This 2-Movie Collection of Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life are the same two discs from the individual 4K releases, sans the Blu-rays which contained most of the bonus features.
300 is a movie that I never really immensely enjoyed back when it was released and even today, found it to be great to look at, but little emotion behind the amazing visuals, though some of the fight scenes were pretty bad-ass.
Angel Has Fallen is pretty much in-line with the first two movies, meaning they’re fine time-wasters but not top-of-the-line action-thrillers and it is on the predictable side. Still, thanks to Gerard Butler and the indispensible Morgan Freeman, it still was an entertaining thriller.
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is a well done conclusion to the nearly decade-long franchise featuring a well told, if not basic, story to go along with some beautiful animation and nice voice work by the ensemble cast.
The Vanishing is a well made if not also rather forgettable drama/psychological thriller that excels due to the performances from Gerard Butler and Peter Mullan making this worthy of a Red Box rental.
Law Abiding Citizen was a bit of a disappointment for me. I know what the filmmakers’ were after by making giving the audience a difficult choice of which character to ‘root’ for, but the moral choice didn’t work for me.
Imperfect to say the least, Den of Thieves does have quite a few things going for it from an intense performance from Gerard Butler and suspense-filled crime sequences, that does somewhat overcome the lengthy running time and lack of some character development of the supporting cast.
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life is a half-baked and poorly made sequel that lacked the fun and thrills of the first film though Angelina Jolie appeared to give it her all, or at least her stunt double did, but the action itself was lackluster outside of the opening action sequence.
Geostorm was rightfully basically in-and-out in theaters, domestically anyway since it did do okay overseas, as the script and dialogue was downright awful and even the normally charismatic Gerard Butler couldn’t help, same going for the supporting cast.
Gods of Egypt has its moments but as a whole it’s not well made in spite of a talented enough filmmaker in Alex Proyas and a respectable cast, in particular Gerard Butler hamming it up to great effect; not to mention lovely actresses Elodie Yung and Courtney Eaton as love interests to the two leads. This is probably worth a rental, not much more.
London Has Fallen is an entertaining actioner, something that probably would’ve better served released back in the ‘80s, though it’s not exactly a necessary sequel since Olympus Has Fallen, while a nice time, didn’t need a follow-up. Having said that, this entry is at least worth a rental, just don’t expect any sort of depth.
I hated Movie 43. I didn’t find the jokes particularly funny – and mind you, I don’t mind crude/rude humor – nor was it very controversial. Instead this looked more like a college film project with a higher budget and one which was made for insiders rather than a larger audience.
Much like the “DreamWorks Spooky Stories” released a few weeks back, this Holiday collection is great for the entire family. It’s especially cool to get the main actors to reprise their roles for the animated shorts while the animation looks amazing.