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.

Something crash lands into a lighthouse located in the United States. A strange phenomenon begins to emanate from the landing site, a sort of bubble or force field. The US government quickly moves in and quarantines the area. Luckily, the site is easy to keep secret as it’s in a rather remote and unpopulated area. The bubble, deemed The Shimmer, proves to be impossible to research because anything sent in never comes out, even data transmissions. It’s a total mystery as to what’s in or going on in there. The Shimmer is expanding and when a military team disappears inside, the government becomes very worried that time is running out. Then, a year after the last human expedition went into The Shimmer, one of the men appears at his home, greeting his wife, Lena, who thought he was dead. His mission was a total secret, he never told her where he was going and she never got an answer from his superiors. He immediately becomes ill and during the trip to the hospital, the ambulance is pulled over by armed guards and Lena wakes up isolated in some kind of facility. It is here where she finds out about the threat and she volunteers to go into The Shimmer with four other female scientists in a final effort to solve the mystery.

The terrific Alex Garland directed and adapted the book of the same name into this wild ride which I consider one of the genre’s best. Despite the large premise of the story, Annihilation has its eyes focused on relationships.

This movie is cool in many ways. It’s an alien invasion movie but it’s not. It’s an action movie and it’s not. It’s just as beautiful as it is horrific. Anchored by Natalie Portman, the cast is very strong. Movies led by an all female cast are pretty rare still, especially one where they are in a high stakes military mission so this changes the perspective quite a bit.

I felt like the pacing was pretty much perfect as just enough info is given at the start and by going with the women into the unknown, picking up on the trail from the doomed team before them, makes all of their discoveries and battles taught and intriguing. Why is Lena doing this, why are any of them going in there when they know the odds are so stacked against them? That’s part of the journey. The other is what’s at the lighthouse? Both are tough questions to answer in new and interesting ways and the answers shown are the biggest reasons why I liked this so much.

Aside from the story, Annihilation is a visual feast. Inside The Shimmer, our world is changing. It’s subtle at first, little things are different and then the mutations get bigger and more extreme. There’s a really cool visual design throughout that’s hard to describe. It’s like nature being deconstructed and reconstructed, familiar and foreign at the same time. Many times it looks like a painting come to life.

This movie is a real head trip so I’m hesitant to give many details up. It’s important to see each element presented in the order the movie shows you. And a lot of is a surprise so that’s half of the fun. It all stacks up to create a thought-provoking sci-fi movie with a great ending. We don’t get many of those.

Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson is ready to leave Sacramento, California behind. She’s in her senior year of high school and she wants nothing more than to leave the west coast. New York City is her goal, so applying to schools is the start of her escape plan. Lady Bird is very sure of herself but as the year goes on, she experiences a world of changes. The Lady Bird at the start of the movie is a different woman from the one at the end.

Coming of age movies are one of my favorites and Lady Bird is one of the best I’ve seen in a while. Saoirse Ronan is a tremendous actor and she brings the conflicted Lady Bird to life. A concoction of dreams, fears, low-self esteem, regret, loyalty, angst, and anger are constantly mixing together in her mind. She’s a sweet girl who’s sure she knows what she wants (in leaving home at least) and inadvertently steps on a lot of toes in the process. Her greatest flaw is probably when she acts without thinking of anyone but herself. She says things to others as a joke and when it blows back onto her, she has to scramble to apologize. She also lies a lot in order to fit in with others, who she thinks she wants to be like the most. That brings her trouble too.

Lady Bird is a great character as she is believably flawed. She’s not a bad person, she just often sticks her foot into her mouth. As a teenager, she thinks she knows everything, what’s right for her at every turn but in reality, she has a lot of growing up to do. Her father is a teddy bear of a human being where her mother is the authority. Laurie Metcalf is another tremendous actor and her chemistry with Saoirse is largely why the movie works so well Lady Bird’s best friend Julie is also a very important part of the story, like the footbridge between adult and childhood. Lady Bird constantly butts heads with her mother, mostly being catty to each other but thee are a few instances where things get real and they have it out. Her mother is a hard ass for sure, she can be overbearing to the point of suffocation, but Lady Bird does need someone to call her out on her nonsense when it flares up.

While a lot happens in the movie (romantic relationships, social climbing, applying to colleges) the story revolves around how Lady Bird sees herself and wants to become much more. Growing up in a lower income home skews her perspective. She lives next door to a much more affluent part of town, goes to school with kids from that area, and she wants nothing more than to live that life that she’s convinced is better in every way. Much of her motivation to leave home comes from this, she’s ashamed of where she’s from and how her family lives.

Lady Bird lies to try and get a leg up and fit in, dumps her best friend to hang out with the cool kids, dates the popular boy and finds out that’s not what she expected at all. She is at the pivotal time where she’s finding out who she is and what she stands for. Her future is totally up in the air and for the first time, she’s becoming aware that all the decisions she makes now have big repercussions. She also comes to realize that her home and her family–what she’s “ashamed” of–is way more valuable than she realized.

It’s Lady Bird’s relationships with others that I found the most compelling and enduring. How she acts and handles each group: her parents, her adopted brother and his girlfriend, her boyfriends, her new best friend Jenna, and her true ride or die friend, Julie. It’s these relationships that I thought of the most once the credits rolled. The end is pretty abrupt when it happens but I think it’s the perfect choice on reflection.

We get to follow Lady Bird through the most important year of her young life so far. We know her goal right from the start and the question is always will she be able to do it? She goes through a lot in that year, we blast through it in about 90 minutes and more than just her life changes in that time. It’s not a total metamorphosis of course, as a year can contain only so much. For example, she makes a stupid decision when she’s arguing with her mother in the car in the first scene and at the end, she makes another painful mistake. But she’s learning. When the movie cuts from Lady Bird that final time, her journey for that part of her life is over. Everything after that is brand new territory.

It’s been awhile! For everything! We’re in the thick of the holidays so there’s a lot of slowdown. Great time to catch up on movies with TV on haitus but that ends next week.

It’s been some time since I’ve watched a movie I really liked. I’ve watched 3 this week and I’ll be doing quick hits of those this weekend. I plan on getting out to see Aquaman in January, which I’m looking forward to.

Netflix keeps putting out shows I like so a lot of my free time has been put there. Let’s go over some stuff.

Ink Master finished another season and this year was themed to a Grudge match. Cleen and Christian coached teams and overall it was a fun watch. The final 4 were tremendous talents but good lord do I hate the finales of this show. So much back-biting and trash talking makes it such a drag. I jump ahead to see the final pieces and the results.

On SYFY I completely missed Nightflyers and the new season of Channel Zero. I’m halfway through Nightflyers (if you can use the SYFY app on a media device instead of their website. The video player on the site is not good). I like but do not love Nightflyer. It looks gorgeous, the cast is great but there’s something about it that doesn’t make me seek it out like other similar-ish shows like The Expanse. I don’t like most of the characters, I think that’s why. I’m hoping it all comes together. When I finish, I move on to Channel Zero. I think Happy! starts soon and the ads for Deadly Class are interesting so that’s two more for SYFY.

The final season of Gotham starts on the 4th!

I was fortunate enough for DC to gift me a year subscription to their new DC Universe service. That gave me access to the first season of Titans which I have been looking forward to. First and foremost, it isn’t Teen Titans which the fan base knows and loves the best. The tone of this show is much different and the only thing they really have in common (so far) are the main characters of Robin, Raven, Beast Boy, and Starfire. I think you need to drop the expectations for a live-action Teen show coming into this, that’s how much different they are (Titans is a very dark, adult take on the property). It’s a little slow to get going but overall I like it. Cliff hanger ending, but I think the casting is right on and they sell the story well. Robin is pretty fresh from leaving Batman behind due to (mostly) ethical reasons. Beast Boy has been living an isolated life so finding this group of misfits is the start of something great for him, even if it is dangerous and challenging. Raven’s powers are just starting so she has no idea what’s going on and that’s the main arc of the season. Starfire is the most different. We meet her “on the job” but she doesn’t know what that job is. She can’t remember what she’s here for only that she’s looking for Raven. Dressed as a prostitute, it means she’s been in some shady places trying to put things together. She’s comfortable on Earth, having no idea she’s not from here. Her childish and goofy charm isn’t part of this take which I don’t mind. I think her fish out of water mistakes/comments would have gotten old fast. It’s a short season so it moves at a good clip and teases a lot of DC tie-ins which I like so I’m invested in what happens. This is just the start of their original programming and there’s a great promise. Doom Patrol is next, the return of Young Justice should be fantastic (it never should have been canceled, it’s easily one of the best animated DC shows) and Swamp Thing is filming now. There’s more coming down the pipe but those shows are a ways off.

Now for Netflix. Voltron is finished and I liked it a lot. They put a lot of work into wrapping everything up and I think they did an admirable job. The timing of seasons coming out felt random so there is disjointed feeling I got from watching each chunk. There’s a lot I didn’t remember right away (I never went back to rewatch) but this show really scratches that sci-fi itch. Great characters, great animation, and some terrific sound design make it the total package. The ending had some serious weight to it, glad I watched it.

3Below: Tales of Arcadia. The spin-off series from Troll Hunters. I forgot all about this so when it popped up about a week ago, I dove right in. The tie-in to TH turned out great. Fun and inventive way to spin out this universe into another one about an alien prince and princess. It maintained the quality of animation and I really like Aja, Krel, and Varvatos Vex. The fish out of water stuff was often really funny, the writing on this show is really good. My only problem was with their pet, Luug. Why does this alien animal sound exactly like a dog? Sure you have to suspend your disbelief to make a lot of this show work (everyone speaks English, for example) but this doesn’t match the creativity put into the rest of the show.

I’ve been away from anime for a long time so I was happy to see a new batch of Seven Deadly Sins episodes. This show is basically a version of Dragon Ball Z but with way better pacing. All the problems are unsurprisingly still there though. Some really horrific dialog, which I think is mostly from directly translating Japanese to English so the syntax is all wrong. Another annoyance is when something happens on screen (like a monster getting cut with a sword) and a character will say exactly what happened. Nothing that ads context or background, but a literal replay in dialog form (“The sword cut the monster, it must be a sharp blade”). It’s the weirdest waste of time. The other problem is this show can get really uncomfortable to watch. The main character, Meliodas, gropes Elizabeth’s chest, looks up her skirt, and she does not like it. He basically ambushes her randomly and she recoils in horror every time. Saying it’s perverted is an understatement and it ruins every moment. Crazy costumes that exploit female bodies is a long staple of this genre but this stuff is mind-bogglingly stupid. I don’t know why they still do stuff like this. It serves no good purpose and is such a slam-on-the-breaks blight to an otherwise good show.

I can’t remember if I wrote about the second season of Castlevania, but I’ll say it’s totally worth watching. Some of the action is killer and the final fight is especially fantastic. The best choreography I’ve seen since the end of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles last year (the CG one).

I just started Sirus the Jaeger which has something to do with vampire hunters so I’m hoping it’ll be cool. I’m dying for some good anime, it’s been so long since I’ve seen a good one worth recommending.

I went through the entire The Great British Baking Show collection (except for Masterclass) in like 3 months and if you need something to kick back to, this is it. You can have it on the background while you do stuff and it’s just as enjoyable. One of my favorite competition shows, there’s a lot of jolly vibes in every episode.

I just started Sick Note which stars Rupert Grint and Nick Frost. I saw Rupert on the thumbnail and had to give it a try. Rupert plays Dennis, a 20 something shlub who is lazy and takes everything good in his life for granted. On his worst day ever. his girlfriend kicks him out, his job is threatened, and to top it off, he’s diagnosed with cancer. The hook is, due to stupid Dr. Glennis (Frost), Dennis is given the wrong info, he doesn’t have cancer. Dennis notices a rather nice upswing in his life when he told everyone he had cancer and instead of telling the truth, he doubles down to milk it for a few months and everything spirals from there. I’m on episode 2 (of 12, don’t know if there is more) and it’s great. It’s obviously a dark comedy and man, by the end of episode 1 they go to places I didn’t even think of.

When I’m done with Sick Note I’ll stay on that side of the pond with Derry Girls. That or the final season of A Series of Unfortunate Events. That drops on January 1st so I’m not sure which will pull me in first.

Pacific Rim: Uprising– I’m a fan of the first movie that came out in 2013. Guillermo del Toro making a sci-fi giant robots fighting giant monsters action movie was basically made for me. While it had its faults with a simple plot, I think it did what it wanted to. It set up a new universe and showed audiences giant robots fighting giant monsters in spectacular fashion. The sequel starts 10 years later with the human race largely recovered from the alien beings invading through the dimensional rift that opened in the Pacific Rim. Wealthy countries rebounded much faster than other locations, but as far as everyone is concerned, the war was won. The aliens had an ace up their sleeve though and as time has passed, they have quietly been setting up the next invasion. A young generation of Yaeger pilots is introduced, including Jake, the son of Stacker Pentecost, one of the heroes from the original. As a whole, I liked this new one has it showed me more of what I liked. That’s a basic need for any sequel. Many more robot and monster types and more action (that’s set during the day with no rain!) that show off how mankind has pulled together to defend the planet. But it also doesn’t do anything new or daring. There’s very little lore added to the universe (I don’t think they even mention what happened to Charlie Hunnam’s Raleigh Becket) and the movie boils down to the exact same arc of the first movie: the best defense is with teamwork. Now the set up for a sequel looks to do more, but it’s disappointing that more wasn’t done with this story. Meet the new team, show them training, the threat grows, the threat comes out, the final fight, credits. While I did enjoy it, Uprising is a rote adventure that hangs its hat on giants for its action scenes in an attempt to stand out.

Hotel Artemis– A really neat premise of a movie with a stacked cast. In the not too distant future, Los Angeles is in a state of chaos over fresh water. In the city is the Hotel Artemis, a secret hospital for criminals that is run by The Nurse. She’s been running this members-only facility for around twenty years and she’s pushed to her limit when a volatile mix of clients come knocking. There are strict rules set up for the Artemis to function and things fall apart when those rules are broken. If you’ve seen John Wick, this idea may sound rather familiar. I think it’s safe to say the idea for Hotel Artemis was taken from the assassin hideout in the Wick series. While the general idea of the facility is similar, the story is quite different. The Nurse is the main character and as the movie progresses we learn more about her and the hotel. I liked this a whole lot as I was always surprised at how many story layers there are (something that Pacific Rim: Uprising is sorely lacking) and was happy to see each layer get pulled back. I’m a fan of assassin movies and Artemis gave me my fill. Fun characters that are put into a pressure cooker, each with their own motives and histories. Some have met, others have not. Check out this cast list: Jodie Foster, Dave Bautista, Sterling K. Brown, Jeff Goldblum, Charlie Day (I don’t know what the odds are of watching two movies that Charlie is in back to back unintentionally), Zachary Quinto, and Sofia Boutella. It looks cool, it’s acted slick and the action was surprisingly on point. I give the action set piece gold star to Sofia Boutella’s hallway gauntlet. A lovely mix of vicious and sexy. I even liked the ending so I’m happy to report that the Hotel Artemis was a pleasant surprise.

Tomb Raider (2018)- I wanted to like this. The one sentence review is this was a disappointment. It’s not a bad movie, it just sits somewhere in the middle with nothing there to elevate it to greatness. The plot follows closely to the recent game reboot: a young Lara Croft, with no adventures under her belt, follows a path left behind from her father’s disappearance and assumed death to a remote island that hides a legendary power. So we have some globe-trotting, a bunch of chase sequences, gun and fist fights, and a little bit of bow and arrow work from Lara. It’s all well made too. Well shot, special effects are good, editing and acting are fine. It all falls flat though, there’s just no meat to bite into. I think Alicia Vikander does a fine job as Lara but with so many action movies coming out every year, you need to do something to stand out from the rest. I don’t think Tomb Raider does. I can compare it to Mission Impossible: Fallout. While that movie leans heavily on what’s come before, the whole “we’ve been abandoned by the government, again!” angle, the action on display is mindboggling exciting and unique. Tomb Raider just doesn’t reach the bar set by its peers. If you skip this, you aren’t missing out on anything.