Dune is a movie that has plenty of technical achievements by director Denis Villeneuve and his team but very little emotion at its core, even with a respectable cast.
Escape Plan: The Extractors, and this might be faint praise, is at least better than the previous installment if only that Sylvester Stallone seem like he was the star. As it is, there is some fun entertainment value to the third entry.
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.
Avengers: Infinity War was an amazing feat for comic book movies and although I don’t believe it’s the greatest one, it’s still a great accomplishment from all involved.
On the one hand I was disappointed with Escape Plan 2 given how fun the first movie was, on the other I can’t be too surprised given it was DTV/On Demand and is from the Grindstone Entertainment production company.
Blade Runner 2049 is probably not a great sequel to the 1982 classic but still a very good movie as a whole. Although the visuals (both in terms of cinematography and effects) are fantastic, the characters weren’t all that interesting and the performances were just okay. However, this is still well worth seeing.
Although the one-shot style was interesting and the performances from both Dave Bautista and Brittany Snow were alright, I did find the premise to be utterly ludicrous though obviously this was a metaphor of today’s politics.
Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 is a good step down from the first movie but still enjoyable enough even if the jokes at times feel forced and the story not quite as strong, and a villain’s motivations a bit of a letdown. That said, the performances were mostly good especially Karen Gillan and Michael Rooker.
Marauders isn’t a half-bad crime-thriller though it has plenty of problems from a villain portrayed by Bruce Willis who once again phones-in his performance to some atrocious dialogue and a needlessly complicated plot. However, I did enjoy Christopher Meloni in the lead role and the director at least attempted to bring atmosphere.
It’s not hard to see why Heist had a very limited theater run before being released to DTV obscurity in spite of a nice cast between Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Robert De Niro. But thanks to a bad script, with far too many contrivances to ignore, this is the type of movie easily forgotten within a day and thrown in with the rest of the subpar flicks.