Expend4bles (2023) - Movie Review

2023 has been a really, really fucking good year for action movies. John Wick: Chapter 4, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3, TMNT: Mutant Mayhem, Sisu, Dead Reckoning Part One, the new Dungeons & Dragons movie, even Transformers has really started to turn back around.

In light of all that, while it’s been a long-ass time since anyone paid any heed to the Expendables, it at least makes sense that the ultimate action team-up fantasy would get another crack during this time. The third film may have come woefully short of what the first two accomplished, but even that had its moments. Unfortunately, with this fourth instalment… can this even be called an Expendables movie at this point?

Meg 2: The Trench (2023) - Movie Review

Y’know, I questioned the point of making a big-budget B-movie like this back when the first Meg came out, but with the industry still recovering from the COVID shuffle, I especially question it now. Doubly so because of the director for this one: Ben Wheatley. While he has a storied history with out-there horror material (also helping to produce just plain weird shit like Aaaaaaah! and The Greasy Strangler), and he’s done a bit of pop work in the past like directing two episodes of Capaldi-era Doctor Who, I’m… still trying to figure out where this fits in his larger catalogue. And bear in mind that I managed to find something about his Rebecca remake that made sense, so it says something when I’m struggling with this one. Then again, there’s a lot about this film that I’m struggling with.

Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre (2023) - Movie Review

After the pleasing return to form in The Gentlemen, I was fully on-board for Guy Ritchie to keep making movies I could fuck with again. After the painfully mediocre snoozer Wrath Of Man, I am now also prepared for Ritchie to still be capable of underperforming as he had for quite a while before The Gentlemen. Out of a want to just see something simple and engaging (I’ve spent a good amount of January stuck at home with a fractured arm, hence my lack of activity lately), I’m still willing to give this one a chance, although it could go either way. And what I ended up getting was not only a weird combination of his last two films, but also of elements from his 2010s output.

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019) - Movie Review

Fast & Furious is a very silly film franchise. Sudden character death, sudden character resurrection/amnesia, overblown emotionality, pretences towards it all being families and sticking together; it’s basically soap opera for people who think the WWE doesn’t go far enough. It’s also a series that, as the years press on, I find myself gravitating closer and closer towards, appreciating them honestly as some of the best blockbuster action in cinemas these days and somewhat pretentiously for how it deals with the relationships between its many, many main characters.

The Meg (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: The underwater research facility Mana One, led by Dr. Minway Zhang (Winston Chao) and his daughter Suyin (Li Bingbing), have discovered a previously-uncharted area of the Marianas trench that is even deeper than the current record. As they send a team down to explore the new depths, they soon find evidence of a Megalodon, a gargantuan shark thought to have been extinct that is far from dead. The mission, the facility, even the entire world could be in jeopardy if the Meg makes it to the open seas, and it's up to retired rescue diver Jona (Jason Statham) to stop it.

The Fate Of The Furious (2017) - Movie Review

Okay, time to once again address a certain… pattern I’ve been noticing with my last few reviews. Since the GG meltdown, and I swear that this wasn’t intentional, the last three films I’ve covered on here have all involved some form of feminism. Whether it’s the showing of strength in Begum Jaan and Smurfs: The Lost Village, or the misogynistic bullshit of CHiPs, it seems that I subconsciously made a bit of a theme. Time to change that up, with a look at the latest instalment of the most macho film series running today: The Fast & The Furious.

 

Now, there are very few film franchises nowadays that I would consider myself be an out-and-out fanboy for; the MCU is the closest I’ve gotten so far, and even then it’s more surface level. Fast & Furious, on the other hand? Since Fast Five, I’ve been strangely vibing with this series; I say strangely because, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m really not into car-centric action beats. And yet, between the unabashed and self-aware silliness of the action, the solid character interaction and even a few instances of legit emotional impact, this is a series that I have a lot of respect for. Keep that fanboy bias in mind as we get into the latest instalment of the franchise that restraint forgot. This is The Fate Of The Furious.