Monthly Archives: January 2025

Netflix Movie Review: Back in Action

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The new movie “Back in Action” starring Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx has been waiting for release for almost 2 years due to the Pandemic and Jamie Foxx nearly dying of a stroke in April 2023.

The problem with this movie is that the entire premise has been done so many times, most recently twice by Mark Wahlberg in “The Union” (2024) and “The Family Plan” (2023), where a husband or a husband and wife are keeping their previous life as CIA spies from everyone they know. Then something happens and they have to reveal their past to everyone. Considering the vast creative resources that Netflix has, it is surprising that this idea, produced too many times already, was done again. Cameron Diaz has been retired from acting since 2014, it is also surprising that she would take this boring run of the mill movie, rather than waiting for something much better.

There is an appearance made later in the movie of actress Glen Close in a forgettable role that we have seen many times before – continuing the theme of this movie which is nothing new, nothing memorable, seen this already.

This time around the Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this film are an extremely low 24% and I agree with this number and do not recommend this very forgettable two hours.

Movie Review: The Last Showgirl

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The new movie “The Last Showgirl” is a very small and depressing film about an aging Las Vegas showgirl, Shelly, played by Pamela Anderson, who is 57 and a member of a long-running Las Vegas show that is going out of business. As the expression goes, “Father time is undefeated”, even more for a woman whose entire professional identity depends on her looks.

The obvious problem with this movie is that the story is not big enough to hold your attention for the entire 88 minutes There are way too many slow and boring parts in this flawed overly depressing screenplay. The side stories contain some brief appearances of new characters, including Shelly’s daughter Hanna played by Billie Lourd, who suddenly comes into Shelly’s life after many years. We later find out that Hanna’s father is the manager of the Las Vegas venue, Eddie played by Dave Bautista, who has a small part in this movie.

The other main character is Annette, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, who is a waitress at a local Casino. Along with her extremely dark facial tan, and many wrinkles, Curtis looks way older than 66, her age in real life. Annette is a character that seems to be a method to provide more filler to a relatively short movie and is mostly irrelevant to the progress of this story.

There is a scene at the end where Shelly as an aging showgirl standing on a stage lying about her age, desperate to get a new dancing job in Las Vegas, begging a cruel show director for a chance but is repeatedly rejected. After the producer tells Shelly that “her time as an attractive woman has passed”, Shelly’s response to the director is at first lewd and later a sad rant in a dressing room some minutes later, collapsing in grief, knowing that the only life she has ever known is over. If Pamela Anderson receives an Oscar nomination for this small movie, this scene will be the reason.

Pamela Anderson winning an Oscar for this role would be an amazing moment in Oscar history, however, this is very unlikely because this movie is not significant enough to include a win for Best Actress.

For some of the acting, despite the depressing small story, my rating for this movie is a passable 70% and a moderate recommendation.

Movie Review: Den of Thieves: Pantera

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The new movie “Den of Thieves: Pantera” is a sequel to “Den of Thieves,” released in January 2018, during the ‘January effect” period when bad or low-rated movies are released. I find it interesting that a low-grossing (80 million) movie released seven years ago would get enough production support to convince anyone that there should be a sequel. The first movie was average at best and was considered a run-of-the-mill action movie at the time.

The new film once again stars Gerard Butler and O’Shea Jackson Jr. as the only returning characters for the new movie, which does go in new directions. The problem with caper movies like this one is that almost all of them require so much setup to fill in the audience on what will happen and how it will happen, that the story slows down with too much filler, which is the case with this movie – that has too many areas that are slow.

What does work is the friendship between Nick O’Brian and Donnie Wilson, played by Butler and Jackson. There is some story trickery at the end, that I thought worked well, and a car chase and gun shooting scene through the winding roads of a mountain that was very well filmed. Unfortunately, the end of this chase scene involved a completely illogical appearance of other criminals at the top of this mountain, when there was no way they could have been there. Continuity, and logic errors like this, especially in an action movie can not only ruin a scene but in some cases, the entire film.

It is interesting to see Gerard Butler who starred in the great film “Olympus Has Fallen”, released in 2013, trying to recreate that huge hit with another action movie as good or even better. So far, this has not happened, more evidence of how difficult it is to write and produce a highly rated box office hit in the movie industry.

The Rotten Tomatoes reviews for this film are a low 62% with my rating around 70% and a mild recommendation.