For sale is a pill that when taken can give any person super powers for exactly 5 minutes or kill them by setting them on fire, freezing them to death or blowing them up. This is the insane premise for the new Netflix movie “Project Power”, starring Jamie Foxx. The problem is, like so many insane action movies with an off the wall idea, the insane premise is never enough to carry the whole two hours. Also In this case, why would anyone take any pill for 5 minutes of super powers, when they could actually blow up by taking the pill?

The story is muddled, boring and run of the mill with crazy special effects in what amounts to the two main characters, Art, played by Foxx and a police officer named Frank, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, running around through different chase scenes, looking for Art’s daughter who was kidnapped by the head drug pusher of these super power pills. We never find out how or why these super power pills were invented throughout the entire movie. 

There is a side story with Art and a young woman played by Dominique Fishback, who is one of pushers of  these pills that for the most part works, but is not enough to save this bad story. 

I consider this a pretty bad action movie and unfortunately with rare exception, Jamie Foxx has made too many bad action movies in this career, this being the latest one.  

I agree with the low 62% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes for Project Power and do not recommend this film. 

The concept of a man falling into a vat of pickle juice 100 years ago and only because of the pickle juice he could been preserved and has not aged a day when he was revived is completely absurd. This absurdity is the entire premise for the new movie on HBO Max “An American Pickle”, starring Seth Rogen. There is nothing wrong with having to suspend all common sense in order to buy into the main story of any movie – especially a comedy. The problem with this movie is that even after you suspend all of that common sense, there is nothing that is funny.

Seth Rogen also plays the great grandson Ben Greenbaum, of Herschel Greenbaum and overall I thought the double shooting of both characters played by same person was well done. The story comes down to a billboard that was placed over the gravestone of Herschel’s wife and an attempt to start a new pickle business in order to get 200 thousand dollars to pay to get the billboard taken down. Obviously, this is not a strong enough of an idea to carry a 2 hour movie.

What is most strange with this film are the relatively high 75% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and the very low 46% audience ratings, including IMDB. In this case the critics are very wrong and the audience is right. There is nothing worth seeing here, and I do not recommend this movie.

The movie “High Fidelity” was released in 2000 and starred John Cusack. To this day High Fidelity is one of my favorite movies, because of the stories involving relationships, humor, music and the performance of Jack Black, in what is still his best role.

Due to the outstanding quality of High Fidelity the movie, remaking this into an 8 part series on Hulu had to be a daunting task. This version is basically about the same thing. The owner of a small music store, Robyn(Rob) Brooks, played by Zoe Kravitz, hires two employees, who barely do their jobs or come to work on time. While struggling to keep the store alive, Rob suffers through a series of bad relationship experiences and tries to figure out why he is always being rejected. Why he feels, he is doomed to always be alone. This Hulu series contains many similar excerpts from the original movie and effectively stretches this 2 hour story into an 8 hour streaming series.

The supporting cast starting with Rob’s employees, Todd Louiso and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who plays the Jack Black role were very good in their roles, but Randolph did not get close to being as funny as Jack Black was in this role 20 years ago. I remember enjoying the elitist music egomania of all the employees of this small record shop 20 ago and their ongoing hobby of enumerating their top 5 favorite music categories throughout the original movie. This also happens in this Hulu series remake, but less than the original movie.

I thought this High Fidelity remake series from an original movie, one of the few I have ever known about, was very well done and I highly recommend it.