Sean’s movie thoughts

There is a new Jurassic World movie coming out in July. I feel no interest in it, at least not now. I know Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are not in it. Scarlett Johansson and Marshala Ali are the new leads. It is okay for franchises to end. This will be the 7th film in the franchise overall and fourth of the Jurassic World set.  I barely remember the last Jurassic World, at this time. To be fair it came out in 2022 and I watch a lot of movies, football games, and listen to a lot of audio books. So a movie from 2022 that I might have seen once is something that could slip my mind. I remember feeling the last movie could have been or should have been more interesting. Oh well, maybe if reviews are good I will become interested. Maybe I won’t. There are other movies coming out that interest me more like the Fantastic Four movie. 

 Diablo is not connected to the video game series. It is not a John Wick spinoff either (even if two of the actors were in John Wick chapter 4). Scott Adkins stars as Cris who kidnaps a teenage girl, Eliza, who he claims is his daughter. He says her mother visited him in prison and asked him to save her from Vicente, the man Eliza believes is her father. Vicente is a criminal. Eliza's mother is dead. Vicente offers a reward for Eliza's return.  One of Vincente's henchmen calls in a psycho (Marko Zaror) to get her but he seems creepy and might have his own motives.  The movie is set in Columbia. This is the third time Adkins and Zaror have fought on screen.  I don't think their characters in John Wick chapter 4 fought. (Maybe they fight a lot off screen, heh.) It is nice to see them on screen together.  This is good. It might be better than I expected. Director Ernesto Diaz Espinoza also directed Fist of the Condor staring Zaror. 

This movie is based on a novel of the same name. A young woman (Katie Douglas) and her father move to a small town after a family tragedy. Their relationship is an important part of the film. There is something odd about the town and some of the adults.  I liked it. It is not groundbreaking. It has some nice moments but it doesn't try too hard to be funny. Horror comedies can be hit or miss for me. There are differences between the novel and the movie. One makes a fair amount of sense on a thematic level. It is hard to explain without going into much detail.I wonder if the movie would have played better if one plot twist happened later. This is not a change from the novel. Maybe these things are not interesting to people who have not read the novel or listened to the audiobook of the novel. Is this movie as good as some of the Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street movies? It is probably not as good as most Nightmare on Elm Street films but it is better than some Halloween movies. (T...

 I finally watched Wanted Man. I think I bought last year. Why I did not watch it before now is something I don’t know. This is a Dolph Lundgren movie about a cop who goes to Mexico to bring back some witnesses. The cop had been caught on video calling a suspect a Mexican lowlife. I think the idea was to get the cop out of town for a few days, let things blow over. Things go wrong and the cop and a surviving witness have get to America. For a while the cop and the witness hide out with her family. There are some nice moments during this time It was good. It is not action packed. There are some action scenes. I like Lundgren as a star and I am not the harshest critic of his movies. He might have directed this one.  Kelsey Grammar was in the film. It has been a while since I have seen him in anything other than Fraiser except for a brief cameo. Yeah, he is one of the villains. This is a direct to video action movie. Don't expect Mission Impossible level stunts.

 The writers of the recent French Three Musketeers films adapt another Alexandre Dumas novel, the Count of Monte Cristo. This is the tale of a man out for revenge on the men who sent to prison for a crime he did not commit.  He meets a man in prison who teaches him things and tells about a fortune. The man escapes prison, claims the fortune and assumes the identity as the Count of Monte Cristo. He plots revenge and has two protégés who want revenge for their own reasons. I liked it. It is long but it did feel too long. I watched the dubbed version. Performances were good, and I felt interested in seeing how the revenge plans unfolded. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-count-of-monte-cristo-film-review-2024 I thought this was a good review.

I liked the latest Sniper movie. This time Beckett and Zero have joined a task force in Costa Verde. It was a bit less jokey than the previous film in the series and a character from the last few films is absent. Hopefully this is not the last movie in the series.  Kickboxer Armageddon is still happening. For a while I thought it wasn't going to happen. The previous films in this series have been pretty good. Alain Moussi is not Jean Claude Van Damme but Moussi is a likable screen presence. Hallmark continues to make movies. Some are corny but occasionally I have liked a few. Maybe all of them are corny. I hope the new Superman movie is good.