Movie Review: The Suicide Squad

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The movie “Suicide Squad” released in 2016 was a bad movie, rated 26% on Rotten Tomatoes. The new version, “The Suicide Squad” is getting 92% on Rotten Tomatoes this time around. Considering that the idea of both movies is the same, “over the top, weird insane action and special effects with no real story”, I am having a hard time understanding the huge difference in the critical opinions with this new film.

This sequel does in fact have better special effects and stranger characters, including a man-shark creature called “King Shark” played by Sylvester Stallone. A man who can shoot pokadots at people to kill them and who also really hates his mother. A giant star fish who can control the minds of other people by attaching other small star fish to the faces of other people. The character played by Idris Alba has a mask that looks like the lizard-like creature in the Alien movies. All of this is original, crazy, never seen before insane action, with no real story.

The character of Harley Quinn played by Margo Robbie (the only character to return from the first movie) has a much smaller role in this version, but with her same over the top karate scenes where she is attacked by many people at the same time and managers to easily defeat them all.

Even considering the greatly increased budget for special effects, it is very hard to understand the huge increase in critical opinions for this new version. Once again, there is no story here and while the special effects are impressive, this is not enough to save this film.

My rating for this movie is more in the 65% rating, mostly for the special effects – with a marginal recommendation for only the most rabid Marvel Comic fans.

Movie Review: Jungle Cruise

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Some years ago, some Disney executive probably said, “Why can’t we combine the African Queen with Raiders of the Lost Ark?” From this one idea the odds are pretty high that the new movie starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, called “Jungle Cruise” was created. The problem is that this movie was probably made as a vehicle for two of the hottest actors right now, rather than writing a great story first and then getting the actors later. I could be wrong, but after seeing Jungle Cruise this sure seemed like the most likely scenario.

The start of this story seemed so familiar with the start of “Raiders Of the Lost Ark”, in this case there is a disease curing leaf of an impossible to find tree, somewhere in the jungle. Dr. Lily Houghton, played by Emily Blunt has to travel to the Amazon and rent a boat, captained by Frank Wolff, played by Dwayne Johnson. Once they meet, this entire movie is an excuse to create one action scene after another – and it all seems like we have seen this many times before. There is nothing new here, nothing memorable. This is not a bad movie, but definitely not a good enough movie to recommend, despite the special effects that at times were good.

I agree with the low 63% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and rate this film a pass.

Movie Review: Stillwater

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The new movie “Stillwater” is one of the few movies I have seen where the trailer makes it look like a high quality blockbuster, but in realty the film is a huge dud. The problem with Stillwater is simple. Its horrendously boring. Why the producer of this bad movie decided to make it run 2 hours and 20 minutes, with the story could be told in 80 minutes is anyone’s guess. The logline of this movie is about a construction worker is living in France while trying to get his daughter out of prison for a murder she did not commit. The problem is there is so little story to tell here, that they decided to add so much filler to stretch the runtime to 260 minutes, that you can actually go into a coma sitting through this incredibly boring waste of way over two hours.

There is a side story where the main character Bill, played by Matt Damon becoming involved with a French actress and her 9 year old daughter, but even this secondary story is another extreme waste of time. Bill’s daughter who is in a French prison is played by Abigaile Breslin. I am actually surprised that both Damon and Breslin read this script and still decided to make this bad movie.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating of 72% is wrong. This movie is 60% at best and should be skipped by all.