Sean’s movie thoughts

I added this film to the Second Chance Film festival.  I had basically the same opinion after the re-watch that I did after seeing it in theaters. The movie is kind of average, and I expected better from the fourth film in a franchise. It is not the start of a new franchise, the set up carries over from the first three films and Emma Thompson returns as the head of the organization from the third film. I think there was a photo of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in the background. I think the series missed Will Smith. I thought Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth were fine, I don’t think they were the problem but neither one is Will Smith. The aliens seemed less amazing but maybe after three previous movies that was bound to happen. Producer Walter Parks either re-wrote the script or had it re-written. The finale script was not the script that the cast or director signed up to make. Some people said to the Hollywood Reporter, without giving their names, that Parks watered it down...

xXx was a movie trying to portray the James Bond movie franchise as old fashioned. Vin Diesel stars as Xander Cage, an extreme sports star who is pressed into service as a secret agent after a stunt where he stole a politician's car. (I did not get this bit, it seemed like that was a felony that he was broadcasting to the world.) Samuel L Jackson stars as the agent who recruited Cage. The villains in this movie are not interesting. It is a little long too, I think that a lot of movies are a little long though. Sometimes I watch a pre-1990 movie and it seems like on average movies were shorter then. I will probably watch the sequel with Ice Cube sometime in June. xXx is not terrible and the third one in this series years later was kind of fun. Donnie Yen being in the third movie probably helped a lot. I don't recommend this.

I want to keep the movies in this festival ten years old or newer.  So that is the first criteria.  It will narrow the selection area. The second criteria is all these movies are movies that either I disliked or was on the fence about. A film I really liked probably does not need a second chance. The third criteria is that I need to have watched the entire film. Baywatch does not qualify. I tried two (or maybe three) different times to watch it (one was during a rainy day in a hotel room I believe) and never finished it. Maybe some day I will give it a fourth chance, if only to be able to explain why the movie failed. I probably won't. So Hellboy 2019 has already been re-watched, that leaves me with the following films in the festival assuming I don't add one or two more Summer Night Fast and Furious Presents Hobbs and Shaw Zombieland Double Tap Tolkein

Pretty in Pink holds up.  Sometimes an older movie doesn't when you re-watch it after a few years. Sometimes a movie might not hold up but it is still good, maybe just not as good as you remember. Molly Ringwald, Andrew McCarthy, and John Cryer are all good. If another actor had played Duckie, the character could have been insufferable. Although Robert Downey Jr, who was considered for the role at one point, would have been good I think. James Spader seems a bit old for his part but I will go with it. I guess it could be distracting but it is more noticeable in some scenes. Harry Dean Stanton and Annie Potts have supporting roles. Both are very good. This is my first re-watch since I read about the ending of the movie being reshot. (I am not sure why I just found about this recently.) It is interesting because that ending works well and it is hard to imagine the movie ending with Andie and Ducky ending up together. I am little surprised that the ending was the only thing resh...

Scott Adkins and Louis Mandylor return as French and Sue in this sequel to the Debt Collector. Jesse V. Johnson returns as the director. French and Sue are back collecting debts for their boss Tommy. Things might be more complicated than that however and the duo are being followed by two men as they make their collections. This was fun. The fight scenes are good and both stars get their chance to shine. The bar fight that is featured in the trailer is good but it is not the best fight scene in the film. Sue has sworn off violence at the start of the film but that conviction does not last. Adkins and Mandylor have a good chemistry. There are some decent character moments. I am not saying this is amazing. It is good and director Johnson and star Adkins have done some good work together including Avengement, Accident Man, and the Debt Collector.  I did not like the ending (I am not going to spoil anything) but overall this is worth watching.

I re-watched Hellboy 2019 as part of my Second Chance Film Festival. I thought Hellboy 2019 was going to leave HBO soon. I was not willing to buy it, so I decided to watch Hellboy 2019 before it left HBO. It is still bad. Maybe it seems a little less bad than it did when I saw it in theaters but that is not saying a lot. I don’t think the actors are at fault, I think they did the best they could. This movie just has too much going on, the giants subplot could have been cut without harming the film, I feel. I feel I have seen the ancient witch out to destroy/conquer the world done better in other films. I am not sure they needed to tie in King Arthur as much as they did. I still think the supporting cast of characters was better in the Del Torro films. Either that or the actors  in the supporting cast were mostly better than the actors in the new movie. Maybe it was a bit of both. The movie ends with a post credits sequence that will never be addressed. (I don’t think this wil...

I decided on my Second Chance Film Festival for 2020. The idea is to watch some films again and see if I like them more than I did when I first saw them or to see if my first impressions were correct. I did not hate each of these films but I hated a few. here are the films Fast and Furious Presents Hobbs and Shaw Hellboy 2019 Summer Night Zombieland Double Tap Tolkein I did not put Undercover Brother II on this list because I don't hate myself, at the moment anyway.  (Kidding.) Also I really did not have high hopes for Undercover Brother 2. I am going to do this in June.  I will pick one to start but I think I will end with Hellboy 2019.

Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt's movie Ball and Chain is going straight to Netflix. This is a superhero comedy about a couple that was on the verge of divorce that gets superpowers but they need to work together or they lose their powers. I am a little surprised that is going to Netflix. I don't know if it means his star power is on the decline or anything. Maybe with movie theaters still facing an uncertain future, the producers decided to take a deal. Craig Fairbass stars as an ex-con named Eddie in the Villain. His brother owes money to bad people in London and Eddie tries to solve the problem. Violence ensures. The trailer made this look a bit more action packed than it is (some trailers are dishonest)but Fairbass was good. I might re-watch it later this year. Fairbsass was in Avengement. The Mask of Zorro holds up. I got a new Blu-ray of it and I have not seen it for at least four years. Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta Jones were very good. The musical score was go...

Gymkata is kind of silly. However it is hard to dislike this film. Kurt Thomas, a real life gymnastics champion, stars as Jonathan Cabbot, a young gymnast being trained to compete in a life and death game in an small Asian country.  There are no guns allowed in the country. This is fun. The fights vary from kind of silly to kind of awesome. Some of the fights are both. It is funny how there are convenient gymnastic props laying around allowing Jonathan to use his gymnastic skills. Richard Norton is one of the villains, and he looked sinister with a beard. Thomas did nice backflips and he comes across as a likeable hero. The training scenes are fun. It probably helped that his character was a novice hero, not an established one. Maybe I am being too generous because I remember this film from the days it used to be shown on HBO. I think this film is oddly sincere which makes it likable.

The Current War seems like it should be better because of the talent involved. There are some very good actors (Bennedict Cumberbatch, Tom Holland, Michael Shannon, and Nicolas Hoult) in the cast but the movie is just okay and probably not worth re-watching. You kind of wish these actors(or some combination of them) would make a better film together. Dynamo was not good. I bought this Bruce Li movie and I think maybe the bonus materials might save it from being a regretful purchase. It had some nice moments here and there but it had some dull or uninteresting stretches also.  Bruce Li was one of the guys who looked enough like Bruce Lee that he (Li) got some films made after lee died. There were 5 or 6 of those guys if I am not mistaken. Star Trek looks to be a TV property again. I enjoyed the rebooted Star Trek movies and I would like to see that cast together once more. Maybe Star Trek will be back on the big screen someday or maybe they could do something on a budget with th...

There was an announcement of a new Star Wars movie coming. It will be co-written by Tiki Witiki, best known to me for Thor Ragnarok (which I like less than other people do). I don’t hate the movie exactly but I wonder how much people finding Thor the Dark World a bit of a slog contributes to the feelings about Thor Ragnarok. I am not excited by this announcement. Maybe it has to do with my feelings towards Thor Ragnarok or my mixed feelings about the last Star Wars movie (which I am not sure if I will re-watch). Maybe it has to do with both sets of feelings. It could the fact the announcement is really vague that prevents me from being more excited. No actor was mentioned as being in the film and there no plot details revealed. There is not a lot to get attached to or excited about yet.

I said in my podcast that I want to be a positive critic. I don't want to take cheap shots at films or make a bunch of snarky comments about a film. However that does not mean that I won't say if a film does not work or if it is just bad. If you heard this movie is bad, it is pretty bad. The movie has a framing device of a mom telling this story to her daughter that I don't think adds anything to the story, which makes me wonder why the producers kept it. Jessica Rothe stars as Julie in the remake of this classic 1980s romance. She is dating Mickey but seems to be losing interest or becoming disillusioned. (Mickey seems to be a jerk and possibly a bigger jerk than the boyfriend character in the original movie.)She meets Randy, who is not from the valley and they go out. She dumps Mickey but her friends don't like Randy. There is an incident and Julie and Randy break up. The basic plot is similar to the original but one subplot has changed.  The leading man is not te...

This is the last movie in a series that started with Justice League The Flashpoint Paradox. There are 15 films in this set. Some are better than others but I enjoyed all of them. Maybe there was 2 or 3 that I enjoyed a bit less than some others. Superman leads the Justice League in a strike against Darkside and his forces on the planet Apocalypse. This strike does not go well and later the remains of the Justice League and other heroes gather to try to save the world. This is pretty good. John Constantine has a substantial role. So does Raven of the Teen Titans. There are some surprises along the way and I won’t spoil them.  The violence is appropriate for a movie with the word war in the title and the movie is rated R. This runs about 90 minutes but it does not feel rushed. Some of the films in this series have been criticized for being too short. In some cases maybe those criticisms are justified. There are some nice character moments. The next DC animated movie will be S...

Some states are allowing movie theaters to re-open but only at 25% percent capacity. I don't think theaters can make money under those conditions. The cost of running those projectors adds up. Most theaters have at least 10 screens now, so those costs add up. Also there is nothing new in theaters. All the movies that would have opened in theaters have either been pushed back or shifted to video on demand. I enjoy movie news articles but so many movie news articles lately are about what film is being moved back. AMC Theaters has declared war on Universal Studios and said they won't show movies from Universal. AMC is the largest movie theater chain in the country, so that would make an impact. This stems from the Trolls World Tour release and the head of Universal saying that more VOD is coming.

Woody Allen's last movie for Amazon Studios was returned to him. Allen had a four picture deal but allegations from Allen's past made the studio part ways with Allen. (It might be a bit more complicated than that.) There was a lawsuit from Allen but Allen and the studio later settled. I watched the trailer out of morbid curiosity.  Well, that might not have been a wise use of nearly 3 minutes. There is not much to it. The cast includes Timothy Chalamet, Elle Fanning, and Selena Gomez but the story does not look interesting. Tim and Elle are dating and she has an interview with a movie director in New York. They go to New York and Tim's character is expecting to have a fun/romantic weekend but something happens and the short interview ends up taking a lot of time leaving Tim's character alone. Tim's character runs into Selena's character and sparks fly. I don't know why but this seems so dead. For a movie with a cast this talented(I did not even mention D...

If Hugh Jackman never plays Wolverine again, that is perfectly okay. One of the film websites I visit wants him back as Wolverine. Jackman apparently doesn't want to do the exercise and diet regiment needed to get in shape to play the the character anymore and he seemed comfortable with moving on from the character. I am sure Jackman will find some interesting projects in the future. There is another animated Superman movie coming out this year. It is about Superman's early days in Metropolis. I think there should be a preview soon. It is nice to have another animated Superman movie. The anniversary articles for the Empire Strikes Back are here. There is a nice one on Screen Crush explaining that Luke might have a hero but he made his share of mistakes. That Luke's heroism came from his willingness to go on despite his mistakes.  https://screencrush.com/luke-skywalker-was-always-a-screwup/  (Look at that title.)

I have not been in a movie theater in over 2 months. Unless something happens, I probably won't be in a movie theater for at least another 2 months. Even though movie theaters are allowed to re-open, I've heard that the major chain in my area is not planning opening until Mid-July.  The other chain in my area probably won't reopen before Mid-July. I don't miss going to movie theaters as much as I expected. I am not sure if that means anything or not. Maybe I have adjusted to not going. I wonder if people will go back to theaters when they re-open. I might not, immediately. China opened movie theaters and then had to close them, so I might want to wait for a few weeks after the theaters open again before going.