As far as the new movie on Netflix “Fatal Affair”, starring Nia Long and Omar Epps, the real story is how can this same exact movie, be made so many times. The entire story is always the same. A largely black cast, a love affair gone wrong, one of the partners, either a man or a woman is either mentally disturbed or insane. Then there are several incidents that prove that the person who was rejected is completely off the deep end, and then the climax includes several characters running for their lives, physical violence and the insane person, along with other people in harms way, die.

What would be a better movie is a documentary about how or why this very same film has been made so many times. Given the relatively marketable fame both Epps and Long have, it is hard to believe that they would agree to perform in a another copy of a film that has been made so many times.

I agree with the very low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes of 16% and 4.4 on IMDB and I do not recommend this mostly bad film.

Since the release of the impressive “Atomic Blonde” in 2017, Charlize Theron has now become a highly skilled Martial Arts actor, that now also includes the new Netflix movie “The Old Guard”.

The Old Guard is one of those science fiction action movies that requires the audience to suspend all common sense, because this story is about a group of immortal soldiers who have been alive for about 1000 years. They cannot be killed, even when they are shot in the head or riddled with bullets. The one trick in this plot is that, after being killed unknown number of times these soldiers are no longer able to come back to life. Due to all of this absurd life and death complexity, this film runs a fine line from being entertaining mostly because of the Martial Arts action to being ridiculous because the immortality angle mostly does not work.

Originally there are 4 soldiers led by Theron who have been traveling the world for centuries fighting in wars and saving lives, but through their common dreams they find out about a new immortal soldier Nile, currently in the US army, played by KiKi Layne. What follows for the rest of this story are events we have seen before including a scientist who wants to capture all the soldiers so they can be studied and fighting various enemies with gunfire and Martial Arts. The last quarter of this story is mostly about the group’s ongoing attempts to evade capture by this evil scientist. At the very end of this story, there was a very strong suggestion that this is the first of a series of movies with these characters, that will probably be determined based on the Netflix ratings for this first installment.

Despite the strong 82% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I give this movie a 70% rating and a very marginal recommendation, mostly for fans of solid Martial Arts action.

The new movie “Greyhound:, starring Tom Hanks was originally scheduled to be released to movie theaters, but due to the Pandemic, it is only available on Apple+ streaming service. Greyhound is a Naval war movie starring Tom Hanks, and his performance reminded me of his incredible performance in “Saving Private Ryan”, released in 1998 – arguably the greatest war movie ever made – and arguably the greatest performance in Tom Hanks impressive career.

The events of this film are fiction, based on the book “The Good Shepherd” by C.S. Forester. The screenplay for this movie was written by both Tom Hanks and C.S Forester. During World War 2, in the battle of the Atlantic, “3500 ships were lost carrying millions of tons of cargo were sunk and 72,200 souls were lost”.

From the start, the commander of a battle ship, Captain Earnest Krause, played by Hanks is in charge of the protection a crowd of freighter ships in the North Atlantic in 1942 from German U-boats. What impressed me the most about the constant danger throughout the start-to-end battle within this story, was the complex maneuvering and the barking of orders from Captain Krause, where one small misstep could cost the lives of everybody on board of the battleship he commands. Krause’s ship is surrounded by submarines, and other German battleships involving excellent special effects within very choppy ocean water. There are at least 3 almost collisions with Krause’s battleship and other ships as Krause tries to avoid the constant attacks by the enemy.

Most unusual about this entire movie is that there is really no story, instead just a series of non stop events in the life of a battleship and its crew during a high point of the Naval battles in the North Atlantic in 1942.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings are only about 76% and my rating is more in the 90% range, mostly because of the special effects and Tom Hanks performance. I highly recommend Greyhound as one of the best Naval War movies ever made. See the Greyhound WW2 movie trailer below.