Aside from the title that would have befitted the second entry in this series instead of the third (as this is Now You See Me 3), the “Ocean Eleven-esque X Robin Hood” gang of illusionists (labeled The Horsemen due to the “Knights Of The Round Table” style secret society they belong to/work for) and with ready to foil villains with incredible “magic” based performances heists are back, with some next generation members entering their ranks to help steal a huge ass diamond from an arms dealer played by Rosamund Pike.
It’s an actually very old fashioned type of plot, something not too distant from Carmen Sandiego or Lupin The 3rd, but done in a glitzy modern way with an emphasis of illusionism, mentalism, parlor tricks taken to anime style levels of ability of deception for twists upon twists, snazzy setpieces and daring escapes. The usual crime caper stuff, basically.
There’s not much to say, it’s that kind of “let’s get the gang back” kind of sequel with the injection of new blooded “tricksters” for justice members, the third installment in the series, this one directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, Zombieland Double Tap, the first Venom movie, the Uncharted film), which does a decent job, i did enjoy this more than the second film, i will say that, and that is somehow mantains that plucky energy, despite the franchise being more than a decade old by now.
It’s still the kind of very light, shiny and glitzy popcorn entertaiment that the previous Now You See Me films were, not completely mindless, but also not deep or complicated by any definition, molsty predictable but not completely, the sort you do enjoy but also kinda throway, forgotten by the very next week at best.
Dropping the “Part 2” from the title, Mission Impossible Final Reckoning is still the direction continuation of the previous film, Dead Reckoning (with a recap of that films events further making clear it was planned as a two parter), that had Ethan Hunt and his team having to go rogue in order to escape the grasp of an IA program (dubbed “The Entity”) that accidentally gained sentience and spread itself all over the globe’s networks, bringing the national networks into chaos, fanning the flames of war, etc.
After the agent working for the Entity, Gabriel, manages to retrieve the “counter program”, Hunt and his team are forced into a desperate gambit to try and retrieve the Entity’s source code (still lost in a sunken submarine near Russian waters), retrieve the counter program from Gabriel, and outsmart the Entity, before it hacks every major nations’ nuclear arsenal and sink the globe into full on nuclear holocaust….
Honestly, i’m kinda impressive how the formula still works wonders, keeping that specific concoction of high octane action, death-defying chases, occasional comedy and espionage extravaganza, straddling the lines between realistic and improbable action movie magic.
And of course, the reminder that Tom Cruise biggest superpower is not his defying the Reaper, but his ability to run on film.
It ain’t trying to revolutionize the genre, at all, but the plot does actually manage to resonate perfectly with today’ fears, without desperately trying to be modern, “hip”, and the execution is pretty damn good, making for a fun and sentimental sendoff of the series altogether, there’s actually a real sense of finality to it, as it ties or brings back events and characters from the older films, gives some closure, and honestly would be the perfect place to end it, or have Hunt/Cruise pass the baton.
So yeah, this is not quite “giant monster” territory as the poster would imply, but i wanted to cover this one for a while and it will do as a parallel to Monster Armageddon, as any excuse to compare Roger Corman’s output of the 50s-60s with the Asylum’s to shame the latter… it’s a good one.
Even if it’s still a tale of lies, because this was deliberately made as a comedy but was never advertised as such, with the promotional material playing it straight, like this being a “serious” monster flick in the vein of Creature Of The Black Lagoon, only to ambush the audiences come to see this in a double feature with Devil’s Partner.
Goading people into seeing a deliberate farce, a parody of basically every movie Corman did to that point, another quickie he actually shot in Puerto Rico alongside Last Woman On Earth, but it wouldn’t be seen until a year later in 1961, a farce that also a political satire and then lastly a monster movie, with one of the silliest looking aquatic monsters ever, as if The Monster From Piedras Biancas was made to look as silly as the bird thing in The Giant Claw. Deliberately.
So, the Spy X Family movie, which feels kinda odd to see release in most territories (EU and english speaking ones) now in late April, as it debuted Dicember 2023 in japanese theathers, an and it’s very easy to notice it was meant as a winter/Christmas release, because of it taking place in a faux-Switzerland-esque city and the tone of a winter holiday vacation.
Not having watched further than Season 1, i was a bit worried to accidentally spoil myself, but this is a non-canonical original story…… that actually doesn’t even really need you to have watched Spy X Family at all, as it introduces the main characters and quickly explains the gist (which i won’t for time’s sake) anyway, you will miss some context for some side characters, but there’s nothing that you can’t catch on the fly by watching the movie.
The plot has the Forger family go into a vacation in the nearby alpine and Switzerland-esque town of Frigis in order to get the recipe for a cake that will make Anya pass the cooking exam at her prestigious school, in turn advancing her career and letting Lloyd get closer to the target of the secret operation he undertook and formed the family for.
But things go south when Anya accidentally gets imbroiled with the army and discovers their plan to undo the fragile peace between non-East Germany and non-West Germany…
It’s a fun time, but it could have been easily a 2 parts long special episode instead, very little feels “cinematic” until deep in the second act, but even in terms of animation quality there’s little (some brief dream sequences, mostly) that feels like this “needed” to be a movie.
Still quite cute and wholesome as is the series itself, but nothing really impressive either way.
Matthew Vaughn is back with that is essentially a Kingsman spin-off taking place in that universe/continuity with Argylle, which goes for the straight up spy comedy/parody with a premise that inevitably echoes Romancing The Stone, and by extent 2022’s The Lost City, but about spies.
Elly Conway is a successful writer of a spy series of novels titled Argylle, and while about to finish up the final chapter of her next book, she is approached by a real spy that reveals her books ended up mimicking too closely the machinations of a real life evil shadow mega-organization, forcing her to follow (with kitty in tow) the real life agent Argylle in order to escape the assassins sent after her.
There is more to this, and it’s a nice variation on this formula…. but i can’t deny at times it feels like an outright spoof done by accidents, as the twists keep coming to a degree that it almost feel like an actual joke (but ain’t) and the fun premise is ultimately weighted down by a convuluted plot and an overly long runtime. This really should have been 90 minutes.
It’s a bit too self-satisfied at times, especially in terms of meta jokes that aren’t too original or funny, the execution it’s far from lacking flaws, but i won’t deny the premise does give the formula some energy, the plot gets some needed mileage out of said premise, enought to keep you fairly entertained, with some fun performances, but it does suffer because often it weaponizes genre cliches unironically without actually improving on overdone tropes.
Despite all that, i’d say it’s still a decent time, but i do hope that the planned sequels (if they do come out after this “part 1” bombing so far at the box office) are better.
You know, when the first Expendables movie release, it was a fun little idea: let’s make an all stars action B-movie that’s a tongue-in-cheek throwback to 90s action cinema, with all the big name actors from that era and the modern ones, spouting one liners over huge explosions and so on.
Now it’s more of a coffin race for most of the actors… or so it would be if most of the people that were supposed to be in or back into… didn’t make the cut in Expendables 4, the plot of which barely matters even discussing, but it has something to do with a Gheddaffi old chemical plant, a nuke, a mole, and the team avenging the death of their leader, Barney.
Meaning one of the franchise’ selling points is borked to hell right away, but then again this the boring kind of trashy movie, as any energy or committment to the formula is gone, with the actors seemingly embarassed of delivering the awful dialogue, and quarter-assing their way through this boring, uninspired rethread with all the cliches but devoid of anything that made the Expendables movies endearing… and also looking very cheap, with embarassing CGI for a 2023 big budget release marred to subpar choreography.
Also, in what it’s mostly an obvious tactic to pass the torch to Staham for sequels, Stallone is barely in the movie, with Staham’s character as the focus, making in another vehicle for the actor…. which makes some “sense” since the climax is basically the same as The Meg 2 (it really is), also with Staham and released this year, coincidence or not.
Some fresh utter trash, that’s also sadly a mostly boring affair, a worthless, joyless relic for this day and age, filled with new, better and already iconic modern action franchises.
It’s a drought in every way, so let’s go the ol’ content mill to see what garbage TV disaster movie we can fish out from Amazon Prime Video and it’s ever so unreliable availability of old stuff that now is included with the Prime membership, now isn’t available anymore, or is it but if you subscribe to another channel/service for 8 bucks a month, so sod it, let’s see a random pick from my list which is available for “free”, and if nothing else there’s plenty of these disaster movies to chew through on the service. So i’m kinda glad we didn’t land on one of the Asylum one with this dice throw.
Nope, we’re going back to the late 90s, on the verge of the 2000s being a thing and the Y2K scare was being throttled, with all the bullshit it produced, but it was simpler times as you could make disaster movie about “just” tsunami without the need of a hook like crystal meth spiders hiding under the tectonic plates so now we have swarms of drug spiders being spread by the tidal waves.
Predictably, Tidal Wave: No Escape, directed by George Miller (not that one, despite this George Miller also having a history of directing children movies with/about animals) is about tsunami happening out of the blue (pun) in various american coasts, which forces the usual unwilling “scientist in hiding/ritire” to touch grass and try to make sense of the phenomenon, revealing that he did study a method to artificially create tidal waves, so he gets suspected but then a mysterious voice calls them to inform that the killer waves will happen again, and again and again.
Is Poseidon itself treathening mankind? Will the dumbass army men figure out he’s obviously not the protagonist scientist behind this? Will he form a bond that will bloom into romance with the female scientist that initially thought explosions or meteors were behind the tsunamis?
In terms of plot or characters there’s nothing we haven’t seen before, but even if mostly stereotyped (the dickwad head honcho who is convinced the hero is actually the villain because of petty jealousy, also present in the variant of the more fair and impartial but also incredibly dense black officer whom isn’t as lucky as the dickwad boss), the characters are ok, the acting is decent enough, and surprisingly the effects are not too bad looking today.
Sure, they have certainly aged and are obvious by today’s standards, but this one came before widespread use of cheap digital effects, which are maybe used twice for minor things, so they have to make the waves hitting look real the old fashion way, and for a TV movie of the era it does a respectable job, given the limitations and not having much in terms of “cinematic scope” for spectacle. Again, it was indeed what one could expect for this type of production in that decade.
And to my surprise, Tidal Wave: No Escape it’s actually not bad, not bad at all, the balance between drama and the conspiracy plot is actually nice, and direction is strong especially in the first half, sadly after the mid point and the reveal of a character’s true motivations, the narrative kinda turns into a more typical and a bit too old school action-disaster movie stuffed with boring or filler-ish dialogues so the villain can say something before the climax and some dumb conversations can be had, even thought by this point you won’t really care much about and are just waiting for things to finally unfold as you’d expect they would (and they do).
It’s definitely a naive and kinda outdated relic of its time, especially as you can date it just by how the “hacking” and rudimentary database rummagign is done via old DOS computers on the respectively old timey computer screens not brimming with many colors, but honestly that’s kinda cute to see today, and overall the movie manages to be respectable, enjoyable despite its flaws , which surprisingly do not lie in aged special effects, more in a bloated third act and a fairly thin plot, but it doesn’t bore the viewer with excessive and tiresome pseudo science exposition dumps, plus it does its job with some dignity despite the overall result being just above mediocrity, and that alone is more than one could have expected to say of a 1997 TV disaster movie about tidal waves.
I didn’t plan to do another “first impressions” piece on a recent anime release, especially since the original manga by Tatsuya Endo (whom you might be already familiar with, as he previously worked on fan-favourite TISTA) sky-rocketed in popularity after debutting on Shonen Jump in 2019, and especially last year as it received wider releases globally.
A relatively new series on Jump with an original premise that doesn’t fall in the “battle manga” genre, but instead goes for a spy theme was bound to turn heads and be popular, and eventually get an anime series. So here we are, and while this series doesn’t need my “push” to become popular or anything (as it’s also streaming in most countries on Crunchyroll, which is obviously marketing the hell out of it) it’s one of the few shows i’ve decided to actually follow as they air this season (alongside Ya Boy Kongming!, of course), so might as well say something about it.
Once again, i’m considering the first 3 episodes as a basis to draw these first impressions from.
I quite liked the first Kingsman movie, even enjoyed the second one (even if it was uber cheesy, with the robodogs and Elton John and all), but i feel that maybe it would have been best if this didn’t became a series, as we are already going for the “origins of” storyline, but whatever.
The film – as you would expect – it’s about the foundation of the Kingsman’s intelligence agency, borne in Britain during the events of WW I by elite warriors that woved to silently defend humanity from its from villains and tyrants, which puts them against Grigori Rasputin and other conspirators led by a mysterious figure, intent in making Germany overwhelm Britain in the conflict.
This is not a bad movie, mind you, nor bad movies. I do feel like they had scripts for two different movies set in the Kingsman universe, and – maybe – afraid that with the current situation of theathers they couldn’t get another chance (also due to hypotethical series fatigue) at it, so here you go, you get the story of Orlando Oxford’s son wanting to enlist in the war to prove his worth, with a fairly serious war movie tone, and the over the top comic book style spy action fights that you’d expect from a Kingsman movie.
Both are quite decent and entertaining in themselves, which is laudable, but the tone (and the themes, honestly) doesn’t really match between the events on the WW I trenches and a delightfully excessive Grigori Rasputin using his mystical powers (which are somehow real) to cure a wound by licking it frantically, to say nothing of the charicatural characterization of the kaiser, czar and most of the villains.
Despite this, it’s definitely not a slog, cast it’s pretty good and overall it’s decent fun.
I was almost not gonna review this new 007 film, i usually enjoy them, but they’re not exactly my favourite type of movie, and i haven’t see one in theathers (or at all) since Casino Royale, but i’d figured we could use a break from the horror stuff, and i trust Cary Fukunaga.
Before tackling the plot, let me say i like Daniel Craig as Bond, but i won’t lie, i did like the idea-rumor of casting Idris Elba as the secret agent himself that was floating around when the movie was announced, but i guess we’ll have to wait for the next one.
Sure as hell they want it to feel like a big comeback, since it has been 6 years since the last one, Spectre, which wasn’t that well received, and this also being the last time Craig will play the character…. i guess explains how (and partially “why”) it’s almost 3 hours.
Plot is about James Bond being recruited by the CIA (after he resigned from the MI6) to rescue a kidnapped scientist, but things lead to thing and eventually to a showdown between Bond and a powerful villain (played by Rami Malek) with a nefarious plan…
Maybe it’s because i literally haven’t seen a Bond film in more than a decade, but honestly this actually hits all the right and expected notes from a 007 flick, it embraces the style of the series and plays it just right, without trying to ape other spy flicks, cynically chasing modern trends or – on the flipside – stubbornly trenching itself in the old shit just to spite modernity.
It’s a consolidated, familiar formula, here well executed, with likeable characters, spectacular action setpieces, a stellar cast. Arguably a bit longer than one would expected (or want), but far from slow moving, good overall, i’d say.
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