Why did the Mad Titan Thanos (Josh Brolin – W., Sicario) need to grab hold of the power of the six Infinity Stones to destroy the universe? I think it’s important to understand what causes a villain to do certain actions rather than just to have a bad guy. The stronger the villain’s arc and the more we sympathize with them on any level, the more we understand and appreciate the underlying of who they are. In Avengers: Infinity War (directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo), we have a powerful bad guy motivated by a tortured past and willing to destroy all the good guys in the universe to atone for it. After the planet Titan is no longer inhabited, he is not allowed to prevent things from destroying it; he thinks he will prevent it. Instead, he lost his planet and everyone on it. Vowing not to let something like that happen again, he makes it his mission to balance the universe by completely wiping out half of it. But to do so, he’ll need all six of the Infinity Stones that will power his Infinity Gauntlet, allowing him to bend time, space, energy, and the laws of physics and reality.
Category Archives: Action
Annihilation (2018)
It took me two watches, some 12 months apart from one another, for me to be able to say emphatically that Alex Garland’s (Ex Machina) Annihilation isn’t a great movie. While I appreciate its ingenuity and ambition, the overall execution, delivery, and continuity could not be overlooked. For as much as I was in awe of Garland’s 2015 directorial debut, Ex Machina, I was even more disappointed with Annihilation, a movie for me that came and went as it felt, broke its own rules, left me bored at times, and hoping for more, while knowing it was never going quite to deliver. With a critics’ score of 88% but an audience score of just 66%, I am comfortable saying that, after watching it twice, some artistry I was missing made this movie so likable by those who review movies for a living. I couldn’t help but remove myself from critic mode and, even after taking off that hat, couldn’t get behind Annihilation to come close to recommending it.
Revenge (2017)
Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge (a terrible title since it has the same name as the Kevin Costner 1990 movie, a 2002 Roman Polanski film, a 1971 Shelley Winters film, and more) might be the best movie of 2018 you have yet to hear about. However, I can’t think of a better one for a movie that makes no bones about it, a movie about revenge, and nothing more. Driven by a first-time director in Fargeat, a cast that has no one that you’ve ever heard of, and a marketing campaign that likely consisted only of trailers on just as unknown straight-to-DVD releases, Revenge earned less than $125,000 at the box office and its limited May 2018 release, the movie resonated with the critics (92% with 119 reviews) though, with more than 2400 ratings, just over half (55%) gave the movie a favorable review. Much more than a simple popcorn flick, Fargeat creates a highly likable protagonist in Jen (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz – Somewhere Beautiful, Rings) and three highly unlikeable antagonists, whom I’ll discuss in subsequent paragraphs. You’ll find yourself cheering hard for Jen and hoping, even if you are against violence, that those who have wronged her get what they deserve.
Homefront (2013)
Homefront is not a movie I would typically watch (let alone review), but it has been in my Netflix queue for quite some time. I usually watch some of my more mindless movies in February and March. Before I even begin reviewing, that’s not to say that this was a poorly made movie or one that you shouldn’t watch. It just means that this is a movie you watch purely for entertainment purposes, and its storyline does not require a lot of thought or concentration. Also, I have over 400 movies reviewed at this time, yet I still have not reviewed a Jason Statham (The Mechanic, The Transformer) movie. That has mostly to do with the fact that I don’t watch a lot of Statham movies. I like him as an action star, but my movie watching these days tends to take me away from The Mechanic, The Transformer, The Expendables, and The Fast and the Furious franchises. Although, based on their box office numbers, there is an audience for Statham-type movies. But, now in my early 40s, I find myself drawn more to movies as an art form rather than I do for pure entertainment purposes. And I almost laugh at this, considering the movies I watched 15 years ago compared to today’s movies.
Triple Frontier (2019)
One of the early tragedies of the Netflix distribution line must be the 
J.C. Chandor (A Most Violent Year, All Is Lost) Triple Frontier, a movie you can decide after watching or reading this review whether you like it or not. This is not a review that will talk about the merits and faults of Netflix (by one sentence, the 2019 stand is that Netflix is unique with its shows, but I wish it would stay away from movies). Still, Triple Frontier deserved its viewing on a big screen theater, where it could have flourished. I’ve seen over 1500 movies in a movie theatre at the time of this post. I’ve seen 1500 other movies for the first time on my television screen as well. For each movie I’ve seen and loved on my television, I can’t help but wonder what the movie must have been like in the atmosphere in which it was designed to be viewed. I can’t make the same claim the other way around. Sure, I’ve said, “Man, I wish I would have saved my cash and watched this at home…or not watched this at all” when I see a terrible movie in the theatre, but that is a different conversation and, hopefully, one I don’t have to have on a different day.