Movies

While superheroes and intergalactic mercenaries take over popular entertainment, some old-school themes still linger. They may be less in demand than in the past, but cowboys pop up now and then in movies, video games and even comics to take us back to the grit of the wild west. Not only that, but current projects under development, like Spirit Reckoning, enjoy mixing up old and modern trends to create unique stories that will resonate with today’s audiences. You can find such originality throughout the entertainment industry, each sector often inspiring others. But, first, a bit more detail on this upcoming horror western.

Spirit Reckoning Update

MORTAL KOMBAT LEGENDS: SCORPION'S REVENGE opens, as one would expect, by presenting itself as the origin of Hanzo Hasashi (voiced by Patrick Seitz), a great warrior who returns to his village to find it completely eradicated, including his wife. His final vision before his death is the brutal murder of his young son.

Hasashi awakens in the Netherrealm, where he is about to be tortured for all eternity by a demon. But Hasashi's will is indomitable, and he manages to fight his way through an army of demons, to the door of Quan Chi (Darin De Paul), who offers Hasashi an opportunity to get his life and family back -- by obtaining the key to unlock Quan Chi's imprisoned master through a competition held between the many realms. The competition comes with an opportunity for revenge against the man who killed Hasashi's family. And so Scorpion is born.

Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) is a jeweler living the high life at a high cost. He maintains a home with his wife and children, as well as an apartment with his girlfriend, Julia (Julia Fox), but it takes more than selling high-end jewelry to a select clientele. Howard has so many shady irons in the fire that he has to become an expert juggler and proficient liar just to keep his head above water.

The Mark Millar Elseworld's tale gets an animated adaptation as DC Entertainment releases SUPERMAN: RED SON on Blu-ray this week.

The premise of the Elseworld's graphic novels was a genius concept, wherein all the elements of an event in the DC Universe would remain fairly the same save for one change that altered the course. With SUPERMAN: RED SON, that change was a half-day; twelve hours, in which the Earth's rotation made it so that Superman's rocket did not land in a Kansas wheat field, but in a wheat field within Stalin's Russia. This gave Millar the playground to test the ages-old argument of nature versus nurture, as Kal-El is raised to support the State and believe in the ideals of communism, while still having within him the innate desire to help people.

It's not uncommon that a film have a theme. In fact, it's expected. You watch the film, you digest the plot, and you come away with the idea that, "This was a metaphor for this particular idea."

With CHARLIE'S ANGELS (2019), the theme is explicitly stated up front, and then slowly moves on from there to hammer that idea home. And that idea is this: Men are bad.

In this Elizabeth Banks take on the CHARLIE'S ANGELS franchise, the Townsend Agency has been taken international, just as John Bosley (Patrick Stewart) is retiring. As a tribute of sorts, every agency's lieutenant is given the rank of "Bosley," which doesn't get confusing at all. So Elizabeth Banks' character in this film is called Bosley as she directs the activities of her Angels while also directing the actors playing them.

Tom Holland and Chris Pratt lead this charming Disney Pixar road-trip / buddy movie in a literal quest for magic.

ONWARD presents a world that was initially sword-and-sorcery, and allows it to evolve into one of modern convenience while retaining its culture and creatures. Unicorns are nusance animals, small dragons are kept as pets, and the ways of magic have been long forgotten for smart phones.

In the category of Best Film of 2019, we had, perhaps, the most competition of any other category in terms of the number of nominations each vying for the vote of our readers. But there were only three films that cracked the barrier into double-digit percentages of the prize pie.

Coming in for the third place position was the Quentin Tarantino blockbuster with Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, ONCE UPON A TIME... IN HOLLYWOOD, and its fictionalized account of actors who fell into the orbit of Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, just before the Manson family murders.

We've written before how so many of our Best of 2019 contests were nail-biters, close calls, and photo finishes.

That certainly wasn't an issue when it came to the readers selecting who they thought the Best Film Actor of 2019 was. In fact, the field quickly narrowed so that the only significantly reportable actors became a club of five.

Rosa Salazar and Brie Larson made up the superhero contingent of the pack, for their roles in ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL and CAPTAIN MARVEL, but both were overtaken by Taron Edgerton for his exuberant performance in the Elton John musical-biopic, ROCKETMAN. 

The face of Sega gaming races into theaters this weekend, and the studio execs have got to be crossing their fingers that they hit a home run with the fans. After early images of the CGI-rendered Sonic the Hedgehog were released to the public and met with universal scorn, production went back to the drawing board to get a redesign that was closer to the original version of the character.

They succeeded.

Sonic the Hedgehog came from another dimension, fleeing to this one as a hiding place when evil beings on his home wanted to take his power from him. It's a power he doesn't fully understand himself, but it manifests itself in super-speed. (Warner Brothers may want to push back THE FLASH another year after this.) He's been here for a while, living among the people in a small town, hiding from them. He knows them intimately, even though they don't know he's around.

Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus are two living legends in comedy. Both are Saturday Night Live alumni who revel in the absurd. Ferrell graduated to the big screen with Old School and never looked back. Elf, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Step Brothers, The Lego Movie 1 & 2, Get Hard, and my personal favorite of his impressive resume, Stranger Than Fiction -- It seemed like the funny man would never bomb. The same holds true for Louis-Dreyfus,, the only woman in history to have won Emmy Awards for three different comedy series. Seinfeld put her on the map, and The New Adventures of Old Christine and Veep proved that she belonged to be considered among the heavyweights like Carol Burnett and Betty White. 

More than a few people expected PARASITE, the film from director Bong Joon Ho, to take the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. But far more were taken aback when the film swept out of that niche and into the broader part of the ceremony, nabbing the coveted Best Picture award.

Is it a good movie? It's okay. It's a bit of a slog in places, and for American audiences it is clogged with cultural references that won't strike any chords. Add to that the fact that the entire thing is subtitled throughout, and you end up with a recipe for Decidedly Not a Blockbuster.

It cost 84.5 million to make.

It grossed about $81 million in its opening weekend.

Which has executives at Warner Brothers scratching their heads and wondering: Why is BIRDS OF PREY AND THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN not making money?

It couldn't be the wordy title. It couldn't be that the movie posters had all the mass appeal of a 14-year-old girl's scrapbook project inspired by Botticelli. It couldn't be that the few ads that were shown revealed the well-known intellectual property characters to be even less like their historical counterparts than any prior DC Extended Universe or televised Arrowverse character. It couldn't be that the R rating shut out a large segment of a target audience that could be remotely interested in a superhero property (if, indeed, BIRDS OF PREY was intended to be one).

So here's the gist of the TERMINATOR franchise: In the future, an artificial intelligence called Skynet decides humanity needs to be purged, and creates killer robots called Terminators. But John Connor would mount a successful resistance, forcing Skynet to invent time travel so it could send a robot into the past to prevent him from growing up. It fails, and only succeeds in ensuring John Connor is born. His mother Sarah Connor then fights Terminators who keep coming back trying to kill him, so that the future would be changed.

Only we see in the beginning of TERMINATOR: DARK FATE that a Terminator arrives and does successfully shoot the young John Connor in the head, leaving a grieving and embittered Sarah Connor behind to mourn.

So Skynet's future is assured, right?

Wrong.

It's WILL SMITH vs WILL SMITH when the classic "nature versus nurture" debate gets tested in the world of highly-skilled assassins.

Smith plays Henry, a superior marksman with a number of kills to his credit all of whom were bad guys looking to do harm to America. Until this last job. When he misses his kill shot by a few inches (still killing the man), he decides it's time to hang it up and retire. After all, an inch in the wrong direction can mean the difference between a righteous kill and an innocent victim.

However, Henry's last target wasn't what Henry was led to believe: he was the loose end in a secret government program called "Gemini." And now the last dangling thread is Henry himself. He manages to fight off an attack of several men, picking up a partner in Agent Dani Zakarweski (BIRDS OF PREY's MARY ELIZABETH WINSTEAD) by accident. And when the men behind his kill order realize Henry escaped, they send in their best man.

Junior.

Holy cow, is it 2020 already? 2019 seems to have gone by in a blur, with so much happening in the world of movies, television, and comics. It's hard to believe we've reached the point where we now have the unenviable task of deciding which was the best in every category to recognize the producers of entertainment for their efforts.

So below you will find the voting form, featuring our nominations for the best film, film actor, television series (which includes streaming until we come up with a word to replace television), series actor, comic book storyline, comics writer, comics artist, and -- last but certainly not least -- the selection of our Critical Blast Bombshell of the Year from the list of 2019's Bombshell of the Month candidates.

GRETA GERWIG's directorial rewrite of Louisa May Alcott's American classic is a sprawling mess of a period piece that meanders about, hopping backward and forward in time to finally get to its quiet and unsatisfactory conclusion.

There are a handful of movie sequels that have surpassed the original: Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Captain America: Civil War, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. Toy Story 2 and maybe The Godfather II could also be on that list. How about Jumanji: The Next Level which hits theaters in the US on 12/12/19?

Finally...there's something even the presence of Dwayne Johnson can't improve. It would be more accurate to call it "The Next Level Down." There was a genuine sense of fun and enery to be found in the first reboot of the Robin Williams classic. While the cast tried hard to recapture that elusive chemistry that made the previous film work so well, the sequel failed to reach the next level this time.

When Grace (SAMARA WEAVING) accepted a marriage proposal from Daniel Le Domas (ADAM BRODY), she expected her life to change. After all, the Le Domas clan was richer than Croesus, and their reputation was global. What she didn't plan for, however, was the wedding night tradition of midnight game play. The Le Domas dynasty had been built on marketing games, and it had been a long-standing tradition that upon any wedding, the new family member would be assigned a random card from a puzzle box, detailing the game to be played. It could be checkers, chess, backgammon...anything at all.

But one game required different rules than all the others: Hide and Seek. That's the game when the family knew their ages-old benefactor demanded a sacrifice be made. So when Grace pulls that card, and goes off to find a hiding place, she is completely unaware that the family is preparing to come looking for her -- armed to the teeth!

I will say this for Tim Janis's BUTTONS: A CHRISTMAS TALE: it's heart is in the right place, and it delivers familiar faces -- and voices -- at every turn. Beginning with narration from KATE WINSLET and ROBERT REDFORD, we waste no time in being introduced to legendary actor DICK VAN DYKE, leaving a note at the doorstep of Mr. & Mrs. Hill (PAUL GREENE, ABIGAIL SPENCER). A child is at the hospital awaiting adoption, and the Hills are too eager to rush there to fill that role.

At that same time, Emily (NOELLE PARKER) is brought to the hospital, brought to Mother Genevieve (ROMA DOWNEY), to the chagrin of the doctor (STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION's JOHN De LANCIE). He makes it clear that she can't stay past the night, as this is a private hospital for paying patients.

The events of OFFICIAL SECRETS are true, and that's what makes the film so magnetic. It's not overblown with explosions, high-speed chases, or tense confrontations. It's a sequence of human decisions, facts, denials, and consequences.

Katharine Gun (KIERA KNIGHTLEY) was working as a translator for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British counterpart to the United States' NSA. Between the events of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, she was one of several recipients of a confidential email from the NSA, requesting assistance from GCHQ to dig into the backgrounds of several United Nations representatives for the purpose of finding leverage on them that could garner their votes for an invasion. Torn between duty and conscience, Katharine ultimately printed the email and, through a series of back-channels, got it into the hands of reporters at The Guardian.