I have a three hit combo for you today.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado- Sicario hit theatres in 2015 and took everyone by surprise, a terrific film that wasn’t on the radar for many people. Three years later and we get a follow up that builds on the best parts of the original.

The best parts are Benicio Del Toro as Alejandro and Josh Brolin as Matt. Soldado picks up not long after the first film with Alejandro and Matt still working on the same side. Alejandro is still haunted and enraged at the murder of his family and Matt’s job in stopping the drug war at the southern border is still far from over. With a new plan to whip rival cartels into a war, both Alejandro and Matt see value in making it happen: further revenge and duty. When the plan doesn’t work Alejandro and Matt are split in what they should do. They choose sides and come to their own realizations with what they’ve become and where they should go from here.

Another impressive movie from this team and I think it stands as a great example of what sequels should strive for. It’s not pinned down to more of the same but what does this do to our characters? Great writing, Del Toro and Brolin are as good as ever and they make both sides of the coin compelling. Taught action, great pacing, and a satisfying ending. Highly recommended but you must watch the first movie if you haven’t already.

Mandy- It’s 1983 in the Pacific Northwest and Nic Cage goes berzerk to get revenge on the cult that murders his girlfriend. If that sentence gets your interest, that’s probably all you need to read. This is a love it or hate it flick and I’m not exactly sure where I fall with it. It’s got its redeeming qualities but I know I’ll never watch it again.

This is a slow burn, 70s cinema style. It takes almost an hour for the pivot point of the story to happen and then it’s pretty much all carnage from there to the end. There’s not much to it, just revenge. Red (Nic Cage) and Mandy’s (Andrea Riseborough) relationship is established as a great one and Brother Swan and his followers are established as complete nutters. Mandy is killed in front of Red and Nic Cage gets to show off his commitment to freak out on camera (he goes all out in his underwear on the toilet if you are curious). And cue the gore.

The admirable part of Mandy is the effort it took the filmmakers to make this movie look the way it does. It’s a total throw back to the 70s. Hallucanation like scenes bathed in red light and the surreal, a grimey film grain we never see anymore, long takes with no hyper fast editing. Visually I found it fascinating to watch but story wise it leaves a lot to desire. I think this one is for the film nerds and gore hounds.

The Predator- I want to like this. It’s so goofy and dumb in all the wrong ways. This movie is considered the 4th in the franchise, the Alien vs Predator movies are ignored. The first is an absolute classic, I like 2 a lot (I appreciate taking it to the ‘concrete jungle’) and I think Predators (2010) has a lot going for it but clearly behind the other two. We have a new worst movie (I’m not including the AvP movies in this equation).

Writer/Director Shane Black is a real hit or miss creator for me. His name is attached to some great stuff but he makes ponderous story choices. I think he might put action before all else and when he comes up with a scene, its whatever goes to get to it.

What I did like. There is a sense of fun to the movie. The misfit gang of characters can be endearing and it throws back to the ragtag action movies of the 80s that so many of us grew up on. Here are some guys (and a girl) who are thrown into this crazy blender, watch them work together to try to survive and save the world. Special effects are very good, the Predator looks fantastic. It’s such a cool and iconic alien design it still holds up and all of the changes they made to update it all work. The action is great too. There’s a good amount of it, and the Predator goes for the R rating by cleaving anyone in his way. When a Predator is on a mission, get the hell out of the way or you will be wearing your own butt as a hat. I also like that Olvia Munn’s character was her own woman. She’s got her own goals and she becomes part of the team, a romance angle isn’t shoehorned in there. So that cliche is avoided.

What isn’t avoided: deus ex machina. The mother of all story cliches is not just used but is embraced. Very little happens without a truckload of luck and happenstance. There’s so much I can’t begin to scratch the surface so I won’t try. And then we have all of the “Wait, what? Really?’ plot devices that come up. The main character, Quinn, his son Rory (12 years old maybe) is the focal point of the movie. He’s autistic and at the start they clearly and repeatedly want you to know that he’s incredibly smart. It goes way beyond intelligence though, the level of absurdity means this kid has superpowers. He somehow figures out the Predator language in like 2 hours by messing around with the Predator’s equipment. He figures out how the OS of this alien tech, with all of these completely foreign symbols, works. It controls all sorts of stuff but he doesn’t know a blaster is in the helmet until it blows up a house. At one point he activates the force field on the Predator ship by using a control panel as he slides past it at like 20 miles an hour. How did he know that panel was there, what buttons were on it, that you could even do that from there? He clearly jumps down there to get to that panel and just dragging your entire hand across it makes the force field turn on? Autism is so next level that space aliens want to collect him? At the end the kid is a government employee all of a sudden! There are tons of unexplained things that the movie just wants you to go along with.

This is such a weird movie and it went through major reshoots so I can’t even imagine what the first cut was like. Predator deserves better.