Tag: Nik Dodani

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: Escape Room: Tournament of Champions

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions and all the images you see in this review are owned by Sony Pictures Releasing

Directed by Adam Robitel

I have next to no memories of the first movie other than a general sense of loathing and contempt for its central premise and absurd ending. The whole thing just got memory-holed like so many bad horror movies I saw in theaters which I guess is an interesting position to be in when watching a sequel as the lack of concrete feelings definitely gives it a lot of leeway as far as trying new things; not to mention that the overall low opinion going into it only makes the bar that much easier to clear.  It’s certainly possible that whatever negativity I felt for the first film has burned itself out and I’ll be more open for whatever this Saw Knockoff franchise wants to throw at me, but then again the trailers weren’t exactly selling me on anything beyond elaborate traps and people yelling which certainly sounds familiar to what I didn’t like last time around. Besides, we don’t NEED a Saw Knockoff anymore now that they’ve brought the series back and aimed it in a new and interesting direction!  In any case, does this latest entry in the ESCAPE ROOM UNIVERSE expand upon the original and actually give us something interesting, or will this movie double down on everything that didn’t work the first time?  Let’s find out!!

Following the events of the first film (which are helpfully summarized in a sequence that might as well have started with PREVIOUSLY ON ESCAPE ROOM), Zoey and Ben (Taylor Russell and Logan Miller) are still looking for the mysterious Minos corporation that set up the elaborate game from the first film and have seemingly set up games like this all over the place.  After some cajoling from Zoey, the two of them travel to New York which seems to be their base of operations but find nothing there except an empty alley and a purse snatcher.  Said purse snatcher grabs Zoey’s compass which I THINK was given to her by one of the characters in the first movie, and after an overly long chase through the streets of New York, they wind up on a subway car while the thief jumps out at the last second.  For reasons that are never properly explained, this subway car JUST SO HAPPENS to have four other passengers on it and they all get directed into another one of those deadly escape rooms.  ALSO as it turns out, the four other people are previous winners of one of Minos’s games which makes this (as one character helpfully says out loud) a tournament of champions.  Our previous winners are Rachel, Brianna, Nathan, and Theo (Holland Roden, Indya Moore, Thomas Cocquere, and Carlito Olivero), and all six of them have to go from room to room solving deadly puzzles for some nebulous goal and the chance to maybe not get murdered, though with Zoey and Ben hot on Minos’s heels it seems unlikely that this game is just gonna swing open the doors for them even if they manage to find the right number of keys in a fish tank or whatever.  Will Minos finally be brought down by the very champions that they’ve created, or will everyone be out for themselves in a desperate bid for survival?  Is there more to this game than they first realize, or are the Shyamalan twists in this thing easy to spot from a mile away?  Does any of it even matter when the game is apparently being run by money wizards that can literally do anything at any time with these nonsensical traps? 

“I KNOW THIS ONE! It’s a selfie challenge!” *CLICK* “Okay, maybe not.”
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Cinema Dispatch: Escape Room

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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

Directed by Adam Robitel

Oh boy!  Is it January already!?  We all know that this is the BEST month for movies, am I right!? Okay, so the conventional wisdom has been that movies released in January are in a sort of deadzone where there’s next to no chance for an awards worthy movie to get recognition (especially when we’re still talking about awards for movies last year) and it’s far too early to start releasing the blockbusters since the box office is still densely packed with what came out at the tail end of last year.  Whatever is coming out right now is usually doing so because there wasn’t much hope that a more valuable timeslot would amount to much for its box office, but then that’s not necessarily the same as a movie being BAD; just not particularly marketable.  After all, Proud Mary was pretty good and came out in January!  Okay, so did The Commuter, but the point is that it can go either way!  Will this be the rare exception of not just a good movie in January but a good HORROR movie in January!?  Let’s find out!!

Six people, Zoey, Ben, Amanda, Mike, Jason, and Danny (Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Deborah Ann Woll, Tyler Labine, Jay Ellis, and Nik Dodani) are given invitations for this super awesome Escape Room with the added incentive that if they manage to solve it they’ll get a ten grand prize!  Well that sounds so good that you CAN’T pass it up, right!?  Sure enough it turns out to be an elaborate trap where they have to solve the riddle of each room or die horrible deaths.  Well that sounds like a poor way to spend your weekend (I’d certainly give this Escape Room Company a bad review on Yelp!) and it’s not like they have any idea why this is happening in the first place which is admittedly sort of a moot point if they can’t manage to find a way out before it’s too late.  Can these six strangers work together in order to solve each room’s puzzle and make it to the very end of the game?  What is it that connects these people together, and what does the Escape Room Company expect to get out of this in the first place?  Who the heck is in charge here, anyway!?

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“She may not be the most helpful, but at least she’s here nights and weekends.”

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