Author Archives: jjcwn

Movie Review: Thunderbolts

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There have been more than a few bad Marvel movies released in the last few years, most recently “Captain America: Brave New World” (2025) and “The Marvels” (2023). The release of the new Marvel movie “Thunderbolts” was an opportunity to greatly improve the quality of this franchise. Unfortunately, mainly due to the crazy and mostly boring screenplay, this movie cannot be considered a step in the right direction.

The story starts with the main Marvel characters Yelena Belova, played by Florence Pugh, Bucky Barnes played by Sebastian Stan, John Walker played by Wyatt Russell, Ava Starr played by Hannah John-Kamen and a new superhere they call “Bob”, played by Lewis Pullman all trapped in a warehouse, for the first 10-15% of this film. There is no real way to make scenes where several people are trapped in a large series of rooms – interesting, especially in a film that is supposed to be a superhero action movie.

We later find out that Bob has superpowers that greatly exceed the powers of all the other superheroes, and later Bob turns to the dark side and has evil forces that can send people into some other dimension. All this does create several scenes of extreme special effects, but not enough to cover what I thought was a surprisingly bad screenplay.

There are some good father-daughter scenes between Velena and her father, Alexiei Shostakov, played by David Harbour, but not enough to fix what could have been a far better screenplay.

I was surprised that Julia Louis-Dreyfus took the part of politician Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, after reading this script. She seems completely miscast in this role, regardless of the mostly ridiculous story.

I have no idea why the Rotten Tomatoes ratings are on average 88%, with the most accurate review from critic Jeffrey Harris:

“The film exemplifies how The Multiverse Saga constantly stumbles and fails to find its footing, with the entire narrative amounting to little more than a groan-inducing, bait-and-switch joke.”

Due to the many flaws, and mostly bad screenplay I do not recommend this movie.

Movie Review: The Accountant 2

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The new movie “The Accountant 2” is the sequel to “The Accountant”, released in 2016. Considering how good the original movie was, it is surprising that it has taken nine years to release this sequel. Even more astonishing is how convoluted and insane the screenplay is, looking like it needs about 5 more rewrites, just to make the story coherent. One of the best reviews on Rotten Tomatoes is from critic Charles Koplinski:

“As for the ridiculous nature of the mystery that brings them together, it defies logic, the final solution an insult to the audiences’ intelligence. This situation would be right at home only in the most absurd soap opera. It also doesn’t play fair with the audience, the out-of-left-field answer likely to induce an epidemic of eyerolls“.

How can it be that nine years did not uncover a better idea and screenplay, realizing the potential future money that can come from this franchise, and a very good idea about an extremely high-functioning Autistic man who is a super genius and has impressive martial arts skills?

The good news about this new movie is that there is much more humor with good scenes involving Christian Wolff, played by Ben Affleck, and many more bonding scenes with Christian’s brother Braxton, played by Jon Bernthal. All of the original main characters return for this sequel, including Marybeth Medina, played by Cynthia Addai-Robinson, and Ray King, played by J.K. Simmons, with the exception that Anna Kendrick, who was very good in the original movie, unfortunately does not appear in this sequel.

The ending of this movie was an over-the-top, not believable gun battle scene with Christian and Braxton outnumbered 20-1 in an attempt to rescue about 50 young children from being assassinated, that I thought was largely unnecessary and too disturbing to put into the conclusion of a movie like this.

I mostly agree with the middle-of-the-road Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 76% for a movie that should have clocked in at 95% or higher. I give this movie a marginal recommendation mainly for some of the humor and not for the plot, which was disconnected, hard to follow, and way too convoluted.

Movie Review: Sinners

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The new movie “Sinners” stars Michael B. Jordan, who plays two roles, Stack and Smoke, in a rare example of one actor playing twin brothers.

This film is set in the Deep South, 1932, Clarksdale, Mississippi, where twin brothers, Stack and Smoke, return home to open a juke joint. There is massive evidence of bigotry, and members of the Klan as Smoke and Stack, throw money around town, attempting to convince people to perform or work at the new juke joint. Much of this is rather slow and boring for most of the movie until the entire story takes a gigantic turn into murdering vampires and zombies and violent battle scenes, until the insane conclusion, making this the strangest turn on a dime story change I have ever seen in any movie.

This movie is both written and directed by Ryan Coogler, marking his fifth collaboration with Michael B. Jordan that includes both “Black Panther” movies (2018, 2022), “Creed” (2015), and “Fruitvale Station” (2013), Jordan’s first movie.

I was surprised that a promising story degraded into something that seemed more like a B movie, and another run-of-the-mill Vampire film. I was also surprised at the appearance of actress Hailee Steinfeld, who seemed miscast in this movie, playing Stack’s love interest.

The special effects, while well done, have been seen many times before, with battle scenes involving the living and the dead, and the various methods of how to kill a Vampire. At this point, enough of the killing of the already dead.

The biggest surprise is the extremely high and wrong 98% rating for this movie on Rotten Tomatoes, with my rating 75% and only a very small recommendation, because there is nothing new in this story, other than the sudden and drastic change in direction.