The Harder They Fall - Netflix Review

Starring Jonathan Majors, Zazie Beetz, Idris Elba, Lakeith Stanfield, Delroy Lindo, Regina King, RJ Cyler, Edi Gathegi, Danielle Deadwyler, Deon Cole, and Damon Wayans Jr.

Written by Jeymes Samuel & Boaz Yakin.

Directed by Jeymes Samuel.

★★★

This stylized Sam Raimi-esque gun-totin' Western is cooler when you realize that most of these characters were real people. Sure, liberties have been taken to allow certain body counts to happen in a certain order, but for the most part, yeah, let's have some fun with real people.

Here we get Jonathan Majors (Loki) as Nat Love, an outlaw in his own right, but he's seeking revenge against someone badder - Rufus Buck (Idris Elba) , the man who killed his parents right in front of him. Turns out Buck has a gang that's sprung him from prison, so this is Nat's chance to find him and kill him himself.

Tons of other actors show up to have some shoot-em-fun. Never thought I'd want to see Zazie Beetz (Deadpool) and Regina King (Watchmen) dressed as cowgirls fighting to the death, but we get that here and that's what makes cinema fun, right? Lakeith Stanfield (Judas & the Black Messiah) is an actor I'll never tire of seeing. Delory Lindo (Da 5 Bloods) is that welcome old man who has one last gunfight in him. And so on.

I'm not really sure how Jeymes Samuel got to get this movie made - maybe there was some Jay-Z money behind it (he directed Jay-Z: Legacy) but his directorial debut was also a wild Western with an all-Black cast called They Die at Dawn, which I now want to hunt down.

This movie's a hoot.

Star Trek Beyond - Movie Review

Starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Idris Elba, Sofia Boutella, Deep Roy and Shohreh Aghdashloo.
Written by Simon Pegg & Doug Jung.
Directed by Justin Lin.

★★★

After Star Trek into Darkness turned out to be a remake of The Wrath of Khan, they wanted to be a little more original this time around. And they were. This felt like a two-hour episode of the original series, so by being more faithful to the spirit of the series, it was able to break out and tell a new story.

The Enterprise is now more than halfway through its five-year mission, and the crew is starting to feel bored. But then an opportunity comes along to explore a nebula where no one knows what's inside it, and things sound interesting. Of course once they go inside, they're attacked, the Enterprise is destroyed, and they're stranded on an unknown planet.

The movie takes its time to give everyone character moments. We've gotten to know them; now it lets us enjoy their interactions. Spock and McCoy spend a good section of the film stranded together, and their interplay was the most enjoyable part of the movie. (Karl Urban's best work yet in the role.) It also benefits from guest work by Idris Elba as the main villain Krall, and from Sofia Boutella (Kingsman: The Secret Service) as Jaylah, a different alien who's been stranded a long time herself.

The late, great Anton Yelchin is just part of the ensemble as Chekov, and I can't help but wish they'd given him more to do. But they had the luxury of thinking they could just do that in the next movie.

Star Trek is a likable series. It's never my #1 must-see of the year, but I'm always glad when the opportunity to see another one rolls around. Especially when it's good.

Pacific Rim - Movie Review

Starring Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Ron Perlman, Rob Kazinsky, Clifton Collins Jr. and Burn Gorman.  Directed by Guillermo Del Toro.

★★★

It's giant robots fighting the monsters that Godzilla's not here to kill.  We're clear on this, right?

I always give a movie its premise.  An inter-dimensional rift has opened on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, allowing 150-foot-tall creatures to come through and terrorize coastlines.  I accept this.  The world came together and built 150-foot-tall robots called jaegars to fight them, operated by two pilots.  Of course they did.

I wound up enjoying this a lot more than my wife.

We're somewhere around the year 2025 for this action, where the kaiju (the monsters) have become part of everyday life.  They have fluorescent lines on them for some reason, and more than one scene, I couldn't help think that they were really thinking about the toy line in designing some of these.

Anyway, the story revolves around Raleigh Becket (Hunnam), a jaeger pilot who quit after his brother died in battle.  He's called in for duty when the diminished jaeger corps need his help.  We meet the other teams, and it's like meeting other video game characters ("the Russians!"), and we see their unique jaegers (where do they get those wonderful toys?).

Elba brings movie-star charisma to his role as the leader, and he gets his pre-battle speech that blows Bill Pullman's Independence Day monologue out of the water.  I was confused by Hunnam. His accent was all over the place so I couldn't tell if he was American, or something else.  Charlie Day was funny in the Rick Moranis role.  His sidekick (Burn Gorman) was a bit too cartoony for my taste.  He made me think of Emmerich's Godzilla, and you do not want to do that.

It's over two hours, and it has one too many obstacles thrown at our heroes in Act III.  I wanted to check my watch a couple times during some of the final fighting, a cardinal sin in an action film.  Most of the time, though, I was digging it.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance - DVD Review

Starring Nicolas Cage, Ciaran Hinds, Idris Elba, Violante Placido, Johnny Whitworth, Fergus Riordan and Christopher Lambert.
Directed by Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor.

★½

Silliness is the name of the game here.  Nicolas Cage returns as Johnny Blaze, the motorcycle daredevil who occasionally turns into the Ghost Rider.  He learns of a way to finally free himself from the Rider from a silver-eyed monk (Idris Elba), but first he must stop the Devil from taking over a boy's body.

First time around, the Devil was played by Peter Fonda.  Now he's Ciaran Hinds, a step up in my book.  Its actors like Hinds and Elba that made me think this sequel might be an upgrade, but it's more like an opportunity for those two to ham it up and get paid good money to do it.

Cage gets wild and crazy with the role, and he kills a lot of generic Euro-trash henchmen on the way up to his showdown with the Devil.  It has CG-splashiness, and it's the most unnecessary sequel of the year.  I never had any sense from anyone in the movie they were doing this for anything more than cash. It's not like they actually believed in this project, nor care if it was any good.