Monthly Archives: August 2025

Movie Review: Highest 2 Lowest

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , • Leave a comment

The new movie “Highest 2 Lowest” is the latest Spike Lee-directed movie. His last film was five years ago, “Da 5 Bloods”, released in 2020 on Netflix. This is the 5th collaboration between Spike Lee and Denzel Washington who stars in this film as a music mogul in New York City named David King, who is a major risk taker and has built a music empire that is either doing well or about to collapse from bankruptcy.

There are several speeches in this film about risk, success, and failure that are very well written, all ultimately about what is most important in life: how hard it is to succeed, and how easy it can be to lose everything are some of the best parts of this story.

There is a huge deal that David King is trying to make with this company that surprisingly turns into a kidnapping of David’s son, Trey, played by Aubrey Joseph, and a mistake by the kidnappers that adds many story twists and impossible decisions, making this movie a standout kidnapping story.

The acting is outstanding, including David King’s best friend, Paul Christopher, played by Jeffrey Wright, and his wife, Pam King, played by Ilfenesh Hadera. Former NBA player Rick Fox plays himself as a high school basketball coach, and there are several references to his time in the NBA and especially the great playoff matchups with the Boston Celtics.

The twists towards the end of this story and the ending are very well done and never predictable, with my only negative comment involving the too-long music montage fillers at certain parts of this film.

The rap star A$AP Rocky is great in his role as Yung Felon, with some of his arguments and speeches with Denzel Washington at the end of this movie performed very impressively. The singer Sunni Valentine plays an aspiring singer Julie Tucker, with her only appearance at the end of this film, with a great performance of her song “Highest to Lowest”, trying to convince David King to sign her to a music contract.

The Rotten Tomatoes consensus of 90% is correct this time. I agree with this rating and highly recommend this film.

Movie Review: Nobody 2

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , • Leave a comment

The new movie “Nobody 2” is the sequel to “Nobody”, released in 2021. This movie is almost entirely about the most violent and awkward fight scenes in the history of cinema, with the huge bus fight in the first movie being one of the most insane and crazy fight scenes ever filmed.

With this new version, there are several fight scenes as long and as crazy as the first movie, with the main character, Hutch Mansell played by Bob Odenkirk, taking on as many as eight attackers all at the same time, and despite being about five feet nine and maybe 200 pounds, Hutch manages to win every time. What is always ridiculous about movies like this, including the “John Wick” series, is that with so many guns and so many attackers all attacking at the same time, there is no way any of these fights would not result in the instant death of Hutch Mansell. The solution to this is to try to make the action scenes more believable, rather than so insane, but after all, this is a movie.

There is not much of a plot for this second installment, other than Hutch and his family, including his wife, Becca Mansell played by Connie Nielsen, and his two kids, Sammy and Brady, played by Paisley Cadorath and Gage Munroe taking a trip to an amusement park, where the arguments and fights with the townspeople starting with Gage start within minutes of their arrival. One shove of Hutch’s daughter by one of the security guards, and the insane fighting starts, and is followed by several more fights, one in a boat that is almost as impressive as the bus fight in the first movie.

Hutch’s father David, is also in the sequel, played by Christopher Lloy,d and his brother, Harry played again by RZA make the majority of their appearances during the final action scenes that resolve a huge battle at the amusement park between an evil woman, who heads a drug cartel, named Lendina, played by Sharon Stone. Two men, Hutch and a former member of the cartel, Wyat Martin, played by John Ortiz, hold off about 25 of Lendina’s soldiers, making for a finale that will remind everyone of all the John Wick movies.

Nobody 2 is not as good as the original, but the well-choreographed action fight scenes and special effects are enough to make this a solid recommendation, and I agree with the 78% Rotten Tomatoes consensus.

Movie Review: Freakier Friday

Posted on by • Posted in Comedy, Drama • Tagged , , • Leave a comment

The new movie “Freakier Friday”, the sequel to “Freaky Friday” released in 2003, is one of those bad movies that you are embarrassed to tell people you actually saw. I only saw this movie because the theater for the film I wanted to see had a broken projector, so I sat through this horrendous waste of two hours for this blog.

This entire story about people who swap bodies was so poorly done that for most of the movie, you are trying to figure out who swapped into who, all along hoping that this nightmare would be over soon. There is a series of filler side stories, entirely designed to make this movie last two hours, where the goal should have been to end this mess in 80 minutes.

Freakier Friday stars the same two main actors from the previous movie, Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as Tess Coleman and Anna Coleman, and two new characters who are also swapped, Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons, who play Harper Coleman and Lily Reyes. After the initial screaming scene where they all found out they were swapped, it seemed that the swapping after effects were ignored in favor of other stories to fill out the two hours. It’s hard to believe that a bad movie from 2003 was greenlit for a sequel 22 years later. With millions of dollars at stake, what were the producers thinking with this disaster?

The Rotten Tomatoes average rating of 73% is way too high with my rating 10% and a run from this mess at all costs recommendation.