What's Next On My List? Escape Plan The Extractors

Welcome to the eight installment of #StalloneMonth, which I have to say, is my favorite time of the year! In February we look over the filmography of this wonderful actor, Sylvester Stallone, three-four movies at a time. This year I tried to keep a "prison" theme. So let us jump right into it!

Escape Plan The Extractors (2019)

Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone) gets involved in a missing person's case, as the abductor is the son of his former partner, seeking revenge for his father's death. Breslin had him killed, after he betrayed him. Breslin loses his girlfriend to the altercation, but results in helping a man free his girlfriend and her party that was abducted by the same man to control a very rich man.

This is the hardest review to write because I did not enjoy the movie, but as I said in a previous entry, I am relearning my opinion on movies. Yes, many are not home runs, yet, there is a crew behind it that has tried to do their best. A lot of people involved in the project are not to be blamed if the script is not good. Now, I have been reading a lot of trivia as of late, and the quality of a movie can be ascertained based on how much behind the scenes information is shared on it. Now, I have found out that this movies began filming before Escape Plan 2: Hades (2018) (read review here!) was released. And quite frankly, despite having scenes at a prison, more precisely the historic Ohio Reformatory prison, where The Shawshank Redemption (1994) was filmed, but there was no interesting plan to infiltrate the prison, it was not even really functioning, and killing the villain was ridiculously easy. This movie did have more Stallone, which is my main issue with the second film, and overall the title is not "escape prison", but once again, the film had several new characters that fail to establish any contact with the viewer and I did not care for their story. Even Breslin's girlfriend, Abigail (Jaime King) had no more than six or seven scenes between two films with her partner, and thus failed in making us care. 

So watch it? I think you can skip it. I, as a devoted fan of Stallone will watch everything, and I can tell you that this was rushed unfortunately. The idea of a larger organization bent on taking down Breslin was quite intriguing, but casting decisions as well as some foolish revenge scheme overrode the initial ideas of this trilogy, if it is a trilogy. It will be interesting to see if there are going to be any additional movies in the series. But if I just get to see Stallone and Dave Bautista appear in the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie, then I am good to go!

That will have to do for this years #StalloneMonth. I just love watching his movies, and sharing them with you all. Even the ones that are not as impactful or of tha same caliber as some award winners are just good entertainment. And well, I'll do anything to have some Sly time in my yearly schedule.

Until the next item on my list!

What's Next On My List? Escape Plan 2: Hades

Welcome to the eight installment of #StalloneMonth, which I have to say, is my favorite time of the year! In February we look over the filmography of this wonderful actor, Sylvester Stallone, three-four movies at a time. This year I tried to keep a "prison" theme. So let us jump right into it!

Escape Plan 2: Hades (2018)

Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone)'s team is imprisoned in a super facility meant to defeat even the best of prison makers and escape artists, such as Breslin himself. The team plans to get out both the latter's protégé Shu (Xiaoming Huang), and to finally find out who has been trying to best Breslin over the years. 

I decided to use this poster, because the American one features Stallone and Dave Bautista on it, without any of the other actors, despite the fact that Stallone isn't a leading man, not really at least. And as much as I love Bautista, he is barely in it, so much so, that despite showing up for the final fight, I do not really remember what he did. For the longest time I thought he was gonna betray Breslin, and I am uncertain if that is what the writers were going for. And coming back to the poster, the biggest issue with this movie is in fact NOT ENOUGH STALLONE. The movie did absolutely nothing to make me like the main character, and that is not on actor Xiaoming Huang, as he clearly played the character as he was told to play. And we have seen hundreds of these kinds of movies, where the protagonist learns his lessons and we grow along with them, we root for them, but poor protagonist here did not seem to learn a single lesson. He just understood how his enemy was thinking and did the opposite long enough to escape. Really, until Stallone joins the game I was very unimpressed, unfortunately, not to mention that Jesse Metcalfe never looked better, and the movie did not make the best use of him either. This was a great cast, it is such a shame. Is the story the same as the first one? Sure. But the great cast does not compare to the banter between Stallone and Schwarzenegger. (I reviewed that movie last year, click here to read it!)

Watch it? You know, it is hard for me to be hard on bad movies too. This is not really a memorable film, and it is too bad, because with a couple more twists it could have been far more entertaining than the original one. The cast and the idea was there, that is for sure. We still have one more movie in the prison theme, so stay tuned for next week!

Until my next review in #StalloneMonth!

What's Next On My List? Lock Up

Welcome to the eight installment of #StalloneMonth, which I have to say, is my favorite time of the year! In February we look over the filmography of this wonderful actor, Sylvester Stallone, three-four movies at a time. This year I tried to keep a "prison" theme. So let us jump right into it!

Lock Up (1989)

Frank (Sylvester Stallone) is an inmate that gets transferred to a prison run by Warden Drumgoole (Donald Sutherland), who has a personal vendetta against him. With six months left on his sentence, Drumgoole is determined to make Frank's life a living hell, furthermore, he tries to frame him for a larger crime, to ensure he spends his life in prison.

I did not know what to expect with this movie. While watching it I just felt anger... it was probably the intent of the movie, but I felt like I have my stomach is in a knot the whole time, and there was no real way of letting off steam, not even in scenes from the movie that were not part of the Warden's revenge scheme, as you feel something awful coming just around the corner. But whether you have seen it already or not, I do recommend that you look up trivia because the making of this film is fascinating. First of all, they filmed in a real prison, while the inmates were there, many of them are in the backgrounds in scenes, and were paid for their work as extras. Actually, some of the production got locked-in during the filming when the inmate count numbers didn't add up at the end of the day. Second, Sylvester Stallone was tackled repeatedly by some of the real-life prison's penitentiary extras during the filming of a football game that they played outside. The scenes themselves look tiring, I have no idea how long they shot those scenes out in the mud, but actually getting tackled is real dedication to the craft. Another wonderful piece of trivia is the following, according to imdb: "The movie was very well received in central Europe during the last echoes of communist oppression. The movie's title in Hungarian is: In the Prison of Revenge." I rarely talk about the background or the reception of movies, but last year I managed to watch a total of 365 movies, and I ended up reading a lot of trivia and I begun to have a new kind of appreciations for the making of movies. Even the ones that are not the best... I heard someone talk in a podcast about how nobody sets out to make a bad movie, and that is something we often forget and just think about a paycheck. However, even if this movie did not make my top 10 favorite Stallone films, it is still quite incredible in its making. So, final point, as you will see from the reviews I have lined up this year, this is not the only prison themed movie that Stallone starred in, one of them being the fantastic Tango & Cash, which was released in the same year! (Click here to read my review of it!)

So watch it? I think it is much better than some of the reviews and ratings suggest. I do not think it is re-watchable, purely because of the continuous tension in the film. Some like that feeling in their stomach, but for me personally this was enough once. I do with that justice would prevail in real life the way it does in movies. But it is sure satisfying when Frank finally defeats the warden!

Until the next Stallone movie on my list!

Discussion: Eternals Was the Justice League Movie I Always Wanted

Welcome to the first entry in my Discussion series! Please enjoy reading and join ... well, the discussion down in the comments! These posts will be small essays, debates, and analysis of various trends, TV shows, and of course movies. 

. . . . .

I grew up with Justice League cartoons. There are several out there, one better than the other. You would think that making any into live-action wouldn't be so hard. YOU WOULD THINK THAT. But here we are... 

I have not seen the Zack Snyder movies and I refuse to do so. Just from the trailers and accounts from my friends I can clearly tell that I will not enjoy them. These -very famous- characters are continuously misunderstood by this director and I am tired of it. If you like them, good for you. I will not go into a large rant about it, I have before, just read my review of Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) here! So let us move on to the movie that we are about to discuss. I will, however, draw a lot of comparisons with the live-action adaptations of the famous DC comics characters, as the title already suggests.

This is gonna be a thorough argumentation over all the things that this movie did right, so read on and add all the things you think of in the comments, I welcome the discussion! Needless to say, spoilers ahead.

The Eternals was released in 2021, based on the comics by the same name, with the first issue being released in 1976, created by Jack Kirby. It is about a series of heroes known as Homo immortalis, who, along with their enemies, the Deviants, were created by alien Celestials. As far as the premise goes, the movie followed the comics. First thing that is different from its DC counterpart.

The reason for my comparison, is that these Eternal god like creatures have very similar powers to that of the members of the Justice League, and YET we did not need a single movie in advance to introduce any of these characters. With a couple of time jumps and interactions the most important traits of their personalities were revealed to us. The DC version tried to copy the Marvel formula, forgetting altogether that most people have a very deep knowledge of the titular characters of DC comics. After one Superman (Man of Steel (2013)) we jumped to the larger group with a new Batman being cast and the addition of all the greatest villains, with the hope of these heroes working together cohesively without any real depth as to who they are and where they come from. The fans were both expected to know everything while the film tried to adhere to a much larger audience that did not know anything about these characters. You cannot have a film that way... with the Eternals, we have a closer look at a Celestial, but it is not the first time that happened in a Marvel movie, as the seeds were slowly and carefully planted.

The reason, I believe, that Eternals (2021) was not successful is because it did not hold any major twists. Marvel movies by now have a tendencies to reveal something last minute, something that is very logical once you re-watch the story (thus making you want to re-watch it to begin with), but they buried the lead just the same. Eternals was incredibly straightforward, and I ended up guessing the major plot points, and honestly, I did not mind. Marvel is good at twists, but DC isn't. It is not their fault, of course, major audiences WANT to be surprised, they want the story to twist and turn, and they expect the unexpected. In my experience of the DC movies I have seen, these twists come only with the sacrifice of major plot points, leaving holes behind. Holes that grow quite large as the stories progress. Eternals had a lot of foreshadowing, and thus you could perceive where the story was going, however, it was also the device that they used best to let us viewers connect to our main characters. I do not mind that I could guess the ending, I did so with every DC cartoon, but at least no plot points were sacrificed. I am so tired of movies that do not go anywhere... never in my life did I get up after seeing a Marvel movie and felt like it was a waste of time, even when the movies wasn't a 10/10. I wish I felt that way about DC movies...

Let us have a closer look at the characters. I, for one, have loved that the multiple award nominee actors were not the leading characters. They were wonderful additions to the cast, but I'll be honest, more of Angelina Jolie's Thena, or even more Salma Hayek's Ajak would have damaged the power dynamics in this group. I did, immediately fall in love with Gemma Chan's Sersi, and Richard Madden's soldier like Ikaris persona only broke in the third act, and it was a marvelous change of pace. Oh course, Kumail Nanjiani's Kingo stole the show, and I could watch him for hours and hours on end.

Let us talk about the most fantastic thing in this movie: inclusion. Despite being in love with the LGBTQ+ representation with Brian Tyree Henry's Phastos, as he did not feel like a token character, my real love was towards another character. Disney is already trying to include a more variety in its casting and storylines, starting from the Tusken raiders using sing language in The Mandalorian, and then the Hawkeye series also included a deaf and mute mobster, of all characters! Here we have Lauren Ridloff's Makkari who... dear god, was the best live action Flash I have ever seen. I am a HUGE fan of the Flash, he is my favorite DC character of all time. I still watch the CW series with Grant Gustin, although it is less impactful now, and I find, despite his talents, Ezra Miller to be the biggest miscast in television history, so let us disregard that. Of course, the Flash mantel was also worn by the great John Wesley Shipp, who did his best, but knowing what CGI can do today, there was still a long way to go. [I would also like to add that the Flash was voiced by wonderful actors over the years, and I would have liked any of them to try out for the live-action.] But, turning back to the Eternals, the best thing about Lauren Ridloff isn't just that she is deaf, but the fact, that not once in the movie did I ever feel like she was cast to meet a quota. All the other characters used some limited sign language and they interacted with her as if he disability was not there at all. And that is the kind of inclusion we need, the one that normalizes all of the things that make us different. Makkari was the best Eternal, I just loved her, the way she used her powers were breathtaking. When she fought Ikaris I just stared at the screen with my mouth open. It was the best directed fight scene among literal gods that I had the pleasure to see. You know, when they kept casting people who look nothing like the comic book Barry Allen/The Flash, it kept making so mad... although Grant Gustin's version is quite good, here we have a female superhero, who is half Mexican-American, half African-American, and is deaf, who looks absolutely nothing like the Flash and yet I have zero complaints. I am quite certain then, that despite the casting they are just ruining something extra when it comes to the live-action version of this character. But I could watch Makkari for hours on end, she was hands down my favorite part of the movie.

This movie felt like a DC cartoon to me, that is it, at the end of the day. I saw a team of heroes trying their best, fighting their battles, and in the end Batman fought Superm-- I mean the team had to fight Ikaris, because of his strong belief in the mission they were assigned on this planet. If I mentioned it, the DC comic books explain in such great detail the pain of the people in losing someone like Superman, and why, upon his return, he dons his black suit. There is a separate DC cartoon movie about the death of Superman, something I reviewed a few years back, you can read about it here. He is not just a fighter, he is a person. In this film, Ikaris, is a beloved member of the team, he does have his issues with the others, but he is loved and he loves. He betrays the others with pain, and that pain causes him to refuse to face the failure of his mission. He is a person with feelings. There is no question about that. The main reason I hated the new Superman is that there was only one single scene in the live-action movie adaptations in the past 20 years, where he showed actual personal growth and that was at the end of Man of Steel (2013), when he killed Zod, which is the scene most people hated. Ikaris is detached, somewhat, a real soldier, but I never question his humanity, despite him being a god-like creature just like Superman. 

I think, at the end of the day, someone from Marvel looked at the horribly long Snyder cut and thought to themselves "We can do a better movie than this." And they did. They really did. I am very excited to see where the Eternals go from here and I also plan to re-watch it soon to focus in on more details of the characters and their interactions.

One of the best things about this movie is that it did not just showcase the humor that we expect from a Marvel movie, but it did so by relying heavily on popular culture. First of all, you have both Richard Madden and Kit Harrington from Game of Thrones (2011-2019), now fighting over someone called Sersi; you have Kumail Nanjiani's Kingo who is a Bollywood star, and he references the never ending sequels to one character that is typical of many Indian movies; Kingo also calls Lia McHugh Sprite 'Tinker Bell', and if you are an avid fan like me, or just old as f*ck, you might have realized that Sprite has Julia Roberts' haircut from Hook (1991), where she did in fact play Tinker Bell. Finally, and as a best returning gag, many characters actually reference DC characters without the blink of an eye. In this universe Marvel heroes are real and DC characters are alive in the comic book format. I could think of nothing else to prove my point that someone just wanted to make a better Justice League movie. One that has no plot holes, one that has a cohesive team, despite their differences, one that treats their strongest member with respect and also fear, and one that, above all, puts human lives ahead of the objective. These heroes are meant to protect Earth, not have childish rants among themselves...

I invite everyone to see this film. We keep forgetting that the comic is also some 45 years old, because these characters have never been on the big screen, and we all were subjected to so many origin stories at this point, we think that a creative and unique spin on a story is impossible. And you know, it might be. However, there are some wonderful direct to TV Marvel and DC cartoon movies out there that I wouldn't mind seeing in a live action format, even if there are no major plot twists or unique intricacies that would make them stand out from all the others. I just want a good story, and that is what the Eternals was.

Join this discussion in the comments below, let me know how you felt about the movie, and share if you had any of the thoughts that I described above.

Blogger: Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts

I won't lie, in my opinion the advertising campaign for this reunion was not really great, unless the idea was to keep it secret as long as possible. In which case: success! Until the trailer came out I did not realize that is has been 20 years, and well, this universe is around us in many ways, from the books, obviously, the movies, the remakes, the musicals, the stage play, the continuation in the Fantastic Beasts (2016-) film series, the theme parks and the never ending line of toys and stationary. If I had a penny for every time I saw someone with a Harry Potter tattoo over the years, I would probably have the money to go the theme park! More than this I look forward to the 40th and 50th anniversaries, because I am very curious to see how many more generations will be impacted by this story one way or another. So, before reading my next paragraphs, I do recommend you check out the reunion first.

Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts (2021)

I have a lot to say on the topic, but I divided it into subtopics, because I wanted to make sure not to miss anything. As I was watching the reunion, thousands of thoughts kept running around in my head. I am currently listening to several podcasts about old shows and they all reveal so many things about the emotional state of actors, that it is impossible for me to turn that off when I watching these kinds of reunions. So many more emotions go into it, as much as we would like to pretend that there are actors and then separate from them there are the parts they are playing, in reality, these get often mashed together. The best way to measure that is how fans keep acting as if the actors were in fact the characters they portray. And if anyone, child actors are constantly submitted to this kind of line blurring, as was the case with Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint. It was an interesting experience, sort of like an Actors on Actors interview series, rather than any other reunion I had seen. (As a matter of fact, this makes me wish they had not included James Corden into the Friends: The Reunion, but would have instead let the actors just talk to each other through the whole special.)

Book vs. Film

If you are a frequent reader of my blog, you know that I haven't read the books for the longest time. Honestly, my reptile phobia is still a major issues, so even when I watched the movies I needed somebody to be with me and let me know when I can look at the screen again. The fact that there was not enough creativity, despite the fact that this whole world is MAGICAL, from changing the stupid spiders and snakes into literally ANYTHING else, is a beef that I am just not willing to let go of. That having been said, the books have not been, for the longest time, connected to me in any emotional way, not in the way that the movies have been. I know that people did not like the movies, but I was never hard on them. I got to go to this magical place for two hours, enjoy the fantasy and the adventure, and return to my world any time I wanted to. This is something the actors did not experience, but I will talk about that later on. As a final note on the topic: the people who were writing the script also suffered from the plain and simple fact that there was yet no end to the story. If you compare this to other adaptations, there is no question about the fact that those movies that are made from major franchises that have concluded already, are much better received. The phenomenon that Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone/the Sorcerer's Stone (1997) ended up being was quite unpredictable, and of course they wished to make it into a movie much before the seventh book came out. More than anything I am patient with the adaptations for this one reason, and if they were to remake these books, knowing the ending, the small details that lead up to the end conflict, the deaths and interactions that define the main characters, as well as the evolving romantic relationship among the leads. I actually will always look upon these actors as the incarnation of these characters, but I am open to any new adaptations, simply because this is a beautiful universe, and every time I see an adaptation, I just feel like I have the chance to look into another reader's mind and see their interpretation and it is fascinating.

Let's Not Forget J.K. Rowling

A lot of controversy is surrounding this woman right now, and I do not wish to add to that in anyway. I do not like her remarks and it is very important that we look at the amount of people one celebrity can touch with a tweet: there are consequences. That having been said, as I have not read the books for years, for me this universe is very loosely connected to its author. For me, Harry Potter is the actors that brought it to life, and the directors that helped them along the way. I cannot pretend that this author is not to be thanked for the fact that this universe was invented in the first place, and for that, I am grateful. It has brought so much joy to the people I love, and it brought about friendships, communities, trends that were, undeniably, beneficial in a society that loves to argue and to debate and, most of all, to hate online. Going to Hogwarts, either through the books, or the movies is something remarkable that people of all ages have experienced. However, because the movies have a much more important place in my heart, I did look forward to this reunion, and as such I really have no issues "distancing" myself from Rowling, as she was almost more of a name, then an actual person to me. I would like to emphasize how disgusted I am about her remarks, of course, I do not know if cancel culture will actual solve this one, because the problem with cancel culture is that it cannot really be applied in every situation, despite the fact that we keep doing it. We should have conversations about these issues, teach people of all generations about the consequences of their inflexible nature, and help them learn instead of "cancelling" them. This all having been said, I would like to add a small messages to all of those who looked up to Rowling and whose childhood was impacted by these books: I'm sorry. I am so effing sorry this is happening. I have had things from my childhood taken retrospectively because people out there can be quite shitty, so I know the pain. But, we go on. Just remember, be part of the conversation and do not just "cancel" without reflection: the only way to educate people is by talking about these issues.

The Reunion

I really loved this special. The reason for that is was a small documentary, but more than that, it was like a DVD special. AND I LOVE DVD SPECIALS! We all love to see the actors that conveyed the characters that meant so much to us to admit that it meant a lot to them too. Obviously most of these are built up to work up the nostalgia in us, to get us to feel things, and well, it worked with me. I do not think, actually, that there was one single dry eye in the house when Robbie Coltrane said: "The legacy of the movies is, I suspect, that my children's generation will show them to their children. So you could be watching it in 50 years' time, easy. I'll not be here, sadly, but... But Hagrid will, yes." We have, quite literally, grown up with these actors. They are all actually my age, my generation, and every time they talk about these movies and their experience it does feel like a class reunion for me. I am fortunate to live at a time on this planet when so many beautiful milestones in popular culture have embedded themselves in our history. Of course, the kind of fan service that most of these reunions are based on lately is not for everyone, but if you have seen as many DVD extras as I have, you can easily see the thoughts and the built up in the mind of the director, and appreciate it for what it really is: a glance behind the curtains. I cannot wait for the 30th anniversary, maybe we'll get some other actors to tell us more stories of their time at Hogwarts.

That is all I wanted to say. I would be very interested in everyone else's opinion on the reunion, so let me know in the comments down below! You know, I really wish that streaming services would add the DVD specials and the commentaries to their movies, really, that is the only and certain way to make sure that DVDs and Blurays become obsolete. I only buy them for the extras such as this special. 

Would you like to see a new adaptation? Or would you prefer they continue the Fantastic Beasts series (despite a whole new bunch of controversies and issues!)? I am very curious about where everyone else stands on these issues.

Thank you for reading, have a great day.