Tag: Brandon Perea

Cinema Dispatch: Bad Boys: Ride or Die & Twisters

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

I’m pretty sure I say this every other month, but life can come at you pretty fast, and I’ve let a few things slip through the cracks in trying to keep up with it all. The casualties this time around were two very successful summer blockbusters which I probably would have gotten a few extra views if I was timely with these reviews, but there’s no time like the present to try and catch up! Were these classic films carelessly shunted to the end of my to-do list, or does it make some amount of sense that I couldn’t be bothered to finish these reviews when they were relevant? Let’s find out!!

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Bad Boys: Ride or Die

Bad Boys: Ride or Die is owned by Sony Pictures Releasing

Directed by Adil & Bilall

The first two Bad Boys movies are obnoxious and crass in a way that left me very ambivalent about going into the third one, but the new blood behind the camera ended up being the shot in the arm the franchise needed to stay relevant. This one, however, is content to rest on its laurels and use the excuse of a sequel to work out some fancy camera techniques. It’s not a bad movie by any stretch, and it still runs circles around the first two, but it lacks a meaningful reason to exist. The third one actually had something to say about its aging heroes, which gave it a sense of purpose beyond the action spectacle and funny banter. They try to keep that thread going here, but there’s nothing of substance to it, as Laurence’s brush with death early in the movie is a complete goof and doesn’t hit the same way that it did with Smith in the first one. They’re also not as interesting to watch as Smith and Laurence seem to be going through the motions at times, but I would chalk that up to the lackluster script. It’s supposed to be a redemptive story, but the plot is far too convoluted for it to have the raw emotional catharsis that you’d want, and without a clear direction to point our two leads, they feel a little lost in the weeds. Still, the action is fantastic with Adil & Bilall proving once again why Warner Bros were fools to dump their Batgirl movie, and while the action is certainly sillier than in the last one, there’s more than enough of it at a fast enough clip that you hardly even notice as you’re sitting through it. I got the sense that the third movie was written to be an end to the series, even if the door was open to possible sequels. I don’t get that sense watching this one, as the sequel door is left wide open with neon signs around it and a twenty dollar bill dangling on a fishing line. If they want to keep this franchise going for as long as Smith and Laurence are interested in doing so, then the best of luck to them, but running the sequel mill has its drawbacks, and despite the movie’s subtitle, there’s no significant shakeup to the status quo to mark this one out as a significant entry. It’s been several weeks since I saw it and very little has stuck with me the same way that Bad Boys for Life has, so by that measure it’s a disappointing sequel. Not a significant disappointment, especially since it’s still the second best in the series by my estimation, but you’re only gonna get so far when not trying to do too much.

3 out of 5

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Cinema Dispatch: Nope

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Nope and all the images you see in this review are owned by Universal Pictures

Directed by Jordan Peele

Very recently I’ve started watching Key & Peele in earnest as I had seen little more than clips online in the past, and frankly, it’s not all that surprising that at least one of them became a horror director. The duo made some very funny stuff, but there are also quite a few sketches throughout the show that not only have a sinister edge to them but almost feel like precursors to Jordan Peele’s first feature Get Out. Now he has two wildly successful features under his belt and much like M Night Shyamalan when he was in that position, his next move is to go for a spooky movie about aliens, or at least the general idea of them as the marketing has done a very good job covering up the true nature of whatever is going on here. Does this updated take on the classic sci-fi genre prove to be as groundbreaking as Peele’s previous films, or is even the best of filmmakers unable to escape the occasional dud? Let’s find out!!

OJ Haywood and his sister Em (Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer) are left running their father’s horse ranch after an unexpected (and unexplained) accident took his life only a few months prior. Now Papa Haywood (Keith David) ran Hayood’s Hollywood Horse Ranch like a true professional as he took great care of the horses and worked well with the production studios, but unfortunately, his kids aren’t exactly filling his shoes with Em having the personality but not the business sense and OJ working great with horses but not with other people. The only thing keeping them afloat is selling horses one after another to the local rodeo owned by former child star Ricky Park (Steven Yeun), but that’s only going to last for so long before they will surely need to sell their father’s ranch and his legacy off to whoever will throw a few dollars their way. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, there seems to be this strange thing in the sky that will occasionally pass soundlessly through the air in the middle of the night and has some sort of effect on electronic equipment which can only mean one thing; aliens, and therefore opportunity! Em is gung ho about capturing some fantastic footage of this mysterious spacecraft on film and selling it to the highest bidder, and OJ is just kinda going along with it since there isn’t much more they can do to save the ranch, so with the help of a local electronics store clerk (Brandon Perea) they set up a series of cameras around the ranch hope to get a once in a lifetime shot that will put Haywood’s Hollywood Horses back in the spotlight! What is this mysterious thing in the night sky that Em and OJ hope to capture on film, and can they do it without drawing its attention; or wrath? What is it doing here in the first place, and are the Haywood’s the only ones trying to catch a glimpse of it? Seriously, with the way things have been going lately, how much are they really gonna get for alien footage? It’s not like there won’t be another dozen or so terrifying news stories the next day!

“If we can sandwich the release between the end of the January Sixth hearings and the latest news from climate scientists, we may have a solid six hours on Twitter’s Trending topics!”     “And that turns into money, how?”     “That comes when they make the docu-series on Netflix.”
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