A down-on-his-luck LA vampire hunter races against time to save his family. Splashy hybrid of horror-comedy and buddy thriller: From Dusk Till Dawn and John Wick are key influences: the plot is an excuse to hang a series of fun fight sequences on. Scott Adkins and Snoop Dogg (it’s that kinda film) pop up for good measure, and there’s even a Hellzapoppin gag.
Here’s the trailer.
Multiple parties search for the source of a New Orleans street drug, which grants a superpower for five minutes. Flashy and confident if superficial mashup of Limitless and the 70s TV show Gemini Man. Plenty of incidental fun tho, especially in the first two acts.
An unscrupulous manager manipulates the careers of multiple music performers throughout the 60s and 70s. Awkward facsimile of the musical biopic subgenre adapted from a stage show. Some of it works (Eddie Murphy is great as a James Brown-ish blowhard) but too much is sketchy by-the-numbers genre pastiche material that doesn’t even have the benefit of actual period songs.
A young nobleman turns to crime to thwart a local administrator’s lust for power. Messy (like the 2017 King Arthur) ahistorical retelling, pillaging from other versions and franchises such as The Hunger Games, Assassin’s Creed and The Matrix. Even the casting echoes other, better movies: Star Wars: Rogue One and The Name of the Rose included.
A slave and a dentist team up to claim bounties and to mount a rescue. Episodic and sprawling, Django Unchained is nevertheless funny, thrilling, horrific, informative and a great-looking quest. Something for everyone, and there’s Franco Nero too.
A good-guy getaway driver falls in love. Slick but superficial wheelman movie, somewhat more concerned with its show-off direction and choreography than in giving us reasons to root for the antagonist. Some fun to be had though.
A rogue cop has his son kidnapped by drug dealers. A day-from-hell thriller which lifts from Die Hard and Snake Eyes (it’s a remake of Nuit Blanch) in working to sustain momentum; for the most part it holds itself together.
Spidey comes up against two new foes, and one old one. Stronger in its comedy and in the romantic entanglement stuff than in its superheroics, ASM2 ends up nevertheless both soapy and in a rote city smash-up finale against underwritten opposition.
255 Review 