Movie Review: Predator: Badlands


The new movie “Predator: Badlands” is the eighth Predator movie in the ongoing franchise that started with the original Predator released in 1987. Two of these movies were crossover films: Alien vs. Predator (AVP) (2004) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (AVPR) (2007). Since the first two movies released in 1987 and 1990 the majority of the other movies have been either average or bad, and were all about trying to maximize the money created from a great science fiction character invented in the first film.

This new movie, for the first time in all of these movies attempts to give some real emotions, and humanity to these horrible aliens who just want to hunt and kill living creatures as trophies. This time around the main alien Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is banished to a distant alien planet and becomes friends with a Robot girl Thia played by Elle Fanning. Due a a spaceship crash, Thia, who works for a company called Weyland-Yutani Corporation, has been cut in half and spends a good part of this movie in this halved condition, being carried around by her alien friend Dek. They later befriend another alien creature Bud (Ravi Narayan) and start a quest to find and kill a huge alien creature and bring his head home to his father, who in a rage, killed Dek’s brother at the start of this film.

There are attempts at humor in this movie, very unlike all of the other Predator films, mostly with the very likeable Thia, as she tries to understand Dek. The ending is mostly like the climaxes of the other Predator movies, with someone getting decapitated and a huge sword fight and many explosions.

The very high Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 85% seem way too high for a movie that is definitely better than all of the other Predator movies, except the first two, but mostly just above average with good special effects and not much else. My rating is a very marginal recommendation of 70%, mainly for die hard Predator fans.

Movie Review: Die My Love


The problem with a movie as horrible as “Die My Love” is that too many will be fooled into seeing it because the cast includes two Academy Award winners, Jennifer Lawrence and Sissy Spacek, and three-time Oscar nominee Nick Nolte. Well-known actor Robert Pattinson is also in this disaster for reasons unknown. Most moviegoers will probably think that a movie cannot be bad if so many experienced, rich, and famous actors are in it. Of course, they all read the script and wanted to make this film for their own growth as actors, the message, or some other important reason that did not include money, because this was a low-budget movie. Unfortunately for those who go to this horrific mess, they will be tortured for two hours with scenes that include loud noises of a dog constantly barking, loud arguments and foul language, a baby crying, and even Jennifer Lawrence crawling around barking like a dog in several scenes. What is the point of all this? Perhaps to make the audience nauseous. Too bad there is no movie award for the highest number of people throwing up in theaters.

The plot of his terrible movie is about a young couple, Grace and Jackson, who live in a depressing old house in the middle of nowhere. Despite their mostly bad marriage, they decide to have a baby, resulting in Grace, played by Jennifer Lawrence, staying home all day with the child and her husband Jackson, played by Pattinson, at his job all day and having affairs with other women. They later stupidly decide to get a dog, which does nothing but bark nonstop in every scene and later becomes very sick – perhaps because the dog read the screenplay. The early scenes of Grace with her newborn baby are some of the worst in these nightmare two hours, as she becomes understandably extremely depressed and acts more and more insane at a level that becomes unbearable to watch. Of course, Grace has postpartum depression, made worse by the dump of a house she is living in all alone, in the middle of nowhere, without even a television to distract her from her horrible existence. Grace was formerly a writer, and once pregnant, she gave up on her profession, another reason for her depression.

There are occasional visits to Jackson’s parents, and his mother, Pam, played by Sissy Spacek, in an effort to add more depth to this bad script and give Grace more excuses to act insane in front of Jackson’s parents and Pam’s neighbors. There is one scene with Nick Nolte, Jackson’s father, probably to make this of movie torture hit the two hour length. Jennifer Lawrence has several nude scenes, perhaps to trick more people into seeing this movie, a marketing tactic that, in my experience, almost always backfires with bad movies.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this horrific film is an insanely innacurate 78% with the audience consensus a more accurate 46%. My rating is 0% and a recommendation to set fire to this nightmare before it’s released to any streaming service. One of the worst movies I have ever seen.

Movie Review: Christy


The new movie “Christy,” starring Sydney Sweeney, is one of the very few movies about women and the sport of boxing. This story is about the boxing career of Christy Martin, who practically started the sport of women’s boxing in 1989. Martin’s career spanned 1989 to 2012 with a record of 49 wins, 7 losses and 3 draws. Martin fought in the undercard of the Mike Tyson undercard (Tyson vs. Bruno II), where her boxing match was the first women’s shown on a major pay-per-view.

Considering the physical challenges of making a boxing movie, including gaining 30 pounds and then having to lose all that weight, I was surprised that someone as relevant in the movie industry as Sweeney would take this role, considering that this is not a widely released big-budget movie.

Christy Martin’s maiden name is Christy Salters, and despite being gay she made the huge mistake of marrying her manager, James Martin, for all the wrong reasons, including worries about the press knowing that she was gay. Worse was that her marriage to her manager was extremely abusive, including a climactic incident where Christy was almost killed and somehow managed to survive multiple stab wounds and even being shot. After watching this scene in this movie, it is a miracle that Christy Martin is alive today.

The boxing scenes were mostly impressive, giving credit to the trainers and the hard work Sydney Sweeney put into making this film. The fight that happened between Martin and Laila Ali, when Martin was knocked out in the 4th round, appeared to be a fight that never should have been sanctioned by the boxing commission due to the 30-pound weight advantage that Ali had over Martin.

The low 66% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes are understandable because this movie comes off as too run-of-the-mill, seen this before, even though this is about a true story. For the hard work and good acting in this film, I give it a 72% rating and a marginal recommendation.