Tag Archives: Djimon Hounsou

Gladiator (2000) Review – Exploring the Past

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TL;DR –. When the bombast hits, you still feel what made it a special film all those years ago.  

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid for the Paramount+ service that viewed this film.

A hand in the wheat fields.

Gladiator Review –

In this day and age, companies are trying to find a way to get people back into the cinemas, and the current plan has a lot to do with bringing back classic films with sequels decades later. That means this week we get a new Gladiator film, which I am honestly looking forward to. But as I was sitting there, I realised it had been a decade since I had watched the first film, and that is something that I had to fix, and there is no better time than the present.

So, to set the scene, it is at the height of the Roman Empire, and the Romans controlled everything from Britain to the Deserts of Africa and Arabia. In the north, Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris) was fighting a campaign against the tribes of Germania, led by his one trusted general, Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe). But when Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), the son of the emperor, discovers that his father wants to restore the Republic, he kills him. He has Maximus arrested when he won’t declare loyalty to the new emperor. Maximus escapes, but before he can get home, his family is murdered, and slave traders capture him. Now, he has but one choice: die in the arena or win and get revenge for his fallen.

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A Quiet Place: Day One – Movie Review

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TL;DR – A gripping work that holds onto you from those first minutes and never lets up as the world collapses around it.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid to watch this movie.

The Aliens arrive in the sky.

A Quiet Place: Day One Review –

It is time to step back into this universe that oscillates between complete quiet and a riot of explosions. I fundamentally enjoyed both A Quiet Place and its follow-up, A Quiet Place Part II. However, both of those films looked at how this apocalypse would affect a small town. It is now time to take this roadshow to a large city, which is, in fact, one of the largest cities in the world, and see just what would happen.

Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) lives in a hospice counting down her days on earth through the prism of forced poetry when one of the nurses, Reuben (Alex Wolff), convinces her and her support cat Frodo (Schnitzel & Nico) to come into New York City to see a play. While there, the puppet show had to be finished early because something was going down in New York, and the Hospice wanted them all home, which was when the first explosion hit.

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Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver – Movie Review

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TL;DR – It is a visually impressive film that is narratively shallow, even though everyone is trying their best.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid for the Netflix service that viewed this film.

Jimmy

Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver Review –

I had an odd sensation as I sat down to watch this sequel, in that even though I had only watched the first film back in December, for my life, I could not remember anything that happened. It had evaporated into the ether, bar was Anthony Hopkins a robot? This meant I desperately needed that what happened last time the introduction that started the proceedings. But it did not fill me with confidence as I sat down to watch the follow-up.

So to set the scene, at the end of Rebel Moon, the plucky rebels had found and won a massive victory against The Motherworld. Kora (Sofia Boutella) and her group was able to return home to Veldt after killing Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein). But you see, you can never count The Motherland and its technology out. Because Noble is still alive, and now he has a more than personal reason to burn Veldt to the ground and the village has only five days to prepare.

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Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire – Movie Review

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TL;DR – Moments of interest in the middle of a sea of mess.

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid for the Netflix service that viewed this film.

Gas Giant.

Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire Review –

Before we begin our best of 2023 list, there are a handful of movies that I want to catch up on, one of them being this new Science Fiction magnum opus from Zack Snyder. Snyder has always been at least an interesting director because he has a clear visual style, and that has worked for him in the past. The question is if this will work for him today?

So to set the scene, there is a large empire that spans across space, reaching out and conquering all they could find from the Motherworld. That is until assassins kill the King (Cary Elwes) and Queen (Rhian Rees) in a coup d’etat. There is a power vacuum filled by a Regent (Fra Fee) who sent his ships out to the edge of his domain to make sure no plant picks this moment to rebel against them. On the backwater moon of Veldt, things are proceeding as they always do until the ship commanded by Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein) appears in orbit over their settlement. While some in the town see an opportunity, Kora (Sofia Boutella) knows the reality: they are here to take, and take, and take.

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Gran Turismo (Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story) – Movie Review

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TL;DR – It takes what could have been a boilerplate story and brings it into overdrive with the roar of an engine that rumbles through the cinema.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Disclosure – I paid to see this film

Jann in his racing helmet.

Gran Turismo Review –

There have been a lot of adaptations of video games from Sony at the cinema recently, some good, some bad, and occasionally they can be fantastic. But what we are looking at today is a little bit different. Sure, it is based on and named after a video game, Gran Turismo. However, its full release title here in Australia, Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story, should give you a hint that something else is going on here. Something quite interesting.

So to set the scene, Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom) is a marketing manager from Nissan’s England division, and he has found a problem. Young people don’t care about cars anymore. They are the generation of Uber and such. He flies to Tokyo to Nissan head office to suggest a contest to fix that issue. Because game designer Kazunori Yamauchi (Takehiro Hira) from Polyphony Digital has recreated car racing down to the minutest details in his game/simulation Gran Turismo, if they create a competition where the best drivers in the sim get a chance to be a ready race car driver, they could ignite the passions of an entire player base in driving again. Well, one of those players is Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe), a kid from Cardiff, who is trying to forward his passion in life when everyone else just sees it as a game, and well he is here to prove them all wrong.

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Shazam! Fury of the Gods – Movie Review

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TL;DR – When it is working, it is a delightful blast of a film   

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid and post-credit scene

Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of this film

The whole family in super form.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods Review –

When the first Shazam! film came out. It was at this odd moment for the DCEU. There had been a hard pivot away from the dark and brooding movies like Batman v Superman towards something a little lighter. And I, for one, liked the change. While Shazam! and Aquaman were not perfect films, there were at least supremely entertaining. But I wondered if lightning could strike twice because, much like last time, Shazam has to do some repair work after a string of failures.

So to set the scene, since Billy (Asher Angel) was given the powers of Shazam (Zachary Levi) by the last council of the wizards, also called Shazam (Djimon Hounsou), he has tried to be a superhero. However, he is still just a kid; if ever there is an imposter syndrome, it is this. However, life does not give him the time and space to process this change because the two daughters of Atlas, Kalypso (Lucy Liu) and Hespera (Helen Mirren), have returned to Earth. They are there to rectify their position and see Billy and his family as a threat and an affront to everything they stand for.  

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Black Adam – Movie Review

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TL;DR – This is a film where nearly anything of interest was sandblasted off to give us a bland expedition with some moments of interest.     

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene

Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of this film.

Black Adam floats in the ocean.

Black Adam Review –

I came into this film with a lot of trepidation. To say that Warner Bros has had a challenging year with its merger would be an understatement, losing nearly any goodwill they had with them. Add to this that the DCEU has struggled with very straightforward hero narratives. How would they go with an anti-hero? But if nothing else, the charisma of Dwayne Johnson is strong, and if anything can help a film, it is that.

So to set the scene, 5,000 years ago, in 2,600 BCW, in the land of Kahndaq, Black Adam (Dwayne Johnson) was chosen by the wizards to stand up to the local despot. SHAZAM, and the palace explodes. In the present, Kahndaq is still under the control of occupiers, and Adrianna Tomaz (Sarah Shahi) is trying to hide treasures from the Intergang mercenaries when she finds Black Adam’s tomb. He is finally let free, but all that time has not blunted his desire for revenge and rampage. Seeing a potential threat, Hawkman (Aldis Hodge) and the Justice Society Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), and Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo) try to show him a different path or at least get him to surrender peacefully. But then, the Black Adam is not peaceful.   

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The King’s Man – Movie Review

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TL;DR – A war film that does not know what it wants to say about war   

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene

Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ subscription that viewed this film.

The King’s Man. Image Credit: 20th Century Studios.

The King’s Man Review –

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the first entry into this universe with Kingsman: The Secret Service. I even liked the follow-up Kingsman: The Golden Circle, though I may be alone on that front. So when I heard that there was going to be a prequel, I was interested but also concerned because revisionist histories can land like a thud. And after watching it all, I’m still not sure.

So to set the scene, we open in South Africa, 1902 with Orlando Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) and his wife Emily Oxford (Alexandra Maria Lara) arriving at British Concentration Camp during the Boer War. They were inspecting the facilities for the Red Cross and meeting Lord Herbert Kitchener (Charles Dance) when a sniper kills Emily in the crossfire. 12-years later, the world is careening towards war because a mysterious force is pulling strings behind the scenes, pushing King George of Britain (Tom Hollander), Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany (Tom Hollander) and Tsar Nicholas of Russia (Tom Hollander) into conflict.

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Movie Review – Aquaman

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TL;DR – Bombastic, silly, overly long, but still by far some of the best fun DC has made so far.    

 Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene

Aquaman. Image Credit: Warner Bothers.

Review –

To say that the DC Expanded Universe has had a rough launch up to this point would be a bit of an understatement. Indeed, of all the past films, only Wonder Woman (see review) felt like a coherent film in any great sense. So, more than ever, the first film after Justice League had to hit the ground running, even more so after background conversations that the expanded universe was losing a lot of its big-name talent. Now while Aquaman is not a perfect film, it is a film with a lot of style, and more than most of the films that have come before it was just fun.

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Movie Review – King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

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TL;DR – King Arthur is a fascinating film as long as you don’t care that much about the source material, though it does have more than a few lulls and awkward story moments

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

King Arthur Legend of the Sword. Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Review –

So this was a surprise, from all accounts, and my own expectations going in I was expecting a dumpster fire in movie form. Instead what I got was sure a flawed film in many respects but also a really interesting one as well. So today we are going to look out how this film approaches the legend, how the cast works, then the parts of the film that excel and the parts that really fall short. So let’s begin with how they approach the myth of King Arthur, and well it’s interesting.

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