Tag: Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson

Cinema Dispatch: Captain America: Brave New World

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Captain America: Brave New World and all the images you see in this review are owned by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Directed by Julius Onah

Do you know what’s way more tiresome than another MCU movie? Hearing about how tired people are about there being another MCU movie. Marvel Fatigue jumped the shark a long time ago, and frankly, I see enough movies that there’s always a sizable buffer between each superhero outing so it never feels like the MCU is overstaying its welcome. Still, there have been some missteps in recent years after the one-two-three punch of COVID, the death of Chadwick Bosman, and Jonathan Majors being outed as a predator; all of which threw the entire Post-Endgame roadmap into chaos and left us for six years without a Captain America movie to kick-off Anthony Mackie’s run as the character. Is this a case of better late than never with Mackie proving himself to be just as big a star as Chris Evans, or have all the delays and shakeups at Marvel taken the shine off his coronation? Let’s find out!!

Things have changed quite a bit since The Avengers brought everyone back from The Snap; not the least of which being the election of Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) as President of the United States. With a new Commander in Chief looking to write his name in the history books, he works towards a peace treaty that will allow all nations to mine the precious resources from that Celestial that almost destroyed the world back in The Eternals while also trying to convince Captain America Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) to start a new Avengers Initiative to fend off whatever threats are out there waiting to strike. Sadly, these plans are forced to take a back seat when Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) and several others attending a peace talk at the White House try to assassinate the president. Of course, nothing is as it seems, and Sam is not about to let the government throw his friend back in jail. With the help of the new Falcon Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), the two set about to find out what caused those people to become would be assassins and if there is more to the plan than just the death of a President. Can Sam and Joaquin uncover the truth and save Ross’s plans for peace, or will all this chaos only beget more violence on the global stage? Is Ross being upfront with everything that he knows about this latest threat, or are there secrets so terrible that he would put the world at risk to protect them? I mean, I usually trust Harrison Ford no matter what, but still…

“I’m telling you, they BELONG in a museum.”     “Can we at least keep the Infinity Stones separate from each other? Maybe rotate them out of the display case?”
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Cinema Dispatch: Bloodshot

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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Bloodshot and all the images you see in this review are owned by Sony Pictures Releasing

Directed by David SF Wilson

Is it just me, or did anyone else think this movie was about a vampire?  I mean it’s not like BLOODSHOT is some sort of household name to rival that of Iron Man and Thor, and with a name like that I’d have pegged them as a Blade knock off more than anything else!  Well whatever this movie is about (a ROBOT vampire maybe?), it’s yet another vehicle for Vin Diesel who’s really had a bad luck streak in recent years as he’s been trying so hard to escape the Fast franchise to do his own thing but to no avail, and now he has to pretend that John Cena is his brother or whatever the heck is going on in that move that we won’t be seeing for another year.  Just when he thought he was out, THEY PULL HIM RIGHT BACK IN!!  Is this the one that will be the new franchise starter that he needs to escape the shadow of the Fast and Furious franchise?  I mean… probably not, but let’s find out!!

Ray Garrison (Vin Diesel) is your typical action movie hero.  He works for a SUPER SECRET SEAL TEAM SIX type outfit for the US military, and he’s covered in all sorts of scars that his beautiful wife (Talulah Riley) lovingly caresses whenever he returns from another world saving mission.  Sounds about right for a typical action flick, but where’s the motivation for vengeance?  WHERE’S THE INCITING INCIDENT THAT CALLS OUR HERO TO VIOLENCE!?  Oh wait, there it is!  Some dude (Toby Kebbell) kidnaps him and his wife looking for information, but when Ray doesn’t have the answers he’s looking for he kills the wife and puts a bullet in Ray’s head; an act that would kill a lesser man, but Vin Diesel isn’t about to be put down by a small amount of lead to the cranium!  Instead, he manages to survive the shooting and his body Is recovered… somehow by SUPER SCIENTISTS working for Dr. Emil Harting (Guy Pearce) where it’s brought to his SUPER SCIENCE company and is fixed up good as new by basically turning him into Million Ants Man; only instead of ants it’s NANOBOTS!!  With this new power he can recover from ANY damage, can punch things REALLY hard, is able to connect to basically any computer… BUT WILL THAT HEAL THE HOLE THAT IS LEFT IN HIS HEART!?  Of course not, so almost immediately he starts to search for the man who killed his wife and plots his revenge despite the consternation of Dr. Harting and his rag tag group of cyborg buddies including Katie (Eiza González) who has a robo-lung and seems to be hiding more than just her giant chest mounted ventilation system.  Will Ray find the man responsible and bring him to justice in a very violent fashion?  Why did he kidnap Ray and his wife in the first place considering he didn’t have any information to give him, and is there more to this horrific act of violence than Ray initially suspects?  Why the heck is even called Bloodshot!?  Is it REALLY just because he has red eyes sometimes?

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“Hey buddy, do you need help or something?”     “All I need is to bath in the blood of my enemies and hear their screams as they take their last painful breath…”     “Okay… well how about some eye drops?”     “I mean… I won’t say no if you have some.”

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Cinema Dispatch: Alpha

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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Alpha and all the images you see in this review are owned by Sony Pictures Releasing

Directed by Albert Hughes

Wait, didn’t this movie come out like four months ago?  I feel like I’ve been seeing the poster for this for like a year now and it just passed me by somehow like The Founder, Gotti, and that Amityville thing they ended up giving away for free.  For whatever reason this was just in the background for way too long for me to reasonably expect to ACTUALLY see it (especially considering I never even got a trailer for it despite seeing posters every once in a while), but I guess Crazy Rich Asians needed SOMETHING to trounce this weekend, so we’ve got this one out there to presumably make a quick buck for a weekend or two before slinking off to be forgotten.  Okay, maybe that’s being a bit too harsh as the release schedule of a movie is hardly the best barometer for a film’s quality, and what little I know about this movie sounds… okay.  I guess.  Anyway, does this coming of age story about a boy and his wolf turn out to be the perfect blockbuster to cap off the season, or is the auspicious timing of its release a huge sign that you should stay very far away?  Let’s find out!!

The movie follows the story of the boy Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and the wolf Alpha (a Czechoslovakian Vlca known as Chuck) who run into each other under… shall we say STRAINED circumstances.  You see the year is 17,982 BC (twenty thousand years ago as a subtitle informs us) and, Keda is a bit of a wussy whose dad (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson) is the chief of his tribe and wants to get the wussy out of him before his wussiness gets the best of him.  In order to de-wuss-ify the boy, he takes him on THE HUNT where they… I don’t know, hunt animals that are VERY far away in order to drag their rotting corpses back to the village and store for winter; presumably before the flies and maggots take ALL the good meat.  Anyway, Keda The Wussy manages to get himself gored by a prehistoric buffalo and falls down to his presumed death; having never learned how to truly stop being a wussy.  A tragedy for all involved, but the good news is that Keda somehow manages to survive his near certain death; albeit a little bit worse for wear.  The bad news?  Well the hunting crew has already gone back and so Keda has to travel all by himself back to the village which SEEMS to be hundreds of miles away.  Again, seems like a pretty far way to go to get meat, but either way Keda has to find a way to get there before it starts snowing.  Then he’s REALLY in trouble!  But I know what you all are asking!  WHAT ABOUT THAT SUPER ADORABLE WOLF!?  It tries to eat Keda early on and gets injured in the process, but Keda decides to help the poor creature with sharp fangs and they eventually grow to be friends which makes it just a little bit more plausible for Keda to survive his journey.  What does the wolf get out of this?  I don’t know, table scraps?  Does Keda have what it takes to survive such a harsh environment while also learning to stop being a wussy?  Does the wolf truly care for Keda, or is it simply following him around so he can get at his precious meat when he drops dead of exposure?

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“In exchange for this half eaten rabbit, you promise not to eat me.  Deal?”     “Grr…”     “I’ll take that as a maybe!”

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