65

2023 Sony Pictures

Rated: PG-13

Length: 1hr 33 min

Action ~ Adventure ~ Drama ~ Sci-Fi ~ Thriller

Directed by: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods.

Starring: Adam Driver and Ariana Greenblatt.

“Prior to the advent of Mankind, in the infinity of space, other civilizations explored the heavens….65 Million years ago, a visitor crashed landed on Earth.”

Adam Driver stars as Mills , a pilot from the planet Somaris. His daughter is sick and needs a lot of very expensive medical treatments. An opportunity arises that would pay him three times his normal salary, but it would involve being gone from home for two years. His wife convinces Mills to take the job piloting a two year space expedition because it would enable them to get the treatment his daughter needs.

With the journey underway and the passengers in Cryostasis, Mills has the ship on autopilot as he sleeps. The spaceship encounters an undocumented asteroid field (same thing happened in Passengers) and is hit and damaged before Mills can get to the Pilot’s chair. He tries to manually maneuver the spaceship through the asteroid field but it is too late and they get struck again. The spaceship is forced to make an emergency landing on the undocumented planet they are near.

When they crash land the spaceship splits in two and the Cryostasis compartment is compromised killing all the passengers. Mills thinks he is alone on an unknown and undocumented planet God knows where. He sees no hope and contemplates suicide but then discovers a cryogenic chamber still intact with a young girl inside. He rescues her and takes her back to the wrecked Spaceship. Her name is Koa (Ariana Greenblatt) and being from a different planet speaks a different language that Mills does not know.

Mills has detected the other half of the spaceship 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) away and realizes their only hope of survival and getting back home is to make it to the other half where the escape pod is. What follows is an edge of your seat thrilling journey through prehistoric Earth 65 million years ago. Not being able to verbally communicate Mills and Koa use gestures and a primitive form of sign language. They soon discover on their journey to the escape pod that Primitive Earth is a very hostile environment full of carnivores and other perils.

I found myself jumping a few times as surprises waited around every corner of their journey. It was funny at times watching the two of them try to communicate and get used to one another. I thought Adam Driver and Ariana Greenblatt did an excellent job. I am not familiar with Arianna but I really liked how she portrayed Koa and will look for her in the future.

An excellent Sci-Fi Adventure thriller!

Two Thumbs Up!

Logan Lucky

2017 Bleecker Street

Rated: PG-13

Length: 1 hr 58 min

Comedy ~ Crime ~ Drama

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh

Starring: Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Riley Keough, Daniel Craig, Seth MacFarlane, Katie Holmes, Dwight Yoakam and Hilary Swank.

“Authorities have confirmed they have recovered a Ford F-150 in connection with the robbery at Charlotte Motor Speedway some are calling The Hillbilly Oceans Seven-Eleven Heist.”

Channing Tatum stars as Jimmy Logan, a construction worker from West Virginia working in the tunnels underneath The Charlotte Motor Speedway in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Construction Company HR Department finds out about his leg injury sustained in a High School football game and fires him for not letting them know, saying it could be an insurance liability. Since he is suddenly unemployed and has the day off, he decides to pick up his daughter Sadie and take her to her dance recital. He stops at The Beauty salon where……

His sister Mellie Logan (Riley Keough) is working and promptly tells him, “Well that’s great and all you wanting to see your daughter dance and everything, but it was yesterday.” He then drives to his ex-wife (Katie Holmes) Bobbi Jo’s house to see his daughter but she’s going to the movies with her step-Dad. Bobbi Jo informs him that her husband’s Dealership is expanding and they will be moving across the state line into Lynchburg, Virginia. Jimmy, not happy at the news, and having a real bad day decides to go to The Duck Tape Bar and Grill where…….

His brother Clyde Logan (Adam Driver) is tending bar with his one good arm. He lost the other arm in a bomb explosion while serving in Iraq. Clyde, upon hearing about Jimmy’s bad run of luck today, starts reciting all the bad things that have happened to The Logan Family and how this is just another example of the Logan Family curse. Jimmy then gets into a fight with a Nascar race car driver and his two companions when they start making one arm bartender jokes and harass Clyde. As Jimmy is fighting Clyde grabs a liquor bottle and makes a Molotov cocktail which he throws into the Nascar Owner’s vehicle. As Jimmy leaves he yells out, “Cauliflower!”

Cauliflower is Jimmy’s code word for “I’ve got a robbery plan.” The next morning over breakfast, Jimmy tells Clyde about the plan he has come up with to rob The Charlotte Motor Raceway. They decide that they are going to have to enlist Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) to help with the heist. He is currently serving time in prison and they hatch a plan to sneak him out and then sneak him back in after the heist. Joe Bang enlists the help of the other inmates to create a disturbance to mask his absence from the Warden (Dwight Yoakam). They also enlist Joe’s two brothers Sam and Fish, and their sister Mellie to drive the getaway car.

It is quite the Hillbilly Heist complete with hick West Virginia accents and one liners. Hillary Swank plays one of the FBI agents involved after the crazy caper has ensued. It is a different take on the traditional heist movie. The Director Steven Soderbergh said he came out of retirement to direct Logan Lucky after he saw the script. Having directed Oceans 11, 12 and 13, he referred to Logan Lucky as the inbred cousin of oceans 11, and said he was definitely the one to direct it. I think he did a great job. It’s a hilarious hick heist complete with a one arm bartender.

I liked it, give it a go and see what you think…..

Two Thumbs up!

Madame Web

2024 Sony Pictures

Rated: PG-13

Length: 1 hr 56min

Action ~ Thriller

Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor, Adam Scott, and Mike Epps.

“They’re teenagers now, but in the future they have powers and will try to destroy me.”

Dakota Johnson stars as Cassandra Webb, A New York paramedic who finds her singular life suddenly and inexplicably changed after an accident on an emergency call. Strange things begin to happen in her life she cannot explain. Then she is seemingly thrust into the role of protecting three random teenage girls from being harmed by a mysterious man with extraordinary powers.

I confess I looked at some reviews of this movie before I watched it to see what it was about. There are a lot of negative reviews, way more than good. I’m not really a Marvel Comic book fan (I read comic books as a kid but was never super into them) so I’m no expert on the story itself. I watched it to see for myself but I did go in knowing about all the negativity.

From the beginning scene where Cassandra’s Mom Mary Parker is pregnant in the Amazon with The Bad Actor (Pun intended) Ezekiel Sims searching for a spider, I had my doubts. What is she doing in the Amazon pregnant? The answer to that question gets answered later as the story unfolds. Then Ezekiel quickly turns into a bad guy right as Mary Parker finds the elusive spider and proceeds to shoot everyone in sight including Mary and then steals the spider. It was kind of a hokey scene and Ezekiel is terrible in that scene (Voice included).

As the story unfolded I was drawn in by the characters and the relationship between Cassandra and Ben Parker (Adam Scott). I like Adam Scott and Mike Epps, and things started to pick up rather quickly. There is another scene early on that had me a little baffled. Mike Epps gets into an ambulance and Cassandra tries to talk him out of going because she has a vision of a crash. Seconds later as you see the ambulance drive off it gets hit by a dump truck. As they do an overhead shot of the scene you see the dump truck was headed at a high rate of speed towards the end of a commercial dock.?.

Another moment that made my ears perk up in a questioning way was when Ezekiel is poisoning a Federal Agent and as she’s dying says “Trust me…It’s a good thing you had no idea you were going to die today.” What?…and that voice…ughh..grating. That scene was really bad acting wise, just horrible.

I did like the story itself and I got drawn into the relationship between Cassandra and the three girls she was protecting. By the end of the movie I was wanting to see more of that Spider Sisterhood story and see how they developed into the Superhero girls that were haunting Ezekiel’s dreams. So in the end I am conflicted….

I liked Cassandra and The Spider Sisterhood story (I found myself rooting for all of them and thought they did a good job). But Tahar Rahim as the Bad Actor Ezekiel Sims (again pun intended) was horrible. Some of the scenes were really far fetched like Cassandra suddenly taking off for a quick trip to the Amazon while Ben watched the girls. “Ok, be right back.”

So yes and no……

One thumb up, the other down.