Reviews
One Battle After Another (2025) is the kind of movie, to me, that seems to have everything right; good acting, interesting plot, good character development. And yet somehow it just doesn’t click for me. I understand why it would win an award for any given acting role, but overall as a movie I think it breaks down at the end and turns into a more mundane, improbable action. Because of the timespan in the movie, it begins to have that ‘epic’ feel but the scene transition for passing of significant time is missing leaving you a bit confused for a second before you realize “Oh, it’s now nine months later”. The final ten minutes or more with DiCaprio driving around looking for his daughter just didn’t seem interesting at all. Overall, the standout actor to me was Sean Penn playing Colonel Lockjaw.
The Fifth Wave (2016) starts out pretty generic and ends just as generic for the alien invasion genre goes. Ron Livingston wouldn’t have been my first pick for this movie, even as a glorified cameo, due to the lack of acting range versus the more dramatic movie which isn’t his norm. Speaking of cameos, Liev Schreiber appears at the end, yay? The primary star is Chloë Grace Moretz who is a rising A-list actress, but even then the performance just seems flat, like the rest of the cast. While they’re setting up the story. As the story unfolds it initially has an interesting premise but quickly devolves into cliche after cliche, with the titular big plot twist being lackluster. The movie keeps trying to find identity, and it never does.
Alice in Borderland (2020) is a Netflix series based on the manga with the same name, which I have not read. Overall this was a great watch and stayed entertaining with steady plot development, introduction of new interesting characters, and a really creative series of games. I don’t even want to compare it to Squid Games because it is so different, but it is far more creative. So if you like Squid Games because of the new take on games with life-or-death stakes, then Alice should appeal to you as well. The premise starts simple, with various people going about their daily life in Tokyo and almost instantly, finding themselves in a new world where every few days they must play a “game” to survive. Failure to play, or failure to complete the game, result in swift death. By the end of the second season we learn what this world really is and it adds a new layer of complexity to it all. I highly recommend this one.
The Instigators (2024) is an improbable comedy / caper movie that I bet on paper was hysterical. For me, despite all of the humor, the cast, and producers, I think I laughed twice and once wasn’t due to the two main actors’ dialogue. It always makes me wonder who the test audiences are, and if people are more conditioned to laugh because of the A-list actors starring in it. As if it is just expected that “yes it must be funny with these people” versus a more objective crowd that would be willing to give feedback saying that a movie wasn’t as funny as producers thought it was. I wanted to like this movie and it was mildly entertaining but ultimately fell short.
The End Game TV show, aired in 2022, is basically a dumbed down version of The Blacklist. There are way too many parallels and it screams of a show that doesn’t know if it will make it past one season, so it’s dumbed down and moves at a faster pace. But if I’m right, Morena Baccarin’s character will find herself outside of that lock up, and the FBI agent will be in charge of escorting her, and keeping her on a short leash. Skip this, watch The Blacklist instead.
The Rip has been highly advertised by Netflix, starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Based on a true story it follows a special police task force that conducts a questionable raid and finds an incredible amount of cash. A third of the way through it was promising because it seemed like those two actors would be against each other and that was exciting since it would be different. That didn’t last long. While based on a true story the movie deviated in reality (hopefully) with the officers doing really stupid things. It also felt like the end may have taken a lot more liberty to give a more exciting finale. It’s entertaining to a degree and Damon still shines as an actor.
Den of Thieves (2018), a movie by and starring Curtis Jackson (aka 50 Cent) is about as predictable and boring as all of his other movies. It doesn’t help that he has zero acting range and even out of movies, he comes across as someone with no personality at all. From the opening scene, full of ridiculous aspects like robbing an armored car at five in the morning at a donut shop (wouldn’t it be near empty?), to amusing attempts to use military lingo that doesn’t quite apply in the middle of a shoot out. Parts of the movie has Gerard Butler seeming to liberally borrow from Al Pacino in Heat. Even the intro text that sets the stage says “2400 times a year, 44 times a week, nine times a day, every 48 minutes, a bank is robbed“. I’m no mathematician but I believe if a robbery happens every 48 minutes, that would be more than nine times a day. Skip this trash.
Don’t Move (2024) on Netflix started out really strong, with a serial killer injecting a hiker with a paralyzing agent. His plans don’t quite work out and she gets away leading to an interesting pursuit that is sufficiently different from other movies. My only gripe is the last five or ten minutes which are full of MacGuffins, enough for me that it ruins the ending.
Trigger Warning (2024) is about a special forces operator that returns home and finds herself in a battle with a gang. The whole premise, the fight scenes, tactics, and action are all ridiculous and bad from the beginning. Taking voice notes while watching I thought I would include them here but when spelled out it is utterly laughable. If I did, I think it would encourage people to watch to enjoy the absurdity. While I am not an expert on the military and special forces, the movie comes across as if Jessica Alba and the director found a third-rate ex military soldier as a consultant or they had a good one and ignored all of the advice.
The Abandons (2025) on Netflix is well done, and quite subtle as the story unfolds giving the setup and notion that lead you to think various things will happen next, but they are changed up a bit. No big twists, just a steady stream of very minor things like in altercation scenes. It’s a refreshing change from the constant use of cliches we find elsewhere. This Western, of sorts, has two amazing lead actors (Linea Headey and Gillian Anderson) with an incredible supporting cast that fade in and out becoming more relevant at times. I recommend this limited series.
General Thoughts
The longer a TV show goes, the more it’s going to break down. Some shows break down faster, some do it in grander ways while others are more subtle. Consider the show Slow Horses, which is a fabulous show. At the end of season five, during a very dramatic scene and one that did keep my attention, it’s hard to ignore that two shooters seem to have unlimited bullets without reloading. While we get brief bits that serve as backstories as to why the various people are assigned there, I feel they missed out on a great opportunity to introduce a new character, the lead “dog” as they call them, after she had repeated failures. That could have been a perfect setup to show why she got transferred to the group she had such contempt for. But really, if these are my nitpicks it speaks highly of the show.
Switching to Alice in Borderland, during season two the show magically changed from the city and into the woods. I either missed why that happened exactly or it was quite arbitrary. I get it to a degree, as it let them introduce a new character and reintroduce another but then suddenly another character from prior episodes is also climbing out in the woods and literally to the top of a mountain. That was all to show that they are not in the ‘real’ world which I thought was fairly well established by literally everything else.
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