Movie Review: From the World of John Wick: Ballerina

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , • Leave a comment

When a movie franchise as valuable as the “John Wick” series exists, the latest one, John Wick: Chapter 4, was released in 2023 there is too much money involved to just walk away. Since John Wick died in the last movie, it is no surprise that this new idea about a young woman in the same life as John Wick would be created.

The new movie “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina” has a plot and a story so thin, it barely exists. This is because the only point of all these Wick movies is non-stop shooting guns and killing many people. Too often, the scenes are unnecessarily violent, as there is no need to kill another human being three or four times over. For this movie, they added the heavy use of hand-held explosives and even flamethrowers to kill the enemy, with some of the killing scenes very impressively done. Ballerina stars Ana de Armas as Eve, who, as a young girl, lost her father during an assassination attempt by The Chancellor, played by Gabriel Byrne.

The rest of this movie is about Eve being trained to be a highly skilled assassin and then trying to find and kill all of the people responsible for her father’s murder. Nothing new here, except for the grenades and flame throwers. The most impressive aspect of this movie is the training Ana de Armas underwent to convincingly portray the martial arts scenes. Then, signing an agreement to make one or two more movies like this one, risking a severe injury due to the dangerous action scenes.

Considering the potential money involved in all of these Wick movies, one would think that much more time and patience would be spent towards making a much better story and screenplay because this movie is almost entirely about shooting, burning and blowing up people, not much more.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this film are an understandably low 74% for the reasons already mentioned in this blog. I agree with this rating and give this movie a moderate recommedation only for some of the impressive action scenes.

Netflix Movie Review: Straw

Posted on by • Posted in Bank Robber, Drama, Homelessness • Tagged , , • Leave a comment

The new Tyler Perry Netflix movie “Straw” captures, better than almost any other movie I have seen, the life of a single mother Janiyah Wiltkinson, played by Taraji P. Henson, is like watching a slow-moving car wreck. Janiyah has two horrible jobs, one as a cashier in a rundown food store, with a rude, cruel boss who treats her like garbage.

Janiyah is about to lose her apartment to eviction, and her 8-year-old daughter is sick and needs medicine that she cannot afford. Janiyah’s landlord couldn’t care less about her disastrous life and refuses to give her more time to pay her rent, evicting her despite her pleading for more time – one of this movie’s singularly horrific moments. Later in this depressing story, Janiyah even has her car towed because her registration was not renewed. Life sometimes works this way for far too many of us, when it seems that everything is going wrong at the same time. How many millions in the world, through no fault of their own, fall into a life this dire and depressing?

The acting of Taraji P. Henson is outstanding, as good as her performance nine years ago in the great film “Hidden Figures” (2016). Sherri Shepherd is also outstanding as an empathetic bank executive, Nicole, who tries to help Janiyah when circumstances spiral out of control. There are some typical Tyler Perry moments in this story that do not seem to hold water, and some standard Perry movie misdirection and trickery at the end, but overall, this is a well-told story with great acting about what can happen to anyone when circumstances out of our control ruin our lives.

Tyler Perry has been one of those hard-working screenwriters and directors who has taken more than his share of bad hits over the years from several critics. This time around, few can argue that Straw is one of the best movies he has ever produced. I give this movie a solid 95% recommendation.

Movie Review: Karate Kid: Legends

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , • Leave a comment

An ongoing theory about why movie sequels are so similar to the original movie is that producers are afraid to try something new due to the financial risk involved, because taking a chance on a new idea might hurt the box office because fans of the original might resent a major change to an iconic story idea from fourty years ago. The plot of the new movie “Karate Kid: Legends” is almost a carbon copy of the original Karate Kid(1984), the second Karate Kid (1986), and even the third Karate Kid (1989).

A young teenage boy Li Fong, played by Ben Wang, learns Karate under the mentorship of a teacher, and runs into a horrible bully who also knows Karate. There is a love interest, Mia Lipani, played by Sadie Stanley where the young boy falls in love with the former girlfriend of the bully, creating a great conflict and later a fight and that leads to a huge Karate tournament climax. This is the exact story behind just about all of the Karate Kid movies. The only new idea in this movie is that this time around Li Fong tries to train his girlfriend’s father Victor Lipani, played by Joshua Jackson, who owes money to the mob (more bullies), and Victor enters an MMA tournament to win money to pay off his debt. This storyline dies on the vine pretty quickly and seems more like an additional idea to make the runtime of the movie longer than any other reason.

This story starts in Hong Kong with Li Fong being forced to move to America because his mother is worried about losing another son to the violence that killed her oldest son. While living in Hong Kong, his Karate trainer is Mr. Han, played by Jackie Chan. Due to the tournament that Li Fong enters to help pay off Victor’s bad debt to the mob, Mr. Han travels to New York City to help Li train. Mr. Han then visits Daniel LaRusso, played Ralph Macchio in California, to convince him to come to New York City to help with the training. All fans who see the movie trailers and posters hoping that Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio are in this film a long time will be disappointed as they mostly appear in the last 20% of the film.

Some of the training of Li Fong is very well done, along with the final fight with Connor Day, played by Aramis Knight.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating of a low 57% is understandable due carbon copy storyline, with my rating a passable 70%, mostly for fans of the Karate Kid movie franchise.