Transformers One: the first trailer I saw for this really had me concerned. It seemed like it was really aimed at kids with dumb Spongebob-type jokes. So besides that I don't go to theaters, I decided to wait until it was on Paramount+, which happened in mid-November.
It was a relief that while there were plenty of dumb jokes, there was a lot of Transformers lore, robots bashing each other, and a pretty good story that tied some of the ragtag Transformer origins together. (Because honestly, every new TV show, comic book, or movie puts their own spin on that so it's not really consistent.)
So long ago on Cybertron, the naive Orion Pax and his friend D-16 are miners deep underneath the planet. They don't have "transformation cogs" to let them transform, which puts them on the lowest social rung of society. Orion dreams of finding the lost Autobot Matrix of Leadership and using that to restore the planet so mining energon is no longer necessary. While D-16 supports him, he doesn't really believe it.
After a particular incident, they both get sent to Sublevel 50, where they meet B, who sorts through scrap and used some to make inanimate friends for himself. They along with the fierce Elita-1 wind up on the surface of the planet, where they uncover secrets about the past and even get some cool transformation cogs.
From there it becomes a conflict between Orion and D-16 in what to do with what they've found out. Orion wants to expose those responsible and bring them to justice while D-16 wants to kill everyone for the betrayal. And if you know anything about Transformers, who might know where it's going.
While I at first thought it was a real kids movie, there's actually a lot of violence that might not be suitable for the young uns. For older fans you get to see various characters like Jazz, Ironhide, Starscream, Soundwave, and Shockwave before they became the more familiar versions. There's also Airachnid from Transformers Prime as the bodyguard of the planet's current leader Sentinel Prime. And like I said, it combines things from different sources. The animation is pretty well done without being cartoony or sloppy. Unlike the 80s show and movie there aren't characters changing colors or showing an Autobot sign when they're a Decepticon and stuff. So if you're a fan of Transformers or just a story of a revolution with cool robots, this is a good watch. (4/5)
Top of the World: When a former cop named Ray (Peter Weller) gets out of prison, he meets up with his ex-girlfriend (Tia Carrere) to go to the casino run by Charlie Ajax (Dennis Hopper). Ray inadvertently wins a jackpot on the slots, which he isn't supposed to do while on parole. Meanwhile the Cobra Kai guy and some others have ripped off the counting room but are having trouble getting out.
There's chase scenes and threatening scenes and so forth. The plot has a few twists and turns but it never really rises above not bad. (2.5/5)
Slay: Easiest way to describe this: what if you replaced Clooney & Tarantino in From Dusk Til Dawn with drag queens? It's basically the same plot as the drag queens go to a redneck bar out in nowhere thinking they're playing a gig. They don't get along with the rednecks until vampires attack and everyone has to band together. It's a fun movie starring no one unless you're familiar with drag queens. The effects and that are OK for a movie like this. (3/5)
Smell of Success: In the 60s Patrick Fitzpatrick (Billy Bob Thornton) is a manure salesman for Rose Fertilizers. But then the reclusive owner Mr. Rose dies and the company goes to his daughter Rosemary (Tia Leone), a perfume saleswoman in New York. What she finds is the company is more than $2B in debt and so she fires a lot of people but keeps Patrick and his four cronies (one of whom is Ed Helms) to sell fertilizer to various farms. Meanwhile someone called Mr. Nose is menacing Rosemary's secretary while Rosemary ducks him.
Then a new company comes onto the scene, literally air dropping salespeople and bags of fertilizer. The Rose crew fight back using some underhanded methods but that only gets them in trouble with the FTC. The mysterious Mr. Nose proves to be the linchpin to everything.
The movie uses a weird sepia tone probably on green screen for the the skies and such so it never looks real. It's more of a Wes Anderson-type surreal feel to most of it. It's pretty weird and wacky overall. (3/5) (Fun Fact: A little cartoon at the end explains that when water was ruining their manure, sailors began putting it up higher and stamped the barrels S.H.I.T. for "Store High In Transit" or something. I don't know if that's true or not.)
Money Kings: Vinnie (Peter Falk) is a bookie in Boston working from his bar. He takes a small-time, almost family approach to his customers, which has the head office impatient. So they assign him a new partner named Tony (Freddie Prinze Jr) who wants to prove himself and thus takes a much harder line.
There's a guy named Frankie (Timothy Hutton) who has lost his job. His wife (Lauren Holly) has been working two jobs but they're still not getting by. Frankie steals his wife's bonus check to make a bet with Tony that fails. Vinnie then has to try to protect him and his wife from Tony and the head office.
It might seem a little slow but overall it's good. Falk is really great as the old-timer finding it harder to maintain his standards in the changing world. (3.5/5) (Fun Fact: the end credits of the movie say, "The producers of Vig wish to thank..." which was probably an earlier title they forgot to change there.)
Once Upon A Time in Brooklyn: Another of those cheap movies that would really like to be Goodfellas but can't be. When Bobby gets out of prison for various mob-related crimes, he immediately goes right back to criming, despite that his dad (Armand Assante) owns a construction company and would give him work there. But Bobby has delusions of grandeur about taking over the racket, but things soon start to fall apart.
Overall it's OK but it can't rise to the level of Scorsese with the talent it has. At nearly 2 hours it's a bit long as well. (2.5/5)
Bookies: So kind of a regular trope where three college kids decide to become bookies. At first things are going fine but then one guy (Johnny Galecki) starts doing drugs and buying expensive shit and getting out of control while his friend (Nick Stahl) tries to rein him in. As they take bigger bets, they draw the attention of the larger bookie syndicate, who want to crush them. Things don't work out Happily Ever After for everyone, which is good.
It's an OK early 2000s movie but the basic plot is something you've probably seen, like in Ron Howard's Night Shift I watched last month. (3/5) (Fun Fact: A young Anson Mount has a role in this.)
Poolhall Junkies: A guy is taught to hustle pool when he's young and now in his 20s he's still doing it though wanting to go more legit. Then the pool hustler who taught him comes back with another great player to challenge him. It's good his girlfriend has a rich uncle (Christopher Walken) who's happy to pony up hundreds of thousand in cash for no real good reason. Hooray!
There are some decent bits in here, but it moves a little slow at times. But don't you wish you had a rich uncle who'd just keep feeding you money to play pool? (3/5) (Fun Fact: The guy's brother is played by Michael Rosenbaum of Smallville. His getting arrested for trying to rob a jewelry store is what sets up the epic final pool game.)
The Killer: I thought from the ads on Peacock that this was a taut, sexy thriller. Instead it's just a bunch of old tropes with John Woo's frenetic action. The end result is that it's OK but feels like you've seen it a million times.
Basically there's an assassin who used to be a homeless girl in Paris until a guy (Sam Worthington in tweed and doing a crappy Irish accent for...reasons) saves her and teaches her how to kill people. She's really good at it until she accidentally blinds a young woman who was only in a club full of bad guys to sing. She tries to help the young woman while her former boss sends minions after her because she's lost her edge. And there's a black Paris cop who's also after the assassin.
And mayhem ensues. The action scenes like the rest of the movie are fine but not really vintage Woo. Overall you can find this movie hundreds of times on any streaming service. (2.5/5)
Army of One: Nic Cage is Gary Faulkner, a crazy dude who kept trying to get to Pakistan, thinking it was his holy mission to find bin Laden. He does finally get there and thinks he takes on bin Laden, but it was probably just a concussion. When bin Laden is really killed, he doesn't buy it.
Back in the States, there a woman he went to school with who has an adopted daughter with cerebral palsy. Gary comes to stay with them and it seems pretty idyllic, but "the mission" keeps interfering. It's mostly presented for laughs with Russell Brand as "God" keeping Gary on the crazy path, but there's an undercurrent of sadness undercutting it. As you'd expect, this is "based on a true story" and at the end there are clips of the real Gary. With a guy like this, Cage doesn't really have to stretch much to get the right amount of crazy, though he sounds like he took a few hits of helium before every scene to sound more like the real guy. It's pretty fun, especially if you like watching Nic Cage movies. (3/5)
Highland Park: I watched this mostly because it's about the Detroit suburb that I probably went through a few times. Like most of the area, Highland Park has fallen on hard times with auto plants closing and many of the businesses falling down and abandoned.
Six people who work in the local high school get together once a week to play their lottery numbers. They've been the same for about 10 years and the principal Lloyd is starting to think it's a lost cause. He has to also deal with a new round of budget cuts from the city's corrupt mayor (Parker Posey), which involves firing all his friends.
On the night his friends are fired, they still all go to the local bar to watch the lottery drawing. And guess what? Their numbers come up! The only hitch is that they allowed the former handyman Ed (Danny Glover) to pick up the ticket while he was up north with a friend. So there's no ticket to cash yet, but that doesn't stop them from somehow buying an RV, cars, and in Lloyd's case promising to revitalize much the city.
You can probably figure how what happens next: it turns out Ed didn't buy the right numbers! Now to me this brought up a plot hole as earlier they say two winnings tickets were sold: one in the UP and presumably the Highland Park people's. But if Ed didn't buy the right ticket, then who would have bought the other winning ticket? I mean if there was only one winner the media would have said that, so I had to think there were two and somehow we'd find out who had the other. But we don't.
Anyway, most of the stuff has to go back while Lloyd is a pariah for not being able to produce what he promised. But he does get a rich friend's help to at least make some of the promises happen. Overall it's a fun, heartwarming affair and while there aren't a lot of big names, everyone does well enough. Despite the seeming plot hole I'd recommend it. (3/5) (Fun Fact: There's a cookie scene at the end that implies Ed is going to make up for his previous failure.)
Kill Your Friends: It's like American Psycho only about the British record industry in 1998. Nicolas Hoult is an A&R scout who wants to get to the top, but things keep going awry. In Pat Bateman style he kills one of his coworkers (James Corden) but otherwise seems to keep getting outmaneuvered by others, like the secretary who forces him to get her a job as an A&R scout.
It's not a great movie and I had to put it on a couple of times because I kept falling asleep. There's murder and a lot of drugs, but it's still not all that interesting. (2/5)
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