Tag: film

Film Review: A Step In The Right Direction

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a somewhat encouraging addition to the Marvel Studios’ cinematic output and is directed by Matt Shakman. It took four screenwriters to come up with a reasonably enjoyable film, but they got there. Josh Friedman, Eric Pierson, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer wrote the script with someone named Kat Wood sharing the story credit.

Pedro Pascal portrays Reed Richards also known as Mr. Fantastic alongside Vanessa Kirby as the Invisible Woman, Sue Storm. Ebon Moss-Bachrach plays Ben Grimm or the Thing. Finally, Joseph Quinn plays the Human Torch, Johnny Storm. Other cast members include Julia Garner, Sarah Niles, Mark Gatiss, and Ralph Ineson.

This story takes place in some parallel Earth in 1964. It has been four years since the space accident which transformed this family of astronauts and scientists into superheroes. Reed Richards and Sue Storm have discovered that they are about to welcome a new addition to the family. They are also warned by a Silver Surfer that a planet eater named Galactus is on his way to consume the entire planet. When the Fantastic Four take another space trip to find out what this guy’s problem was, they find an absurdly powerful being who is willing to spare the Earth in exchange for the child. Obviously, the Fantastic Four have some understandable objections to this plan and make a harrowing escape back to Earth to come up with a plan to defeat the oncoming. During the escape, the baby is born after Galactus induces Sue to go into labor. The Fantastic Four also have to contend with a growing panic among the people they have been protecting for the past few years. They have to unite the people and come up with a plan to send Galactus on his way with an unfulfilled appetite and without the new child.

This franchise has really struggled in the past couple of decades to gain a reliable cinematic audience. This iteration actually manages to be quite suspenseful and entertaining. The cast is more likeable somehow. The chemistry between Pascal and Kirby was also quite endearing. Johnny Storm was actually kind of funny at times.

The film seemed to have a pretty good mix of humor and heart in the performances. The 1960’s setting worked pretty well. I also appreciated that there was not much time spent on another origin story.

Obviously, there was some ridiculousness to forgive since it is a comic book movie, but it wasn’t quite as hard as it has been in recent contributions from Marvel.

Anyway, I am not generally a Fantastic Four fan, but I can still appreciate some success from the producers and studios when they come up with a reasonably entertaining product.

Film Review: A Hitman’s Mind Starts To Crumble

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Knox Goes Away is a 2023 thriller starring Michael Keaton, who also directed this movie. Gregory Poirier is the director. Keaton is joined by James Marsden. Ray McKinnon, Al Pacino, Marcia Gay Harden, and Suzy Nakamura.

Keaton plays a hitman John Knox, who has just been diagnosed with a very aggressive form of dementia and only has a few weeks before he loses his cognitive awareness. As he is making preparations for his inevitable decline, his son shows up with a wounded hand and in a panic. He explains that he had just killed a man who had lured his teenage daughter online and got her pregnant. The son, Miles, played by James Marsden, is aware of his father’s dubious and lethal profession and calls upon his expertise to help him get away with the understandable murder. Of course, Knox has yet to reveal his condition and is compelled to keep his sanity together as best he can in order to aid his son.

This film has a pretty intriguing plot, and Keaton’s performance is captivating. Knox handles his diagnosis with an impressive amount of stoicism. There is a certain subtlety to how Keaton portrays the lapses in Knox is experiencing as he tries to resolve this crisis and get his personal affairs in order.

Al Pacino plays Knox’s friend who ends up being the only one told about this condition. He is fine in this role, but there just isn’t much for him to do here.

The cast was pretty good overall. Ray McKinnon is one of these character actors who tends to leave an impression for some reason. Much like someone like John Goodman, he tends to make the scenes a bit better regardless of the size of his role. McKinnon plays Knox’s partner who takes the brunt of the consequences brought by Knox’s illness.

There is a fair amount of decent suspense that plays out effectively. One can feel a certain sympathy for Knox’s plight in spite of his terrible career choice.

I still wouldn’t call this a terrific film, but there is some effort at creativity. Keaton does a good job holding it together as both the star and director. It’s a decent enough diversion and has enough depth to keep one engaged.

Film Review: Who Let The Dinosaurs Out?

~ Peter Kanelis ~ 1 Comment

Jurassic World Rebirth continues the franchise began many moons ago by the late Michael Crichton who wrote the first novel, Jurassic Park. This is now the seventh film in the franchise, and my mixed reaction is likely not going to be surprising.

Gareth Edwards is the director of this film which was written by David Koepp. Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, and Manuel Garcia-Rufo are included in the cast.

This story begins with a flashback in which an isolated island is the site of some questionable experiments involving the breeding of hybrid dinosaurs are being conducted. Of course, it all goes a bit awry when one of the experiments escapes and tears the laboratory to pieces before dashing off into the jungle.

Some years later, a team comprised of a couple of scientists, a snobby rich guy, and a few hired guns head out to the island to get some blood samples from various dinosaurs that could help cure some kind of heart disease. The team come across a family on a boating excursion who are attacked by some unfriendly and hungry prehistoric ocean dwellers. Everyone makes their way to the island after another harrowing attack to get to the lab where some hope of escape awaits.

Scarlett Johansson is in the lead as some kind of mercenary. Even though she spent some years playing Black Widow for Marvel Studios, I had a little trouble with being convinced that she was the right choice for this part. I guess I didn’t find her as intimidating as what the script seemed to call for.

The special effects were pretty cool, and dinosaurs were pretty well realized on the screen.

The film seems to have a slow start. but it does get somewhat better when the group makes it to the island. The family with Garcia-Rufo as the father actually got me more interested in the film. In recognized Garcia-Rufo from the Netflix series The Lincoln Lawyer, so it was kind of cool to see him in something a little different. He’s a decent actor and did well in this film.

The film does follow a familiar pattern established in the earlier installments. There are some new bells and whistles when it comes to the visual effects and set design, but the plot did not feel all that unique.

There is an innocent family in the mix, and a child who keeps getting threatened by the big, scaly beasts. Fortunately, I start to like the family. Even the slacker boyfriend of the elder daughter started to grow on me a bit.

The film manages to avoid being utter garbage, but it still isn’t one of the better ones of the series. It has some moments that are redeemable, it overall made me question the wisdom of the studio execs who keep on beating a dead raptor.

Film Review: The Multitudes Within Chuck Krantz

~ Peter Kanelis ~ 1 Comment

The Life of Chuck us in the running to become one of the best movies of 2025, in my humble opinion. Mike Flanagan is the screenwriter and director of this piece, which is adapted from a novella written by a not-so-new writer named Stephen King. Tom Hiddleston is in the lead role alongside the child actors portraying the younger versions of Charles Krantz. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Mia Sara, Mark Hamill, and Annalise Basso are part of the formidable cast.

The story unfolds from the end when Ejiofor’s character, Marty Anderson, notices some strange sights in the world around him. There is a serious increase in natural disasters, and the internet has completely collapsed. There are some peculiar advertisements cropping up depicting a picture of a man named Chuck Krantz, a seemingly normal accountant. As Chuck lies near death from a terminal brain tumor, the stars are blinking out, and the universe seems to be just shutting down.

Then, the story moves earlier in the Chuck’s life to a strange but uplifting impromptu dance performance before a street drummer. Then, Chuck’s childhood is laid out. All of this is helped by a narrator, Nick Offerman, who does a fantastic job of guiding the audience on this strange journey.

The novella is part of a collection by Stephen King entitled If It Bleeds. The film probably follows the source material pretty closely. There are some interesting twists and a few surprises throughout the film

The performances were solid and believable. The significant cast members were well-chosen. There was a kind of interesting subtlety to some of the performances during some of the more emotionally charged moments of the movie.

The film does seem to have a bit of a slow start, but it gets more engaging as it unfolds in its unconventional timeline. The three kids who played Chuck’s adolescent years did a great job as well. Flanagan has done quite a few adaptations of King’s works and seems to be pretty reliable. I do not recall being disappointed in some of his other works.

I have not read the novella, but I imagine that it is an example of how King actually demonstrates some variety in his writings.

I will also admit that I did not really recognize Mark Hamill as Chuck’s grandfather until the end credits came up. I thought he was familiar, but I was not sure why. Hamill is not someone who I consider to be a stellar actor, but he did quite well in this one. Maybe, he has actually gotten better in immersing himself in a role over the years, and I just failed to appreciate it.

Anyway, this film does deserve the acclaim it has received. It is certainly better than most of the nonsense coming out of Hollywood these days.

Film Review: Some Accountants Crunch More Than Just Numbers

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Ben Affleck returns as killer accountant Christian Wolff in The Accountant 2 directed by Gavin O’Conner. Bill Dubuque is the screenwriter. Jon Bernthal returns as the estranged, and probably just as dangerous, brother, Braxton. Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Daniella Pineda, Robert Morgan, and Grant Harvey join in the fray. J.K. Simmons has a brief appearance in the beginning.

Christian Wollf is autistic and is high functioning in the most lethal ways. He is asked by a former ally from the first movie to help her figure out why her mentor was murdered. It doesn’t take Christian long to determine a pretty complicated human trafficking situation is going on. Another assassin named Anais is also in the game, but she has amnesia to go along with her own dangerous skill set. Christian calls upon his brother, with whom he has a troubled relationship, to bring his own deadly talents to the table. Now, the players are on the board, the hunt is on, and the Accountant is about to balance the books with a lot of firepower.

As far as sequels go, this is a better one. Affleck does pull off bringing a certain vulnerability to this character in spite of the brutality he exercises. I did find Bernthal’s performance a little too manic at times, but I did find the unconventional brotherly relationship rather interesting.

The fight scenes were pretty slick, even if they were a little fanciful. The climax of the film where the Wolff brothers just storm this compound where children were being imprisoned in Mexico was pretty cool. Some criminals just deserve the kind of brutal attention that Christian and Braxton are so good at dishing out.

The film does have its slow moments periodically, but there are some moments that are almost charming. A scene where Christian ends up line dancing with a pretty girl in a bar seems kind of odd, but it worked for me.

There were some moments where the brothers tried to connect a bit, and those moments were rather poignant.

If another film turns up, I don’t think I will roll my eyes with the same level of derision I have when these announcements are made.

Film Review: Sometimes You Need More Than One Sensei

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Karate Kid: Legends has some pretty cool scenes and character moments, but the plot logistics are quite questionable. Jonathan Entwistle directed this film, which was written by Rob Leiber. The new kid is played by Ben Wang, and he is actually a pretty good choice. Ralph Macchio returns to The Karate Kid franchise as Daniel LaRusso, fresh off the completion of the series Cobra Kai. Jackie Chan reprises his role of Mr. Han from the 2010 The Karate Kid film.

The cast also includes Joshua Jackson, Sadie Stanley, Ming-Na Wen, and Aramis Knight.

The movie begins with a flashback scene in which Mr. Miyagi explains to a young LaRusso the connection his family has to the Han Family. When we’re caught up to the present day, Mr. Han has returned to kung fu instruction fulltime and is doing quite well. One of his students is a great nephew named Li Fong who has been carrying a burden of guilt. His mother has accepted a job in New York as a doctor, so Li has another big adjustment to make in his life.

As usual, he meets a pretty girl and runs afoul of her ex-boyfriend, who is a karate expert. Li is also quite skilled in the martial arts, but this adversary may be better. Mr. Han eventually shows up in the Big Apple to lend a hand in training his nephew for the expected big tournament. He feels that he could use some help and take a quick trip to California to recruit Daniel LaRusso to give his expertise to Li’s training.

There is a lot in this film I liked. The newer characters were actually pretty good. Sadie Stanley was pretty entertaining as Mia, the cheeky but charming love interest. Her relationship with her father, played by Joshua Jackson, was pretty endearing as well. A friendship between Li and the father develops as well, which seems to be a break from the trope in these types of stories.

Ben Wang has quite a bit of charisma to go along with his martial arts skill. It was also great to see Ming-Na Wen in the role of Li’s mother. The mother was pretty dead set against her son continuing his martial arts study, but one can have a bit more sympathy for her once the reason is revealed. Also, Wen is just great to watch. It’s pretty hard to believe that she is just over sixty, but she is Asian and obviously takes well care of herself.

The fight scenes are unrealistic but still fun to watch. The good-natured bickering between LaRusso and Han was also well played by Macchia and Chan.

For the most part, I enjoyed the film, however the plot needs some serious examination. First of all, it’s not really clear what is so unique about Li’s situation that Han felt compelled to seek assistance from LaRusso. The whole idea to get the two sensei in the same place seems rather strange and frankly hard to swallow.

I could almost buy a more coincidental meeting more than Han taking a quick trip to California to make his pitch to LaRusso.

The film does hit the right chords of nostalgia, but I had to fight for that enjoyment since I was pretty distracted by the weak elements in the plot.

Anyway, it’s another one in which I did not find terrible, but a better, more credible reason needed to be found for Han and LaRusso to meet.

Film Review: AI Versus The IMF

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Mission: Impossible-The Final Reckoning is a pretty fun cinematic experience as long as one doesn’t examine the actual plot too closely. Tom Cruise returns as super operative, Ethan Hunt, leader of the Impossible Missions Force, with Christopher McQuarrie as director. McQuarrie also co-wrote the script with Erik Jendresen.

This film continues the storyline which began in the immediate predecessor, Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning. Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames also return as Benjo Dunn and Luther Stickell, respectively. Hayley Atwell is back to help Ethan against the battle against a powerful Artificial Intelligence known as the Entity. Angela Bassett, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, and Greg Tarzan Davis are included in the cast.

When the film starts, Ethan Hunt has been in hiding for a few months after taking possession of a vital component to controlling the Entity. He rejoins his team and spends much of film trying to stay ahead of Gabriel, played by Esai Morales, who is trying to stop Ethan from achieving his ultimate goal of neutralizing the Entity. Ethan will have to decide who or what may be sacrificed in order to save the world from the Entity’s dominion.

As usual, there are some astonishing and sometimes ludicrous action sequences that are definitely eye-catching. Cruise puts out a strong performance which is likely his last turn as Ethan Hunt. This film is being touted as the final one in the franchise, but when it comes to Hollywood, who can say for sure?

The film is a bit of a jumble when it comes to the plot. There are some engaging callbacks to the earlier installments. Rolf Saxon reprises a role from the first film that was not much more than a cameo, and he has much more substantial part to play here.

There are times when the transition to different locations seems a little jarring, but the film is pretty long anyway. McQuarrie throws in quite a bit of death-defying moments in this film that almost makes it to three hours.

The problem is that Hunt at times seem too superhuman for the suspension of disbelief to be maintained. Although these films are not really designed to be grounded in reality, it is still a bit distracting when Hunt gets himself in some of these outlandish predicaments.

I thought Morales was pretty well cast as the main villain. There was nothing too spectacular about his performance, but he was not particularly bad either.

Overall, I was glad to have made it to the likely end of this franchise, or at least the end of this phase. It’s a film with some flaws and falls short of any real artistic greatness, however it was an enjoyable diversion from the daily pressures of real life. It certainly is better than many of the recent films I have seen.

Film Review: Watch Out For The Thunder

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Thunderbolts* is the latest cinematic offering from Marvel Studios and actually manages to be a piece of solid entertainment. Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo wrote this engaging script, and Jake Schreier claims the director’s seat and may have breathed a little more life into the superhero film genre. Florence Pugh reprises her role of former Black Widow assassin, Yelena Belova. Sebastian Stan returns as Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, who is now a United States congressman. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Bucky has lost any of his punch. Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurylenko, Lewis Pullman, Hannah John-Kamen, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and David Harbour are also included in the cast.

Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, played by Louis-Dreyfus, is now the CIA director and has been involved in some controversial black ops which has led to her facing an impeachment. She sets up some of her super-powered operatives to kill each other in a remote lab that also needs to be sanitized to protect her secrets. Yelena, John Walker, Ghost, and an enigma named Bob end up escaping the trap, but Bob is abducted by de Fontaine’s agents where whatever experiments were being conducted on him may continue. The ragtag group of contract killers have only each other to rely on until they are joined by the Winter Soldier, and Yelena’s crazy father figure who is a Russian super soldier known as the Red Guardian. Bob has transformed into a being with frightening abilities and a dark past that fuels the Void within him. This new team of loners and renegades need to figure out how to combine their abilities and save the world without the Avengers to back them up.

Pugh is actually quite fun to watch, and I think the Russian accent she affects is pretty good. I am not so sure about Harbour’s, but he did fine as well with his manic energy as Alexei Shostakov. He was pretty fun to watch, although I also appreciated the chance to catch my breath when he wasn’t onscreen. The cast was pretty well-chosen. Julia Louis-Dreyfus did quite well as a smug elitist with too much power and not much caution in achieving her goals.

The special effects were typically well executed. The fight scenes were also quite compelling if as typically implausible as expected in a comic book movie.

The story does get into some themes of despair and the effects of trauma, but there is enough humor peppered throughout to help not get too depressed. Some of the one-liners even landed pretty well,

I don’t think the film is as good as the early Marvel films such as Iron Man and the first Avengers installment, but it sure wasn’t as dubious as some of the more recent offerings in this franchise.

Pugh is still relatively new in the limelight, but she does have plenty of talent and charisma. The scenes she shares with Harbour were often hilarious, but there was one pretty moving moment between their characters.

The film was just good, and I am looking forward to getting together with this cast of misfits again.

Film Reviews: Some Sinners Never Seem To Die

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Sinners is a new horror film written and directed by Ryan Coogler, and it holds up rather well considering the genre. Coogler has gained some deserved acclaim for Black Panther and the Creed films. This film isn’t going to be the one to knock him off his perch.

Michael B. Jordan has a dual role playing twin brothers known as Smoke and Stack. Okay, the nicknames are a little over the top, but I do still think being called Smoke at least would be kind of cool. Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell, Wunmu Mosaku, Delroy Lindo, and Miles Caton are included in the cast and are solid choices.

Smoke and Stack leave the urban troubles of gangster-ridden Chicago and return to the Mississippi Delta with a lot of cash and ambitions to open a juke joint in 1932. Past romances seem to be rekindled. Old friends unite to pull off this little party, and troubles involving the Ku Klux Klan aren’t going to be a major headache. Of course, Smoke and Stack are former soldiers and gangsters, so they are not so easily perturbed by racists and killers. When the vampires crash the party, that’s a little different matter.

First of all, the setting is great. Jordan is easily a compelling presence, and he does well with playing both brothers. The cast altogether is quite effective. The brothers have a cousin they recruit for the musical talent. Miles Caton is a great find with his smooth baritone. This seems to be the early days of the blues, and the soundtrack is pretty captivating. The idea in the film is that blues music can have mystical powers when played by the right musician. I can almost buy it after this film.

O’Connell plays the lead vampire, who happens to be Irish, and that culture seems to get kind of a nod as well.

The story takes its time getting going, but once the bad guys are revealed, it gets interesting and would be terrifying if I was a bit more of a nervous disposition.

There are some interesting twists toward the end. There are plenty of vampire flicks, but Coogler seems to found a vein of something original.

This film did ensure that I will be keeping an eye out for Coogler’s next project.

Film Review: The Crooked Man Is About To Get Straightened Out By Hellboy

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Hellboy: The Crooked Man brings back that demonic superhero who is sometimes known as Big Red. Too bad Hellboy couldn’t return to a more coherent script. Brian Taylor is the director working from a script he had co-written with Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola. Mignola is the creator of Hellboy for Dark Horse Comics.

Jack Kesy has taken over the role which was previously played by Roy Perlman and David Harbour. The cast also includes Jefferson White, Adeline Rudolph, Joseph Marcell, and Leah McNamara.

The year is 1959, and Hellboy and a young agent of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense are on a train taking some strange supernatural spider to their headquarters. The spider suddenly grows to a massive size and initiates a wreck that enables its escape. As Hellboy and Bobbie Jo Song try to retrieve the eight-legged menace, they realize that another supernatural force is in the rural Appalachian region. The encounter a local resident named Tom who once indulged in witchcraft. A malevolent being known as the Crooked Man has returned. Hellboy and his young partner are drawn into another strange battle with demonic forces.

Perlman remains the best version of this character. Kesy is not a terrible lead actor, but the script is rather confusing and doesn’t serve him well. Also, I would have no idea that this was taking place in 1959 if it weren’t for the notice at the beginning of the film.

This also did not seem to have had a comparable production budget as the previous installments. I can normally handle somewhat subpar special effects if the script made more sense.

The film ended up being a bit of a jumble. Hellboy’s wisecracks don’t land as effectively as in other films.

Hellboy fans will likely be pleased that another film is out there, and it really isn’t that terrible. It’s an adequate diversion but a very forgettable one in spite of the distinctiveness of Hellboy’s appearance.