Movie Review: The Running Man


There should be a documentary made about the decision makers in Hollywood who decide what movies to remake. Almost forty years ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger made the original “The Running Man” about a man who tries to escape being killed by assassins, fully televised for a huge cash prize. Kind of like a modern day Rome and the Coliseum, from 2000 years ago. This movie also starred Richard Dawson as the host of the show and the accurate Rotten Tomatoes rating were 59% for a movie that was at best, below average and close to B movie status.

Why then, when producers are looking for a good acting movie premise for the rising career of actor Glen Powell, would this be the vehicle for his first solo action movie? The reason is, it takes too long, to create a new idea and write a new screenplay, so in order to take less risk, a well known movie name from a long time ago is chosen that starred a very well known actor in the hope that name recognition mostly from baby boomers would help make this movie a hit or be profitable. Unfortunately, this is a bad movie, no matter how much name recognition and action scenes you throw at it. It is slow, stupid in too many places and implausible throughout because as is always the case, writing a great screenplay is the most challenging part of movie making. Without a great story foundation, the movie will never been good and in the majority of cases will lose money – especially when the budget is 110 million dollars.

This film stars Sean Hayes as one of the hosts of the show Running Man, Lee Pace, as an evil assassin, Michael Cera who appears at the end of this movie for mostly filling time and Josh Brolin as Dan Killian, starring in the part originally played by the late Richard Dawson. Why Brolin took this part in a movie this bad, is anyone’s guess.

The low Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this movie are a correct 64% made even worse by a bad movie that runs too long another big mistake here. I rate this movie a run for your life, big pass.

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.