out like any other slasher movie, it’s the last act of the film that’s batshit crazy.  Again, you have to see it for yourself.

While The Cabin in The Woods was released in 2012, it was actually made in 2009, so the Chris Hemsworth you see here is actually the pre-Thor Chris Hemsworth.  He’s not even the lead.  Any good movie, be it a horror, action, or comedy, needs to have strong characters to drive the story.  The main characters in this movie represent the stereotypical potential victims that you see in nearly every horror movie ever made: The athlete/jock played by Chris Hemsworth, the promiscuous girl played by Anna Hutchison, the intellectual played by Jesse Williams, the fool played by Fran Kranz, and the virgin played by Kristen Donnelly.  These make up our main protagonists/victims.  The stand-out character here is Marty the Fool.  Yet, he’s actually the smartest one of the bunch, despite the fact that he’s high as a kite most of the time.  Marty represents the audience’s skepticism in horror movies.  At multiple times during the movie, he’s constantly making the common sense observations that most of us would like to make in those situations.  In fact, one moment when it’s decided that people should split up, Marty goes, “Really?”  He’s the kind of character that figures out what’s actually going on, and that makes the situation even funnier.  Kristen Donnelly plays Dana like the sweet girl next door, but she’s a lot tougher than she looks.  Now, Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford play the government workers who make this whole thing go forward, and they are absolutely fantastic.  There’s clearly a reason for why they do what they do, but a lot of the time, they seem to be enjoying.  They play off each other incredibly well.

In any good horror-comedy, you have to make sure that the horror aspect of the film works as much as the comedy, otherwise people are going to be laughing for the wrong reasons.  Thanks to the deft direction by Drew Goddard and smart writing by Joss Whedon, the horror aspect of The Cabin in The Woods makes it worthy of being included as one of the best horror movies of its kind.  The practical effects and stunt-work are incredibly impressive.  Now, normally I would hate the idea of CGI in a horror movie of this kind, but the final act of the film kind of requires it and for the most part it holds up pretty well, but it does complement the practical effects shown in the film.  The sets are incredibly impressive.  The cabin itself is obviously a riff on Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead movies.  The only thing missing is the Cadillac.  There’s also the run-down gas station run by the creepy old guy that you see in EVERY horror movie.  That scene and old man character are moments that are truly laugh-out-loud, because it’s so ridiculous and the movie knows that.  Marty using his bong as a weapon is also pretty damn silly, but it works.  It works because the situation calls for it.  What happens to Chris Hemsworth’s character is shocking, but also incredibly funny, especially if you’ve seen Thor or any movie where Mr. Hemsworth is the lead.

No film is perfect, yet there are really no complaints that I can adequately come up with about this movie.  At 95 minutes, it’s tightly paced and moves pretty fast.  The humor hits fast with tongue planted firmly in cheek.  The blood and gore is incredibly satisfying, and the fact that the movie takes you on a roller-coaster ride while making fun of you for it at the same time is even better.  Great horror-comedies are not that common, so when they do show up I do pay attention.  The Cabin in The Woods could’ve been a run-of-the-mill horror movie and still be pretty decent, but it takes the concept and flips the table.  While holding a beer.  Or a bong.  While the film is over a decade old, it holds up incredibly well, and I would recommend it to anybody, even to people who are not avid fans of horror.  It’s that good.  Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon nailed it with this one.

Released: June 2021

Director: Justin Lin

Rated PG-13

Run Time: 143 Minutes

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Genre: Action

Cast:
Vin Diesel: Dominic Toretto
Michelle Rodriguez: Letty
Jordana Brewster: Mia
Tyrese Gibson: Roman
Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges: Tej
Charlize Theron: Cipher
John Cena: Jakob
Sung Kang: Han

I’ve mentioned on multiple occasions that sometimes movie franchises run so long that they either forget why they’re popular in the first place or that they have run completely out of ideas.  When a franchise gets to the point where it no longer makes money, film studios have a tendency to give it the axe or reboot it entirely.  There was going to be a new Die Hard movie before Fox got bought out by Disney, but because of that merger, the movie got canned, and it was probably for the best as the previous film wasn’t that great.  But you see this happen a lot with horror and action movies.  One of the biggest franchises to emerge over the past two decades was The Fast and The Furious.  The first three movies were basically about racing, and that was fine, but when number 4 hit, the franchise became about heists, and that actually worked better for Fast and The Furious, because they used cars in a very different way that felt new and exciting.  5,6 and 7, as far as I’m concerned, are the best films in the franchise.  Fate of the Furious had some pretty solid moments, but you could tell that it was going way off the rails.  Now, after a year-long delay, we have F9: The Fast Saga.  After spending the last couple of movies trying to outdo the previous one, F9 doesn’t so much jump the shark, but uses rocket boosters and sails into oblivion.

F9 follows Dominic Toretto as he’s roped into another heist dealing with a device that could have disastrous consequences for the planet, blah, blah, blah.  During the adventure, Dom runs into his estranged brother, Jakob, who has become a super-spy himself, and shenanigans ensue, and yadda, yadda, yadda.  It’s gotten to the point where story just no longer matters.  The Fast and the Furious has devolved into a series of flashy images and action sequences that amount to NOTHING.  Character motivations are non-existent, personalities are mostly wooden with the exception of Tej and Roman, who are the best parts of the movie, and everything is set to the kind of movie that everybody has seen before.  F9 offers nothing new in terms of narrative or character development.  In fact, there’s a character, Han, who was shoehorned into the film because of fan service.  That’s what this movie is: Fan service.  It’s okay to have fan service once in a while, but when the whole film is nothing but fan service, you’ve gone off you’re rocker.

Look, I’ll be the first to admit that I love total absurdity in my action movies.  Just look at The Suicide Squad that was released over the weekend.  That movie was NUTS!  It was over-the-top bombastic and hilarious in all the right ways.  But it was anchored by strong characters and a solid story that had some kind of tether to reality.  F9 has none of those.  In fact, in my previous post about the best and worst movies of the year so far, I mentioned that people had joked about Fast and Furious going into space for the next entry.  It’s like the writers had just given up.  So, they go to space to take out a satellite.  Yep.  I would’ve been okay with them using super-industrial strength magnets to wreck cars and stuff like, despite the fact that magnets DON’T WORK THAT WAY.  I would’ve been okay with the abject silliness involved with all the action movie.  Some of it was really good with some outstanding stunts, which is what the franchise is known, but it’s all combined with questionable CGI and completely outlandish situations that have no basis in reality.  Physics?  Who needs physics?  We don’t need physics where we’re going!  Because they tossed any semblance of realism out of the window, there are no stakes.  It feels like a Road-Runner cartoon.  The bridge sequence at the beginning of the movie had me rolling my eyes, but it was when they went into space that they truly lost me.  What’s next?  Interdimensional travel?  Fast and Furious on Mars?

The Fast and The Furious has never been known for its strong characters.  But this movie basically makes them all invincible.  In the fifth, sixth, and seventh movies, the characters were in situations where you thought they might actually die, and some of them did.  That’s because those entries had stakes.  F9 has none of that.  Everybody is basically invincible, and even one of the characters actually has a discussion about that.  You’ve got characters being saved by being caught by cars(again, no physics involved), plus you have Dom being able to rip apart cement beams with his bare arms.  What is the point in having characters like that if you know they’re going to be just fine?  It robs the movie of any kind of tension or suspense, instead relying on loud images to entertain people.  Again, I’m okay with Fast and Furious not being deep on characterizations or story, these are supposed to be goofy pop-corn action flicks.  But you need the audience to feel that these people are in actual danger, and it never feels that way.  You want to know who I blame for all of this?  It’s not just the writers, it’s Vin Diesel, who is the producer of these movies.  I blame him because he has so much sway and ownership over his character that he refuses to let Dom be beaten or even critically injured, or god forbid, die.  He always has to win or come out on top.  Again, where’s the tension?  Add on top of that, bringing in John Cena as Dom’s estranged brother doesn’t make a lot of sense.  Where was he the last 8 movies?  Oh, that’s right, he was behind the scenes.

Acting-wise, it’s pretty bog-standard for the franchise.  Jordana Brewster returns as Mia, Dom’s sister, and she’s alright.  John Cena as Jakob, again, not the worst, but pretty average.  The real standouts here, actually, are Tyrese Gibson as Roman and Ludacris as Tej.  Not only are they the comic relief, but the chemistry between the two is outstanding.  But that’s really about it.  Yeah, you’ve got actors like Michael Rooker, who shows up in an extended cameo.  I’ve been a fan of Vin Diesel for a long time, but the last few that he’s been in, he’s just been awful, even as a side-character like Groot.  The best lead performance that he’s done in the last decade was as Riddick in…well…Riddick.  The one big element that was really missing from this movie was Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson as Hobbes.  He’s part of why the last few movies were incredibly entertaining.  He was the glue that kept everything together, but because of a feud that he had with Vin, Johnson will no longer be a part of the main franchise going forward, which doesn’t bode well for the next movie or two.  He might show up in another Hobbes and Shaw film, but beyond that?  No.  Charlize Theron is supposed to be the main villain, but she doesn’t do a whole lot, and I have no idea what they’re going to do with her in the next movie.

I will fully admit to being entertained by this movie.  It’s not boring, really, but it suffers from the exact same issues that plagued Transformers: Age of Extinction.  It’s too long, and it’s too action-packed.  There’s not enough time to really breathe and take in the situation.  I enjoyed this movie, but not really for the right reasons.  The tone is all over the place, with Vin Diesel taking his character way too seriously.  Is F9 the worst movie of the year?  I can’t say for sure, as there are more movies to come before I can make that judgment.  What I CAN tell you, beyond the shadow of a doubt, is that F9 is the worst entry into the franchise thus far.  Yes, yes, I know I used the image of the F9 key as an image at the top instead of movie image, but what can I say?  This whole movie feels like a joke.  If I didn’t know any better, I would say that F9 was a total parody of the entire franchise.  That’s how ridiculous it’s gotten, and that’s not a good thing.  Hopefully, Vin Diesel and Justin Lin can pull things back for number 10.  They’re talking about two more movies than calling quits.  Honestly, they need to do one more to finish off Cipher, Charlize Theron’s character, and then pull the plug.  I know the film is going to have its fans, and again, I did enjoy it, but it is a very bad movie overall, and it’s certainly could end up being one of the worst movies of the year.

While the year isn’t over yet, we’re only in August now, I figure I’d be a good time to go over some of the movies that I’ve seen so far.  It’s August, so there’s about 4 months left in the year which means a lot more movies to come.  I haven’t been to theaters since November, because we’re still in a pandemic and I just don’t feel comfortable going to back to theaters yet, so I’ve had to rely on patience and VOD to view new releases.  The movies on this list that I’m going to label “The Worst” are still entertaining on a particular.  In fact, most of the movies on this list I really enjoyed, but some of them aren’t very good.  So, let’s get right to it, shall we?

The Worst – F9: The Fast Saga

For the last couple of Fast and Furious movies, everybody was joking about where the series would go next.  The answer that most people gave was…space.  I was like, “No, they wouldn’t DARE go that far.  That’s just too ridiculous.”  Well…they went there.  I’m not exaggerating either.  Two of the crew take a Piero, strapped to an ACME rocket, and they zoom into space.  There were a lot of ridiculous moments in this movie, but the moment they went into space is where they lost me.  I should’ve been lost when Vin Diesel’s character drove a car attached to the remnants of a rope bridge off a cliff and crash land on the other side of the ravine, WITHOUT A SCRATCH ON HIM.  Look, I appreciate the absurdity of the previous Fast and Furious films.  Realistic?  Not a chance.  But they were tethered to some kind of reality with some kind of physics.  In F9, physics clearly don’t exist.  The story is unnecessarily complex and Vin Diesel takes the whole thing too damn seriously.  Vin Diesel’s been an entertaining actor for years, but as a producer, he’s doing more damage to the franchise than any director or writer.  His character is invincible.  There are no stakes.  Honestly, the Fast and Furious franchise needs to be put out of its misery.  They don’t even care anymore.

The Best – Land

Some of the best movies don’t involve big explosions or space aliens.  No, the best ones are often intimate in their story-telling that focus on characters above everything else.  Land is one such movie.  This was the directorial debut of Robin Wright, who is also the lead.  She plays a woman who suffers an unspeakable tragedy and decides to isolate herself from the rest of the world to deal with her grief.  Not actually knowing how to live off the land proves to be too much for her, until help comes from a local hunter played by Demian Bichir.  What you have here is two very broken people who manage to get to know each other and learn to live again.  It’s heartbreaking, but it’s also uplifting in many ways, seeing people come to terms with what they’ve lost.  While Land isn’t the most original movie, the fact that Robin Wright managed to deliver something so powerful and meaningful is amazing.  It’s definitely one that I would recommend to anybody.

The Worst – Black Widow

This is a first for me.  For the better part of 11 years, I’ve enjoyed nearly every single on of the MCU movies that were put out, up to and including Avengers: Endgame.  Black Widow was delayed because of the pandemic, but ultimately the problems with the movie go way beyond that.  I reviewed and I thought that it was an okay movie, with some really good moments and characters, but the rest of the movie was horrendously generic.  I liked the family dynamic, especially between Natasha and Yelena, but the major problem with this movie, was that it was completely unnecessary in the world of the MCU.  The movie takes place between the events of Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, but if you’ve seen Avengers: Endgame, you already know what happens to Natasha.  So, it begs the question: Why?  Why did this movie get made?  It adds nothing really new, except for Yelena and maybe the Red Guardian, but aside from that, this movie is completely forgettable.  It’s not the worst movie ever, but it IS the worst MCU movie, and it is not the way to kick off Phase 4 of the MCU.

The Best – Zack Snyder’s Justice League

I know what you’re thinking: Didn’t Justice League come out back in 2017?  Yeah, you would be correct.  There was a Justice League released back in 2017, but it wasn’t Zack Snyder’s vision.  After years of fans demanding it, Zack Snyder was finally allowed to go back and complete HIS version of the film.  The result is a 4-hour superhero epic that expands on…everything.  Character motivations have changed, visual effects are more refined and the music is different.  Not only is the main villain, Steppenwolf, more threatening, it’s made perfectly clear that he’s not the mastermind.  No, the film finally gives us Darkseid.  While he’s only in the film for maybe 5-7 minutes, his presence is felt throughout, and that changes the dynamic of the story entirely.  While people were wary of a 4-hour run-time, it’s paced extremely well, so that those 4 hours don’t feel that long.  I’m really happy that Zack Snyder was allowed to complete his vision, as it is a vastly superior film in every way to the 2017 release.  Unfortunately, it did come at a high price: 70 million dollars and the job of a studio exec who greenlit the project.

The Worst – Mortal Kombat

Again, this is a movie that actually found to be a lot of fun.  The opening 10 minutes and closing 10 minutes are really outstanding as they featured Scorpion fighting Sub-Zero.  But the problem is that everything in between is pretty ho-hum.  You have a main character that was invented entirely for the film and doesn’t really add anything new to the Mortal Kombat mythology.  Raiden’s a bit of a jack-ass, and Shang Tsung is an incredibly weak villain here.  Most of the characters outside of Kano aren’t that memorable.  Not only that, the editing in this movie is bizarre.  The quick cuts don’t make a lot of sense and they muddy would could’ve been incredibly fight sequences.  Never mind that the story makes no sense and is riddle with more holes than Swiss cheese, the pacing is all over the place.  Yeah, the blood and gore is fantastic and there a lot of Easter eggs for the fans, but for the average movie-goer, there’s nothing in here that’s really worthwhile.

The Best – A Quiet Place Part II

There were a lot of questions that were unanswered by the time the first movie ended.  Part II explains how it all started, but it still leaves a mystery of what these things are and how much of the world has been affected.  The movie literally picks up right where the first one left off, but it shows how some people have survived.  But the knowledge of how to kill these monsters is always on the mind of the audience.  The sequel is just as intense as the original, and it ups the ante a bit when we run into some people that aren’t worth saving.  Expanding the world to include more than just the Abbotts was a really good idea.  By the time this movie ends, you’re still on the edge of your seat.  It’s a great movie.  AND it’s PG-13, so for all those naysayers that the best horror movies are R-rated:  Not so much anymore.

These are some of the movies that I’ve seen so far.  I’ve enjoyed most of them to a certain extent, but there’s a lot more to come before the year is out, and I can’t wait.  So, the next time you see the final part of this list will be towards the end of December or early January of 2022.