Movie Review: Now You See Me: Now You Don’t

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The new movie “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” is the third and hopefully last in this movie franchise, the first two: Now You See Me (2013) and Now You See Me 2 (2016). In order to be relevant in Hollywood and make enough money to survive in California, one of the most expensive areas in the world, an actor has to keep making movies and money in order to afford the costs of living in a state where almost all of the movies are made. So making money over quality is a reality of life as an actor in Hollywood to much of the time.

Unfortunately great stories and screenplays are few and far between and this third installment was written and greenlighted only to make money and not to put out a quality film. The plot makes almost no sense, and just jumps from one unexplained scene to another one for two hours entirely for the purpose of showing some magic and misdirection, most of which is either impossible or ridiculous. The reason why screenwriting is so difficult is that the story has to make sense, action and scenes have to be explained and predefined, along with continuity throughout the entire story. This film has none of these essential ingredients.

The original cast returns in this movie, Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Mark Ruffalo, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco and Morgan Freeman. For this third film, new cast members have been added, which will probably mean there is a long term plan to extend this nightmare into new movies. The new cast includes Ariana Greenblatt, Dominic Sessa and Henry Fisher as they all try to stop a criminal mastermind Veronika Vanderberg played by Rosamund Pike from using Diamonds to launder money for other master criminals. On top of this being an overall bad movie, it is slow and very boring in too many areas, making the audience hope that it will all be over soon.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating is a too high 60%, with my rating around 20%, hoping that this will be end to a pretty stupid series of movies trying to be about magicians solving crimes.

Movie Review: The Running Man

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There should be a documentary made about the decision makers in Hollywood who decide what movies to remake. Almost forty years ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger made the original “The Running Man” about a man who tries to escape being killed by assassins, fully televised for a huge cash prize. Kind of like a modern day Rome and the Coliseum, from 2000 years ago. This movie also starred Richard Dawson as the host of the show and the accurate Rotten Tomatoes rating were 59% for a movie that was at best, below average and close to B movie status.

Why then, when producers are looking for a good acting movie premise for the rising career of actor Glen Powell, would this be the vehicle for his first solo action movie? The reason is, it takes too long, to create a new idea and write a new screenplay, so in order to take less risk, a well known movie name from a long time ago is chosen that starred a very well known actor in the hope that name recognition mostly from baby boomers would help make this movie a hit or be profitable. Unfortunately, this is a bad movie, no matter how much name recognition and action scenes you throw at it. It is slow, stupid in too many places and implausible throughout because as is always the case, writing a great screenplay is the most challenging part of movie making. Without a great story foundation, the movie will never been good and in the majority of cases will lose money – especially when the budget is 110 million dollars.

This film stars Sean Hayes as one of the hosts of the show Running Man, Lee Pace, as an evil assassin, Michael Cera who appears at the end of this movie for mostly filling time and Josh Brolin as Dan Killian, starring in the part originally played by the late Richard Dawson. Why Brolin took this part in a movie this bad, is anyone’s guess.

The low Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this movie are a correct 64% made even worse by a bad movie that runs too long another big mistake here. I rate this movie a run for your life, big pass.

Movie Review: Predator: Badlands

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The new movie “Predator: Badlands” is the eighth Predator movie in the ongoing franchise that started with the original Predator released in 1987. Two of these movies were crossover films: Alien vs. Predator (AVP) (2004) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (AVPR) (2007). Since the first two movies released in 1987 and 1990 the majority of the other movies have been either average or bad, and were all about trying to maximize the money created from a great science fiction character invented in the first film.

This new movie, for the first time in all of these movies attempts to give some real emotions, and humanity to these horrible aliens who just want to hunt and kill living creatures as trophies. This time around the main alien Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is banished to a distant alien planet and becomes friends with a Robot girl Thia played by Elle Fanning. Due a a spaceship crash, Thia, who works for a company called Weyland-Yutani Corporation, has been cut in half and spends a good part of this movie in this halved condition, being carried around by her alien friend Dek. They later befriend another alien creature Bud (Ravi Narayan) and start a quest to find and kill a huge alien creature and bring his head home to his father, who in a rage, killed Dek’s brother at the start of this film.

There are attempts at humor in this movie, very unlike all of the other Predator films, mostly with the very likeable Thia, as she tries to understand Dek. The ending is mostly like the climaxes of the other Predator movies, with someone getting decapitated and a huge sword fight and many explosions.

The very high Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 85% seem way too high for a movie that is definitely better than all of the other Predator movies, except the first two, but mostly just above average with good special effects and not much else. My rating is a very marginal recommendation of 70%, mainly for die hard Predator fans.