Movie Review: The Sheep Detectives

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One could easily say that the new movie “The Sheep Detectives” could be a movie for kids, with the talking, cute CGI sheep. However, there are scenes of someone being killed and a sheep being attacked by dogs and eventually killed in this movie, so for those reasons, I do not recommend this movie for children.

The Sheep Detectives stars Hugh Jackman and Emma Thompson, with many known celebrities providing the voices of the sheep.
Regina Hall, Brett Goldstein, Bryan Cranston, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Patrick Stewart. After about 20 minutes, this movie turns into a whodunit crime story, with the talking sheep taking over the investigation after it is clear that the ineffective sheriff did not know what he was doing. I thought that the investigation and complex solution to the crime were well done, with some humor with the sheep, also well done.

I am surprised at the very high 97% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, with so many well-known actors agreeing to make this movie, which is only an above-average idea and screenplay. My rating is 80% with a mild recommendation.

Amazon Prime Movie Review: Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War

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The latest installment of the Jack Ryan movie series on Amazon Prime, this time around, is a two-hour movie, not a series. It is a great example of producers trying to “squeeze as much money out of the rock” for a well-known name and franchise that I have ever seen.

The character of Jack Ryan started in 1990, starring Alec Baldwin in “The Hunt for Red October”, and spawned two very good movies movies, “Patriot Games” (1992) and “Clear and Present Danger (1994) starring Harrison Ford, “The Sum of All Fears” (2002) starring Ben Affleck, “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” (2014) and the current one, streaming now on Amazon Prime, “Jack Ryan Ghost War” (2026) starring John Krasinski. Krasinski also starred in 4 seasons of Jack Ryan in Prime in 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023.

This story grabs all that works in the previous Jack Ryan series, starting with the long-time close friendship between Jack Ryan, played by Krasinski, and James Greer, played by Wendell Pierce, where there are scenes of their affection and respect for one another and intense arguments, due to new revelations about cases they have worked on in the past. There are well-done scenes of massive gunfire, car chases, and shootouts inside buildings and cars blowing up. This movie also stars Sienna Miller, who plays an MI6 agent Emma Marlow, and Max Beesley as Liam Crown, who is the evil leader of a criminal organization.

The problem is that there is nothing new in this movie; we have seen it all before in the four Prime series and the previous five movies. In the rush to make more money in the Jack Ryan series, the realization was that name recognition would probably mean that less time would be necessary to write an interesting and innovative screenplay. People will probably want to stream this new movie because of the name “Jack Ryan”; there’s no need to take 18 months to write and then re-write a new screenplay. Let’s make money now.

This unfortunate, slap-together story and then rushing to production is the number one reason why this movie is getting such low marks on Rotten Tomatoes of 45%. I agree with this rating and do not recommend this movie. You are better off watching the older movies or the early Jack Ryan series.

Movie Review: In the Grey

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The new movie “In the Grey” is one of those rare, below-average January movies that are released in May. This film is another example of several well-known stars agreeing to appear in a bad movie due to a favor, contract, or previous verbal agreement, forcing them to act in a movie with a bad screenplay. This film was both written and directed by Guy Ritchie, and I was surprised by how low-quality this movie is, considering the huge experience Guy Ritchie has as both a screenwriter and director. afsgasdfa

The Grey has five well-known bankable actors, including Henry Cavill, Jake Gyllenhaal, Fisher Stevens, Eiza González, and Rosamund Pike. It is possible that the screenplay below average was on hold for a long time, with money already committed to its production. Then a decision was made to hire these five well-known actors to try to save the box office. Due to the very low 47% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, saving the box office for this movie is highly unlikely.

Eiza Gonzalez plays Rachel, who is an independent operative who is hired to coerce huge debts from very wealthy criminals around the world. She works with mercenaries, played by Gyllenhaal and Cavill, with much of this story explaining how they will try to force a wealthy drug dealer Manny Salazar, played by Carlos Bardem, to pay them 1 billion dollars. The story is erratic, too disconnected, and too convoluted to recommend as an action or drama movie. The acting is just OK, with action scenes that are nothing we have not seen many times before.

I agree with the low 47% Rotten Tomatoes rating and recommend this B-movie for right-to-DVD.