Last Seen Alive (2022) - Movie Review

The latest B-movie product starring Gerard Butler starts out with a decent enough idea. Will (Butler) and his wife Lisa (Jaimie Alexander) pull into a gas station, and while Will is filling up the car, Lisa… disappears. With nothing to go on, and a lot of hard scepticism in his way, Will sets out to find her. For an action-thriller, it’s a very Neesonsploitation premise, but the framing leans more into the ‘thriller’ side of that genre heading. A loved one vanishing (heh) into thin air, not having a clue where they went and not getting any help; even on paper, it sounds exhausting, so surely, it’s gotta work on the big screen, right? Well, it’s not as if this is the first time an American version of The Vanishing didn’t work out.

Angel Has Fallen (2019) - Movie Review

Under normal circumstances, I would question this film’s very existence. The latest from modern B-movie kingpins Millennium Films, starring perennial B-movie favourite Gerard Butler, is the continuation and (hopeful) finale to a series that didn’t even need to be a series in the first place. Hell, after the utter bullshit that was the previous entry in London Has Fallen, I was outright dreading having to sit through more straight-faced jingoism.

But then again, as someone who does love a good redemptive sequel, maybe replacing the bulk of the writer’s room and the director’s chair for this follow-up means we can leave behind the alarmingly blatant racism of Gerard Vs. Fuckheadistan, and get back to the hard-hitting action thrills that made Olympus solid, if not entirely memorable. That’s the theory, at least.

Geostorm (2017) - Movie Review

There’s always been something rather perverse about the natural disaster sub-genre. Starting and subsequently nose-diving during the 70’s, disaster films have always presented themselves as a showing of solidarity between people of different backgrounds working together to avert the titular disaster. However, in recent years with the continuing threat of climate change, it has kept that same mentality but added the spectacle nature of visual effects into the mix. Rather than watching people unite to show the world working as one for a change, it turned into taking joy out of seeing the world get crushed by the forces of nature. I know that some men literally just want to watch the world burn, but given how the writing quality of these films have spiralled out into thin but plentiful casts who exist solely to witness the hand of God flatten the Earth, these films aren’t being made with actual humanity in them these days. I’d be far more disheartened by this if it wasn’t for the one shining positive that a lot of these films share, but all in good time. For right now, let’s look at the latest attempt to pull off global carnage in the cinema.

London Has Fallen (2016) - Movie Review

In 2013, a strange occurrence took place in that we got not one but two films involving a siege on the White House by terrorists going after the President. I’ll leave whatever political connotations can be read into that, considering how this came about not that long after Obama was re-elected, and instead look at them both in context to each other. Now, White House Down is a film I haven’t gotten around to yet because, quite frankly, less Roland Emmerich in my life can only be a good thing. However, going just on the casting of Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx and the image from the trailer of Foxx as the President wielding a rocket launcher, I can only assume that the film didn’t take itself too seriously.

Olympus Has Fallen by Antoine Fuqua, on the other hand, plays things so seriously that the frequent action/siege/borrowed from Die Hard clichés that crop up regularly instilled laughter in the audience. For the record though, as a film I actually have seen, OHF was a decent watch. The acting was good, with a surprisingly awesome turn from Melissa Leo, the action shows Fuqua’s knack for brutal and low-flash fight scenes and the pacing was excellent, even if the story got topsy-turvy in spots. Given how I watched this film for the first time recently, I can only hope that this follow-up isn't just going to be a repeat of the exact same story.

Gods Of Egypt (2016) - Movie Review

This marks a first time occasion here at Mahan’s Media, which is surprising considering how often I will go on the offensive when discussing certain topics. No, for the first time yet, I have a personal reason for why I’m looking at a particular film. I would like to draw my readers’ attention to a certain Facebook post made by the director, Alex Proyas; specifically, this one. Now, even though I have echoed similar sentiments as this in the past, that doesn’t really change how much butthurt is oozing from every character of that rant. I mean, wow; I haven’t seen a director react this badly to negative press in a while now and it is no less funny whenever it happens. So, yeah, since this film didn’t really give me many great expectations going just by the trailer, chances are I could end up being one of the many that Proyas chose to throw under the bus for not understanding his vision. Then again, the current critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes for the film might be one of the most pretentious statements made in the history of the website, so I’m more than willing to buy into his argument. Nevertheless, in my continuing voyage to further separate potentially pigheaded creators from their work, time to get into today’s movie already.