Category Archives: Action Movie

Movie Review: M3GAN 2.0

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The original “M3GAN” released in 2022, received a very high 93% on Rotten Tomatoes due to its imaginative new ideas about AI. The new sequel M3GAN 2.0 ratings are only 57%, which most likely ends this franchise at two movies. The reason is the same: nobody thought writing a great script was important enough, because they had fans of the previous movie, and the same idea of throwing special effects to fix a film that once again did not work.

This script, which initially started off well, quickly devolves into a chaotic and nonsensical story. This time, there is a new robot, identified as M3GAN, that appears much more human and is significantly more violent than its predecessor. This robot utilizes much of the stolen technology from the original model and is now being deployed as an assassin to eliminate political enemies. Allison Williams returns as the lead scientist, Gemma, with Violet McGraw portraying Gemma’s niece, Cady. This screenplay is another example of a disconnected makes no sense story resulting from three screenwriters writing one script. How do three screenwriters write one script? If they work separately, like they probably did for this story, the end result is once again a movie that is disjointed and makes no sense.

Most of the last third of this mostly bad movie is all about Karate action scenes and extreme violence that lead to a ridiculous climax that, once again, mostly makes no sense.

Too many promising movie franchises like this one fail for all of these same reasons. I agree with the low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes of 57% and do not recommend this film.

Jurassic World: Rebirth

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Writing one logline to describe all 7 of the Jurassic Park movies is easy. “Very Dangerous Dinosaurs are safely enclosed in cages, then something goes horribly wrong, and the Dinosaurs are released and they kill and eat people, and people run for their lives”.

The 7th Jurassic Park movie, “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” starts out with a scientist within a highly secure and state-of-the-art Dinosaur research facility dropping the wrapper of a Milky Way candy bar on the floor while entering a clean room. What follows is a disaster that turns off all the security in the facility, and once again, the Dinosaurs are released. The good news is that even though the main idea is exactly the same as the other six movies, this time around, this story has more imagination and even better special effects than the previous six.

This film starts 17 years after the security disaster, and there is a major medical science discovery where it is discovered that the blood of 3 specific dinosaurs might contain the cure for all heart disease for the entire world. The story then follows the obvious path as a major medical company, out for a trillion-dollar windfall, a scientist and two adventurers, including Zora Bennett, played by Scarlett Johansson, and her long-time friend Duncan Kincaid, played by Mahershala Ali, travel to this dangerous island to retrieve impossible-to-obtain dinosaur blood. There is the typical evil, only caring about money, representative of a medical company, trying to make trillions on this magic dinosaur blood Martin Krebs, played by Rupert Friend, is typical of the bad people we see in movies like this one.

The big surprise in this movie was the appearance of a father of two daughters Reuben Delgado, played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, who is the great lead actor in the very good Netflix series, ‘The Lincoln Lawyer”. Delgado’s daughters are played by Audrina Miranda and Luna Blaise. Some of the most spectacular special effects in this movie involve Deglado, his two daughters, and their boat captain running for their lives, with many of the scenes infuriating because nobody would take some of the risks they do in this film.

The good news is that this seventh installment is better than most of the previous 4 movies with a better story, even though the reasons for the chaos are still the same.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings are an understandably low 51% because there is nothing new enough in this film that we have not seen before, other than the new types of genetically modified dinosaurs, especially one that looks like a combination of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and the creature from “Alien”. Hopefully, this small step in the right direction will create better Jurassic movies in the future, because with the money involved, there will be many more movies like this one.

Movie Review: F1: The Movie

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My first question about this film is why not just “F1”, rather than “F1: The Movie”, because we know it’s a movie, in this case about the dangerous sport of Formula 1 racing.

This film is mostly about an ongoing dialogue of watching incredibly expensive racecars, that cost between 12-15 million dollars, race at speeds over 200 miles an hour around an oval track, while the racing crew monitors every aspect of the car using impressive advanced technology. The problem with this movie is that there is too much showing of this technology and racing, and not enough of any noticeable story.

The acting starring Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes and Damson Idris as Joshua Pearce, who play the two drivers, and Javier Bardem as Ruben Cervantes, who plays the CEO of the racing crew, is all very well done. With all racing movies like this one, it is at times hard to understand why any person would be willing to risk their life just to race a car, but like all professions like this one, you have to have it in your blood – you don’t have anything else you want to do.

It is impressive the work that went into this film, including risking the two main actors who actually drove their racecars at over 180 miles an hour. Given the risk, it does not make sense to risk lives like this when all of the dangerous driving could have been replaced with relatively simple special effects.

I agree with the middle-of-the-road 84% ratings for this movie, which could have been much better with an improved story and screenplay. This movie is also way too long at 2 hours and 35 minutes, and could have easily told the same story in less than two hours. Mainly for the great racecar driving effects, I do recommend this film.