Very faint praise perhaps, but The Nun is perhaps the better of the three spin-ff movies? Yes, I meant a question mark there… It has a decent atmosphere to it, taking advantage of the Romanian landscape and creepy abbey. Having said that, it is at times pretty dull.
The Marine 6: Close Quarters actually wasn’t a terrible movie and might be a step above the previous entries if only for a couple moments that were actually surprising and unpredictable.
Out of Time is a serviceable suspense-thriller mainly for the charisma of its cast, primarily Denzel Washington and to some extent, Eva Mendes, as well as John Billingsley in the comedy relief role.
Basic Instinct 2 might be bad but it’s also hardly terrible either and I will give some credit to both Sharon Stone and David Morrissey for wading through some lurid dialogue and a mindless plot.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout is another rounding success in this long-running franchise and for actor Tom Cruise himself who continues to push it up a notch with the action sequences and stunts to go along with a strong enough story to carry it across the finish line.
This Critters Collection is another nicely done work from Shout through their Scream Factory line featuring two solid movies and two… not so good ones. The transfers are all relatively well done and the features packaged together were fantastic.
I suppose there are worse ways to spend 90-minutes than sitting through Critters 4, even if the titular creatures don’t seem to have as much screen time with only two on-screen kills. Of note, though, the inclusions of Angela Bassett and Brad Dourif did make it more interesting.
Critters 3 is a step down from the previous installments but still fun, albeit more seeing Leonardo DiCaprio before he made it internationally huge some years later with Titanic. The rest of the cast were fine and the Critter designs were still impressive.
Critters 2: The Main Course might not be as good as the original, but the humor still mostly worked and I actually enjoyed the interactions between the critter bounty hunters, each of them providing a bit more personality (and seriously, wouldn’t have minded seeing some sort of spin-off).
Critters is a fun first film in the quadrilogy with some really impressive puppetry and animatronic work to go along with just a enjoyable flick from the silly beginning to the even sillier finale.
Mara is basically The Ring without any tangible back-story for our vengeful demon/spirit and although I really wanted to like this, especially since it stars Olga Kurylenko, it just didn’t work and the demon herself, when fully revealed, was hardly scary.
Mile 22 had a good premise, along the lines of The Bourne franchise, completely ruined by poor editing and obnoxious and annoying characters that were absolutely unlikeable, not sure what Mark Wahlberg and Peter Berg were thinking.
Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey isn’t my favorite of the two movies and I know one has its fanbase, but for me, it never quite worked, though does have some interesting visuals.
Streets of Fire is a rare breed of film that features a unique yet familiar style and with some interesting casting choices, two of them brilliant with the young Diane Lane and Willem Dafoe.
Final Score was a surprisingly successful action-thriller that does showcase Dave Bautista’s charisma now in a leading role, compared to his ensemble work on the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and Avengers: Infinity War.