Category: Blockbuster

Action Blockbuster

“Morbius”

By Brett_G on

6.1

Jared Leto… Why do we keep letting him do this? Of course, it was Sony letting him crap all over a Marvel offshoot, but still. After his caricature act in “House of Gucci,” I thought we were putting him in time out. I guess I thought wrong. Tyrese is the best actor in this… Tyrese… From the “Fast and the Furious” franchise.

This film is a hot mess. Unfortunately, similar to the Venom films, they still can’t figure out what they want to do, so they just sling a bunch of things at the screen and hope something sticks, only to allow things to become overly-complicated blobs of mediocrity. Which, coincidently, is also a solid explanation of the CGI in these films. It’s an unfortunate combination of everything that people tend to hate about superhero movies, cranked to eleven.

Please… Just sell the rights to Marvel Studios and let them handle it. Please.

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Action Blockbuster

“The Northman”

By Brett_G on

7.8

When strange things happen in your camp, blame the Christians. Because “their god is a corpse nailed to a tree,” so they can’t be trusted. Odin is the only deity to be trusted in these parts.

This was a wild two-and-a-half-hour ride. Somewhere between “Gladiator” and “The Witch,” this film combines gorgeous landscape shots with action portrayed in such complete darkness you’ll swear that you are watching “The Batman.”

Luckily, after our hero repeatedly gets his ass kicked, Ana Taylor-Joy is there with her magical healing powers to nurse him back to health. After the throat-singing prophet in the cave took some hallucinogens and foretold a great journey for him in the form of a riddle.

If you’re looking for a tale of revenge, I’d probably go for “John Wick,” seeing as it’s a tad shorter and more exciting. However, if you’re looking for a shining example of playing the long con this side of “Gladiator,” look no further. It doubles as motivation to do 300 sit-ups when you get home. This guy’s 8-pack is impressive. I’d suggest doing the sit-ups to the soundtrack. It’s non-stop hype music.

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Blockbuster Drama Suspense/Thriller

“Death on the Nile”

By Brett_G on

7.9

At first, I honestly thought I had walked into and sat in the wrong movie theater. First, we start out in World War 1, then move on to Dirty Dancing… Heavy on the dirty. I mean, I know it’s Armie Hammer, but damn.

I’ll watch anything that has Gal Gadot in it, so of course, my butt was in a seat for this whodunnit. The gist of it is if you like “Murder on the Orient Express,” you’ll like this. There are many of the same tropes, but just enough differentiation to keep you intrigued as each new clue is uncovered and suspect eliminated, either figuratively or literally. We get the origin story of Poirot’s mustache that no one asked for but gives his character an incredible boost of depth and complexity that helps him become someone you actually root for by the end of the film. I called the ending as the movie was getting started, but I thoroughly enjoyed the wild ride to the climactic conclusion. Well done “Clue” spin-off in yet another exotic locale.

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Action Blockbuster Drama

“The Matrix: Resurrection”

By Brett_G on

6.8

If you liked the original, you’ll like this one.

I opted to catch this on HBO Max, and don’t feel like I missed much story-wise. Ideally, the spectacle would have been nice on an IMAX screen, but the overall impact would have been about the same. I felt like the runtime moved in bullet time, and the story was a fairly lazy rehash of the original, with updated special effects to distract you from this fact. Unfortunately for the movie, it doesn’t keep the narrative movement consistent enough to distract the viewer from this fact for very long. In a year full of rebooting franchises, this one seemed the least needed, and most lazily done I’ve seen in a long while.

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