Paul Blart: Mall Bad@$$... "Security"

Security (2017)

Rated R

Starring Antonio Banderas, Ben Kingsley, Liam McIntyre, Cung Le, Katherine de la Rocha, Chad Lindberg, Jiro Wang, Gabriella Wright

Directed by Alain Desrochers

The Story:

Veteran Eddie Deacon (Banderas) is down on his luck and unable to find work that was commensurate to his pay grade in the military. Desperate, he tells the unemployment office that he'll take anything. As luck has it, he can start tonight as a security guard at a local mall. Meanwhile, in a US Marshal motorcade, a star witness is heading to trial when it is ambushed, and the witness heads to the local mall for help. It's going to be a long night.

Ha! Then I find a copy of the poster, and they use the same tag line!! :)

So, in a sense it's Die Hard meets Paul Blart, with much more action and a lot less humor in this direct to DVD action thriller.

Deacon's military training kicks in as he goes about protecting the witness as well as trying to use his co-workers to defend the mall and the witness while not getting any of them killed in the process.

Meanswhile, Ben Kingsley sits outside twirling his villainous moustache and threatening to tear down the mall brick by brick.

No, it's not going to reinvent the genre, but all the same, the movie remains watchable throughout.

Security is currently streaming on Netflix as of this writing.

Final Grade: C+

It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year... "The Turkeys of the Year: 2017"

The Turkey of the Year Awards: 2017 Edition

As I sit down to prepare to look back at the movies I've reviewed since last Thanksgiving which I absolutely disliked, I am pleased that only 21 movies received low enough marks (D+ to F-) to be in the running for Turkey of the Year!

Now this list is going to contain some movies that were both popular and critically acclaimed and in some cases garnered (or still might garner) award recoc

However for me, they did absolutely nothing.

I found myself bored with most of the films on this year's list.

For me, that's the biggest crime a piece of entertainment can be, and that's boring.

Naturally, your mileage may vary! :)

As usual, I'll try and stick to the "big name, big budget " films and ignore some of the lesser known, but still just as awful films from this last year.

Meet The Blacks, I'm looking at you. Though to be fair, they did like and retweeted (twice!) my review of the film. : )

Let the games begin!

X-Men: Apocalypse -

Only the strong will survive. That's a great tag line for a film. Little did I know, they meant that was for the audience to endure the latest film in the X-Men franchise. To be quite honest, I'm not one that is passionately yearning for Marvel to regain the rights to the X-Men. Until they began the reboot with First Class, it's really a franchise that I only mildly enjoyed in the first place. Everything they had worked for since that time apparently culminated with Days of Future Past. This returned the muddled cast of thousands that I was quite frankly, bored with from start to finish. Remove the Quicksilver scene, and I have no memory of anything that really happened in this film.

Speaking of X-Men...

 Logan - 

Yep, I am a hater of the critical darling, Logan. Yay! We have an R rating! Let's drop F-bombs and buckets of blood. And let's usher Hugh Jackman off after nearly 2 decades of running around as Wolverine. I know many people loved this one, and have clamored for it to win awards and nominations for Jackman and Stewart. I am not one of those clamoring. If I had to go back and watch any Logan solo outing, I'd pick any of them again before I watched this one.

Yes, even X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

:)

Legend of Tarzan -

It looked visually stunning, but everyone was bored and lost interest with it within the first 20 to 30 minutes, though it felt like we had been watching it for over an hour at that point. I don't know, is it the character? I'm not sure that Tarzan has ever had a decent film made about him yet.

This was no exception.

Hardcore Henry -

I'm not sure if I'm not a fan of 1st person shooter movies, or if I'm not a fan of movies where there is no main character with which the audience can truly sympathize/empathize as you watch them go through the paces. Either way, this was a failed experiment in my eyes. Plus an ending that's telegraphed at the beginning, it just adds up to one big "Game Over".

Manchester By The Sea - 

I told you there would be critical darlings and award winners on the list. This sums up both in one package. I think I let this one play for nearly an hour, and just realized that I really didn't want to spend another minute with Casey Affleck's character. I don't care what kind of emotional roller coaster he's been on. That said, I'm very happy that Amazon and Netflix (and other) studios are getting things made that are being reviewed very well and earning award nominations. So there is that silver lining for this dreary cloud.

Assassins Creed - 

Clearly video game adaptations are placed under intense scrutiny around here. Long, convoluted, and again, boring. The set pieces set in the past looked amazing, but I frankly didn't care about anyone or anything I was watching. Not sure what the actual length of this movie was, but it felt like it dragged on for hours, and that's another cardinal sin for an action movie. Long AND boring? The double kiss of death.

A Monster Calls - 

For proof that I'm a heartless monster, I give you this tale about a monster who comes to visit a boy during the most traumatic time in his life to tell him stories. Meanwhile his mom is dying of cancer. By the middle of the first story within the story, I was dying of boredom and clicked it off.

Beauty and the Beast -

How dare I!?!

All this movie did was make me cringe often, and yearn to be watching the far superior animated version. I've given Disney a pass on their live action remakes before, usually for being bland and not offering anything better than what they have already given us in animated form. This, however, was more than I was willing to forgive. I suppose it starts with the lead, Emma Watson, who reminds me of the woefully miscast Kristen Stewart as Snow White, the fairest of them all in the Huntsman films. I know, it's shameful to judge a book by its cover or an actress by her looks, but when the line of the song states "it's no wonder that her name means Beauty..." eh... not feeling it. Or when her acting skills in a poignant moment raise an eyebrow or a chuckle instead of sympathy... yeah... you're doing it wrong.

Sausage Party - 

Did it get funnier after the first 20 minutes? Because that's really all I bothered with, then walked away. These movies often remind me of the "just because you can doesn't mean you should" axiom. Add to that the negative press of the animators not getting paid/credit for their effort, and that just added insult to injury on this one.

Snatched - 

I think I've made it abundantly clear that I'm never going to buy into the Amy Schurmer experiment. She's better in support of a movie than in trying to carry it. I've tried, but I don't get her appeal. Then the dreadful misuse of Goldie Hawn, and really the entire supporting cast of this film, that was just disappointment from the word go on this one.


And that's it.

A special shout-out to Johnny Depp for NOT being on this list for the first time in a long time!

We'll see if 2018 is as kind, I do have a Pirates of the Caribbean movie review on the horizon.. ;)

Time to reset the clock to zero and begin looking for next year's turkeys, and as always, hoping I honestly don't find any.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!

Missed Opportunities... "Baywatch"

Baywatch (2017)

Rated R

Starring Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Priyanka Chopra, Alexandra Daddario, Kelly Rohrbach, Jon Bass, Ilfenesh Hadera

Directed by Seth Gordon

The Story:

Lt. Mitch Buchannon (Johnson) leads his elite Baywatch squad to protect Emerald Bay from any and all dangers. This summer will be most trying though as they are training 3 rookies to join the team at the same time a dangerous synthetic drug keeps washing up onshore. When the police seem unwilling or unable to handle it, it's up to the lifeguards to save the day.

As with many of the relaunched "used to be a TV show, let's turn it into a movie!" ideas, Hollywood seems to never know what to do with these properties.

Quick, throw the f-bomb every 2 minutes to make sure we get an R rating!

Joke after joke, either situational or dialogue. Some of them will work, some won't!

Are they homages to what came before or parodies of the same material?

It seems like nobody knows for sure, or they keep changing their minds every 5 pages of script.

Here too is the downfall of Baywatch.

There are moments when it's a fun action comedy, then it tries to get too serious.

There are moments when it's madcap zaniness, R rated raunch-com.

It's just whirling around in a blender, and you're never entirely sure what's going to pour out onto the screen next.

It seems that going forward, if these movies are going to be made, pick a tone and stick to it.

The cast does everything they can, and then some, to make the material work.

Efron and Johnson have these parts down to where they can simply go on autopilot and it works, but they need a stronger, more consistent script to make us actually care to see it.

Thankfully it wasn't a huge waste of time like I feared, but if you saw the trailer, you pretty much saw the movie.


 Final Grade: C

Latino Heat! "How To Be A Latin Lover"

How To Be A Latin Lover (2017)

Rated PG-13

Starring Eugenio Derbez, Salma Hayek, Raphael Alejandro, Rob Lowe, Kristen Bell, Rob Riggle, Raquel Welch,

Directed by Ken Marino

The Story:

Maximo (Derbez) has been living the high life as he basically has enjoyed a carefree lifestyle as the boy toy of a rich widow. But when she dumps him for a younger model, suddenly Maximo has to start all over, and at a much older age. Hoping to crash with his sister (Hayek) and his nephew (Alejandro), Maximo's attempts at adjusting to normal life while finding his next rich conquest lead him on one wild ride after the next.

Eugenio Derbez is two for two with me on films that I've seen him starring in. While this one is not quite as heartwarming and endearing as Instructions Not Included, this one is zany and a lot of fun, and yet with just the right amount of heart as several of Maximo's relationships play out over the course of the film.

Surrounded with an excellent ensemble cast that make Maximo's life increasingly more complicated as all he wants to do is mooch off of someone, but circumstances dictate another fate for everything he plans to do.

Along the way, he slowly mends fences with his beloved sister, and helps to bring much needed happiness and stability to her life. Hayek plays off Derbez perfectly creating a great family dynamic.

Ken Marino steps behind the camera for his first feature, and does a great job. It's a little bit of a rough start, but once it gets going, the story builds and it turned out to be one of favorite films for the whole family this year.

Final Grade: B+

The Day That Music Changed The World. "Live Aid - Against All Odds"

Live Aid: Against All Odds (2011) 

Not Rated

Starring Bod Geldof, Midge Ure,

Produced by the BBC

The Story:

After the success of Do They Know It's Christmas, Bob Geldof decided that Band Aid should try something even more impressive. Live benefit concerts in July 1985, both in England and America and other locations round the world, and beam it to everyone else via satellite. It had never been done before, and most skeptics said it couldn't be done, period. But with some hard work, elbow grease, and outright lies, the greatest concert in music history did indeed happen.

This is their story.

This amazing documentary is available in 2 parts on YouTube. Each part is 90 minutes.

It keeps you grabbed from the minute you start watching until it's over.

Then you wish for a few more parts to the documentary.

So unless you were lucky enough to catch this on the BBC a few years back, you've likely never seen it.

The documentary does a great job of getting just about anyone and everyone who had something to do with Live Aid for the documentary, and they still manage to squeeze in enough of the performances to really bring back the memories.

So brazen was Geldof to get people to appear, he listed them as performing, oftentimes without even checking with those acts to see if they were willing and able to play.

Then he would lie to each band and say "well, they're in, so why aren't you?" and vice versa.

It's an incredible amount of chutzpah on Geldof's part, and it's an event that will never be duplicated again.

Then there was the American side of things where so many artists were pulling out because the American promoter was a giant POS that everyone hated. :)

Pair that with hosts that have an absolute disdain for the musicians that will be appearing, and it was a recipe for disaster.

Or at least if they do, it will probably roll off a lot smoother than this one did.

So go behind the scenes and see how they pulled this concert off and all the headaches and heartbreaking moments that went into the greatest concert of them all.

Final Grade: A

Verily Tis Time To See "Thor: Ragnarok"

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Rated PG-13

Starring Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson, Karl Urban, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Hopkins,

Directed by Taika Waititi

The Story:

Ragnarok, the prophesied end of Asgard is at hand. Hela (Blanchett), the Goddess of Death seeks to destroy all that remains of Asgard and take her place on the throne. The only one who has any hope of stopping her is Thor (Hemsworth), and he's going to have to travel across the entire cosmos to get their in time. 

You've seen the trailer, and if that didn't get you psyched to go see this one, then there's not much I can write to convince you.

Waititi delivers the best of the 3 Thor sagas on the silver screen, and yes there's a lot of humor in it...

But I don't think at any point is the humor too distracting, or not in character for any of the characters.

Hemsworth has always been fun in the role of Thor, and they finally tapped into that and let the God of Thunder be the humorous, full of bravado son of Odin that makes the character shine.

He's complemented with the return of Hiddleston as Loki, and once more the brothers find themselves allied and at odds, sometimes both in the same scene.

Many more surprises, returns and losses for this final film from Marvel in 2017.

Is it their best of the year or best ever?

That will be debatable and vary from person to person.

I'm leaning at still giving that edge for this year to Spider-Man: Homecoming, but that may just be because after 5 attempts, I felt they finally got it right.

With Thor, they never really got it wrong, so much as they didn't deliver on everything that it could be.

So go, see the movie and have a good time.

Laugh it up, because things are about to get a lot darker next year with the arrival of Infinity War.

Final Grade: A

But Wait...There's More! "Beyond Stranger Things"

Beyond Stranger Things (2017)

Starring Jim Rash

The Story:

Now that you've finished Stranger Things 2, and don't dare watch an episode of this without finishing the entire season because...

SPOILERS!!!!

Jim Rash sits down with most of the cast and Shawn Levy and the Duffer Brothers to talk about what went into making the show and how they made some of their decisions.

And how some of those decisions made themselves, and created a snowball effect on the overall series.

I guess The Walking Dead has a similar program that airs weekly, and I'm not sure if any other shows have it, but this was a fun, breezy, yet informative 22 minutes where Rash moderates a table full of the cast and get their insights into what happened and what might still happen in the future.

7 episodes total, and my favorites were the ones with Levy and the Duffers on the panel as they help lend more behind-the-scenes knowledge to what they were thinking when certain things happened this season.

If you like these kinds of shows, you're going to really enjoy this one.

If you're not sure, give the first episode a try (it will pop up automatically to start at the end of Episode 9 of Stranger Things 2) and see what you think.

Final Grade: A-