Stuff I Watched: Late June-Late-July

 Here we go again.  About 2/3 of the movies on this list fall into two categories:  Stuff from Tony Laplume's list of 2021 movies that sounded interesting or crappy cheap Bruce Willis movies.  Not a lot of big movies because there hasn't been much coming out in the last month or so.  

Transformers:  Rise of the Beasts:  This really proved they learned nothing from the moderate success of Bumblebee.  Instead, they go right back to their bad habits, though maybe a few less bad jokes and stereotypical accents.  Like the 2010s X-Men movies they set this in the past even though it largely negates the movies that came out in the 2000s and 2010s.  The hook this time was they incorporate the Maximals from Beast Wars...and then do almost nothing with the Maximals.  Like most of the Bayformers, they have almost no personality; in this case they don't even have stereotypical accents or gimmicks to make them stand out in any way.  Rhinox and Cheetor barely get any lines while Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh is wasted as Airazor and Ron Perlman is wasted as Optimus Primal.  The bad guy is Scourge, who's almost nothing like the Scourge introduced in the 1986 movie.  But I guess they couldn't use Megatron/Galvatron so they had to come up with someone else who could be a bad guy.  For some reason he has spider or dog bot henchmen and there's a "Nightbird" who's nothing like the Nightbird in the original series and some other henchman who turns into a tow truck.  But who cares?  They have no personality either.  Bumblebee is "killed" early on so he's not in most of it.  Optimus Prime is nothing like how Optimus Prime should be; like in previous movies they make him a violent psychopath, who grudgingly learns to respect humans.  If that Optimus Prime died, I wouldn't have shed a tear like the original dying in 1986.  Wheeljack is nothing like Wheeljack.  Arcee is just there.  I didn't have any idea who "Stratosphere" was because I guess they basically made it for this movie, though I guess there was a toy for the second or third movie in 2009-2011.  Mirage is voice by Pete Davidson (ugh) and for some reason turns into a Porsche 911, which literally was Jazz in the original toys.  

Most of it focuses on puny humans when in most Transformers series the humans are just sidekicks.  There's a Latino guy who has a sick brother and is going to steal Mirage to make money.  And there's a black girl who's being overlooked at her job in a museum.  Then they join with the Autobots to find this movie's McGuffin:  the "transwarp key."  What is it?  Does it matter?  No.

Watching the movie on Paramount+ on my TV that's something like 4K, I can't even say the effects were good.  They actually looked pretty shitty in parts.  People who whined about Ant-Man 3 would definitely have a beef with this.

Like 2021's Snake Eyes, it really irritates me as a fan of the universe how little they manage to get right.  I'm not sure the many screenwriters watched a single second of Beast Wars or even the previous Transformers movies.  They should stop trying to do these big stories and just go back to "a boy/girl and his/her car that turns into a giant robot" stories.  That's the only way they can seem to make this work. (1/5) (Fun Fact:  About the only cool thing is the one human is recruited for GI Joe, hinting Hasbro is still trying to create a "cinematic universe" though with how this movie has done, I'm not sure it'll happen or even if this planned trilogy will happen.  Since the human was a communications guy I checked but he isn't named for Breaker or Dial-Tone, the two main GI Joe communications guys.)

High Heat:  No it's not a movie adaptation of the baseball video game from the 2000s.  My quip on Facebook:  imagine if Black Widow, instead of joining SHIELD and the Avengers, had opened a restaurant with Don Johnson?  That's basically the premise.  Ana, a former Russian agent (Olga Kurylenko of Black Widow, Quantum of Solace, and Oblivion--the Tom Cruise one) met Don Johnson and they got married.  And now in part thanks to some mob money they're opening a new restaurant.  It's going great until the mob shows up to burn the place down for insurance.  Then Ana has to use her particular set of skills--the one that doesn't involve cooking.  Overall it was surprisingly good, a mixture of humor and action without trying to ape a Tarantino or Guy Ritchie movie like others have done.  Though besides Kurylenko and Johnson there's no real big-name talent, it's pretty well done.  Better than I would have expected. It was also on Hulu.  (3.5/5)

The Bachelors:  I saw this on Amazon after I watched that Yellow Bird on the previous entry and it looked interesting.  It's an indie drama starring JK Simmons as a husband and father whose wife dies so he moves with his teenage son to a private school in LA.  While he meets a French teacher (Julie Delpy, who was in all those movies with Ethan Hawke), his son meets a girl in French class who cuts herself.  There are some good moments that get a bit dark...and then the movie wusses out by in the end falling back on easy answers.  Can't get over your wife's death?  Forget talking to a shrink, drugs, and shock therapy (which like the "Mind flayer" in The Mandalorian has been better calibrated these days to not be as bad as in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and instead just get rid of all your wife's shit.  Then go on a drive with the hot French teacher, your son, and the girl who cuts herself.  Problem solved!  Um...probably not.  But I guess in the real world it would take years and years to resolve the problem and who has the time? (3/5) (Fun Fact:  Kevin Dunn plays the school headmaster and was also in Transformers, which used "headmasters" as a gimmick.  That was really more of a bad joke than fun fact.)

Let's Kill Ward's Wife:  Also on Amazon, this indie crime comedy.  Ward (Donald Faison) has a real bitch of a wife.  His friends start to think, "We should just kill her."  Then one does, sorta accidentally.  One friend (Patrick Wilson) finds out online how to dispose of the body while the murderer and his wife find it sexually thrilling, Ward finds it liberating, and the only guy with no family is freaking out.  And then...it just ends.  At only 83 minutes this really needed to be longer.  I mean, usually in something like this there's a guy falling apart and they have to keep him silent and there's usually a cop who gets on their trail...but nope.  I guess they got away perfectly clean.  Hooray? (2.5/5)

The Virtuoso:  This isn't about someone playing musical instruments.  This is about Anson Mount as an assassin who has a job with some collateral damage.  Then he goes to a small town in the Poconos to find out who or what "White Rivers" is and in the process finds out some other assassins are in town.  It's slow but tense and well-crafted.  Voiceover can be annoying sometimes, but Mount's rich, soothing tones are nice; he should do relaxation videos.  It mostly avoids the cliches of assassin movies.  My only complaint is Anthony Hopkins should probably just retire; his soliloquy at one point was not really great but who's going to tell him to do another take, right?  It could have used someone a little more spry.  Abbie Cornish, Eddie Marsan, and a chubby David Morse also appear so it's a decent cast.  If not A-list then maybe B+ list.  (3.5/5) (Fun Fact:  Like The Ghostwriter or Layer Cake the main character's name is never given.  The credits just list the characters as "The Virtuoso," "The Waitress," "The Mentor," and even "The Dude," but not THAT the Dude; he does not abide in this movie.)

Needle in a Timestack:  Like The Time Traveler's Wife or The Lake House or other things, this is a love story but with a sci-fi twist.  The twist takes nearly a half-hour to show up though.  First we have Nick and Janine, a happy black middle class couple in the not-too-distant future.  Then all the sudden there's like this sort of tidal wave effect and everyone is just like, "Oh, another time slip."  Because apparently people who have enough money can travel in time and sometimes there are ripples that can change things.  There are even companies promising to safeguard your data during a time slip.  The first time it happens not much changes except the couple's dog is a cat.  But then there's a much bigger time slip and suddenly Nick is married to Alex, the girl he was seeing before Janine.  And Janine is with Tommy (Orlando Bloom) a rich guy who presumably is the one who changed things.  Then there's another time slip that leaves Nick with no one until the end where maybe things will end well.  Or maybe not?  I guess it's up to you. At one point early on Nick wonders if they used to have kids and it shows them playing with kids, but this point is never brought up again.

Overall it's a good story.  A little slow in parts.  Probably could have been cut by at least a half-hour if not cut down to a 45-50 minute episode of The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror.  I think both shows have probably done something similar.  And shows like The Outer Limits or whatever.  Still, it'd probably be a good watch with your significant other on Valentine's Day or an anniversary or date night.  Just saying. (3.5/5) (Fun Fact:  this is based on a story by Robert Silverberg, which I'm sure is pretty different from this since it was probably written a long time ago.)

Settlers:  This is a somewhat slow sci-fi movie in the tradition of Solaris or Moon.  It focuses on a family on Mars.  Apparently it's far enough in the future that there's been enough terraforming or whatever that they don't need spacesuits to walk around and can breathe and everything.  (I guess spacesuits are expensive to film in and probably hard to act in, especially for a kid.)  Then the family comes under attack and young Remmy's parents are killed.  The last third or so of the movie posits the question:  what would it have been like if young Bruce Wayne and Joe Chill had been stranded on a desert island together?  By that I mean, what if you were forced to live with the dude who killed your parents?  It's kind of icky and grim.  The end was pretty predictable.  I literally predicted it about 10 minutes in advance.  Like Needle in a Timestack, it leaves it up to you, the viewer, to decide how you want it to end.  Always kind of a dick move.  Still it wasn't bad overall. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  South Africa stands in for Mars.)

Die in a Gunfight:  This is supposed to be sort of like if Romeo and Juliet had survived but like Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca been separated for a few years before getting back together.  There's copious amounts of narration by Billy Crudup that's reminiscent of Ron Howard in Arrested Development and some crude animation.  Then the story gets underway and it wasn't really very interesting.  Honestly I couldn't really pay much attention.  I started reading instead.  The attempts to translate the Montagues and Capulets to modern day as rich media companies didn't really work.  The lovers, Ben & Mary, had very little chemistry.  And why the hell did Ben jump in the way of a bullet when he had a gun and could have just shot the guy instead?  It was pretty lame. (2/5)

Poker Face:  This isn't the Peacock series made by Rian Johnson.  This is a straight-to-streaming movie directed by and starring Russell Crowe.  He plays an aging rich guy who is dying.  He invites all his old friends to his mansion ostensibly for a poker game.  And then he slips them a truth serum drug so they reveal some secrets.  One guy reveals he told his brother about Russell Crowe's house and all the art inside.  And guess what?  The brother shows up with a goon and an art expert to steal the valuable art.  So then it turns into Panic Room as they go to a panic room--until Crowe's wife and daughter show up.  Some very mild mayhem ensues and things wrap up pretty easily.  It really wasn't as interesting or exciting as I thought it'd be.  A big chunk of the movie is just Crowe hanging out in an art gallery and meeting with a guru to get the truth serum drug.

From the description, I thought this movie was going to be like this old 70s movie on the Rifftrax site called Sisters of Death where a guy lures this sorority to his remote mansion to find out who killed his daughter 7 years earlier and then they start dying one-by-one.  Instead, like I said, it becomes more like a stripped-down Panic Room.  There's not even much poker in it!  And I'm not sure why one of his friends is played by Liam Hemsworth, who looks like an off-season Santa Claus.  Looking it up on IMDB, Hemsworth would only be 32 and in the movie Russell Crowe's character is 57, so how could they be childhood friends?  It really makes no sense.  There had to be another way to work Hemsworth into the plot if it was that important for him to be in it.  Overall it's competently made but not all that interesting.  (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  Crowe does some of the music for the movie, but I don't think he sings.  So viewers are spared that.  At one point I was thinking if Russell Crowe dyed his hair gray he would be great in an Ernest Hemingway biopic.)

The Little Things:  This was made by WB during the pandemic, so that's why I had never really heard much about it until I saw it on Hulu and finally watched it.  Maybe it was on HBO Max before I got rid of HBO or it might have been one of those where you could watch it at home for $20 or some absurd price but if so I never watched it.  The movie stars Denzel Washington as a Kern County deputy who goes to LA to pick up a piece of evidence.  But then he gets involved in the investigation of a serial killer that's led by Rami Malek.  They start investigating and you know the bad guy is going to be Jared Leto by that Family Guy bit on Law & Order logic where he was the only other big name we hadn't seen yet.  Except...is he the killer?  Or just a weirdo who wants to mess with the cops?  The answer is...inconclusive.  Overall while well made it's kind of slow.  No big chase scenes or anything like that.  It's supposed to be taut and gritty but ends up more sleepy and bland.  But Jared Leto gets hit with a shovel, which I found as satisfying as Pete Davidson getting shot in the face in The Suicide Squad.  You might want to stop and rewind that part a few times to savor it. (2.5/5) (Fun Facts:  the movie takes place sometime in the early 90s for...reasons.  I watched it on July 19th and on the door of one victim's refrigerator was a flyer advertising the then-unknown band No Doubt playing the Roxy on July 19th.  Serendipity!) 

Copshop:  I remember seeing commercials for this during the pandemic in 2021.  It's the kind of movie I probably would have rented on Redbox or whatever, but I never got around to it.  Then Tony Laplume did a mini-review of it and I found it on Peacock, so I watched it.  And wished I hadn't.

The movie is from Joe Carnahan, who after the fairly decent Narc has spent most of his career as a wanna-be Tarantino or Guy Ritchie with movies like Smokin' Aces.  This is just another of those.  A long-haired Frank Grillo gets himself arrested by punching a black female cop named Val Young.  She takes him back to a sheriff's office in Gun Lake, Nevada (GUN Lake, hardy har har) where soon enough Gerard Butler is brought in for drunk driving.  Butler is looking to kill Grillo but then things get more complicated when another assassin (Toby Huss of King of the Hill) shows up.  And supposedly exciting mayhem ensues but it was mostly just dumb and boring.  I guess we should be thankful Carnahan stopped at two wacky assassins for this one.

The problem is there are no characters I could really care about.  Grillo keeps whining about his family but that's all the depth his character has.  Butler has a sense of honor or something but there's very little to him.  Huss is just annoying.  Val Young is supposed to be the hero but the only backstory they give her is she has a spouse (not shown) and her grandpa or great-grandpa was a Nazi soldier in North Africa.  Ick.  The other cops in the "copshop" are less competent than the cast of Reno 911.  Really Lieutenant Dangle and company probably would have wrapped this up sooner.  It drones on and on for a while and in the end there's not even really any final resolution.  And Young's imitating Robocop's gun drawing technique really never had a payoff.  Just saying. (2/5)

Invincible: Atom Eve:  This wasn't exactly a TV episode and wasn't exactly a movie as it's about 55 minutes.  It's a prequel to Amazon's Invincible TV series that focuses on Atom Eve.  She has the power to control molecules and stuff.  She's sort of a cross between Captain Atom and a Green Lantern in how she can make stuff with "sparks" of energy.  This gives her origin story as being born to a woman with some kind of unnatural ability in a government facility.  The government doctor (Stephen Root) who helped to create Samantha Eve whatever her last name is, gives her to a normal family, but it soon becomes clear she doesn't really fit with them or anyone else.  By the time she's 12 she starts to fight crime though the doctor warns her not to because the government will come after them--which it does with freaks created from her mom's DNA.  Overall it was really good.  While it had some violence, it wasn't quite as graphic and gory as in Invincible.  I really wish I had watched the show more recently or read the comics more recently because I couldn't remember what all her deal was supposed to be except she becomes disillusioned with traditional superheroing and wants to do more to help people.  I don't remember if she used her Dark Phoenix mode in the main show either or if that's something that might come up later.  I wish this had been a little longer to maybe get into more about her superhero career and stuff before she met Invincible in high school.  Anyway, even if you didn't watch Invincible you could still watch that. (4/5) (Fun Fact:  A needless cookie scene shows us what Invincible is up to during that time...which isn't much.)

White Elephant:  The problem for this cheap straight-to-streaming movie I watched on Hulu is they spent a bunch of money to cast Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, and Michael Rooker.  Rooker is the only one who really does much.  So almost all of the other roles go to nobodies, which includes most of the important roles to the story.  The movie is about a small town in Georgia that for some reason has a bunch of powerful gangsters.  Willis plays the head bad guy, who has Rooker and a Latino former Marine kill some other bad guys.  A couple of local cops see them and while one is killed, the other (Olga Kurylenko) escapes and goes on the run.  Meanwhile, Rooker starts to have second thoughts because it's his dead wife's birthday.

At this point in his career, with his health issues, there's not much Bruce Willis can do.  Meanwhile, John Malkovich contributes pretty much nothing except a nonsensical ramble about ancient Greek justice, which would probably be noted "citation needed" on Wikipedia.  So they spent most of their casting budget on two old guys who hardly do anything.  Rooker is pretty good but the script doesn't help much.  We don't really get into the meaning of the title until about 3/4 of the way into the movie, when it barely matters.  It would have been better to take Malkovich's paycheck and use it to hire someone to play the Latino Marine who isn't about as menacing as a parking garage valet.  And besides budgetary reasons, why are all these gangsters hanging out in some tiny Georgia town instead of Atlanta or Savannah?  It made little sense.  While it's not boring, it's only barely passable entertainment. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  Rooker and Willis previously appeared together in an "original" movie on Tubi called Corrective Measures.  That was probably a little better than this.)

Paradise City:  No it's not a biopic of Guns N Roses.  It's another cheap action movie on Hulu!  Made by some of the same companies as White Elephant and with the same problem:  they spent money casting old guys who don't do a lot and leave most of the real stuff to actors who should probably only be guesting on an NCIS show.  One of the old guys is again Bruce Willis but this time he's the father of the guy who eventually turns out to be the hero--Blake Jenner.  Is he one of those Jenners?  I shudder to think.  Anyway, after Willis is seemingly killed, his son teams with Stephen Dorff for a little while to find the ones responsible.  But then Dorff is captured or something so most of the movie is Jenner and a Hawaiian woman running around Maui and Savannah-as-Hawaii to find the bad guys, who of course are led by John Travolta.  Anyway, it's slightly better than White Elephant but not a whole lot.  At least everyone probably got a week or two in Maui out of it. (2.5/5) (Fun Facts:  The Hawaiian girl's name is "Savannah" and they filmed part of the movie in Savannah!  To escape detection for crimes years earlier, Travolta's character gets plastic surgery; it's too bad the old him didn't look like Nicolas Cage for a whole Face Off thing.)

Wrong Place:  To complete the trilogy of crappy 2022 Bruce Willis movies I watched on Hulu--this!  It kind of irked me right away when Willis's daughter finds out she has cancer and has to have surgery and radiation therapy.  Then his wife at a dinner with him starts blathering about "God's plan"...and then she dies on the way home when they hit a deer.  So "God's plan" was to give his daughter cancer and then kill his wife?  Seems like a shitty plan to me.

We fast-forward a year to where the daughter might be a little skinny but otherwise doesn't look like she just had radiation treatments months earlier.  I mean she has long hair and everything.  Her father has retired from the local police force but starts working as a night watchmen for a pawn shop.  A couple of biker gang meth dealers chase a guy to the back door of the pawn shop and he wounds/busts one while the guy they were chasing dies.  The other biker guy takes Willis's daughter hostage to try to get the other guy sprung.

It was all pretty boring.  Again because Willis can't do enough to support the whole movie, the lion's share of the acting falls to unknowns.  I got bored so after eating my lunch I started reading comics and largely tuning out.  In the end Willis dies so I guess "God's plan" was to make the girl who had cancer an orphan.  Great plan! (2/5) (Fun Facts:  This was shot in Alabama instead of Georgia. This was written by "Bill Lawrence," but not the Bill Lawrence who's the creator of Scrubs and Cougar Town and showrunner of Ted Lasso.  He should probably sue to make the other guy go by William Lawrence or something.  I mean, when I saw that name I thought, "Why is that guy who did those good TV shows writing this piece of shit?!")

Midnight in the Switchgrass:  When I saw Tony Laplume had watched a cheap, lame action movie starring Bruce Willis and I hadn't, I was pretty annoyed.  How did I miss this?  So I found it on Peacock.  It is pretty lame.  Maybe slightly less cheap than the three above.  Willis is barely involved in this; he's not even around for the final resolution.  Mostly it's about Megan Fox going undercover and getting roofied by a creepy-looking trucker who, wouldn't you know, turns out to be a creep?  There's also another cop investigating who doesn't do much but does more than Willis.  While this wants to be Silence of the Lambs or something similar, it's really not.  It's not really exciting or thrilling.  The end especially was pretty lame, without much of a payoff.  I had to actually watch it a second time to make sure that was really it.  Barely passable entertainment. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  Text at the bottom of the screen calls the one cop guy's base "Division of Law Enforcement Florida" but his shirt says "FLED" and then he calls himself a state trooper to someone else.  Which is it?)

Survive the Game:  I found this on Tubi and it said it was leaving the next day...I should have just let it.  I mean even by the extremely low standards of the previous 4 movies on this entry it was really bad.  Like "it should be on Rifftrax" bad.  Willis is barely involved as a police...guy who's taken captive by some...people for...reasons.  I think mostly that moldy reason that he busted someone and that person's son wants revenge.  For...reasons the bad people take over a farm owned by Chad Michael Murray (remember him?!) whose family died a few months earlier because he was distracted while driving.  And since Willis is too old, some dude who looks like young Sam Elliott goes around playing Die Hard On the Farm.  If this had some better actors and not ones who went to the Ed Wood Acting Academy maybe this worn premise could have been entertaining.  But even Bruce Willis is obviously bored with this whole thing, making far less effort than any of the other movies listed despite that this was earlier than some of them. (1/5)  (Fun Facts:  The movie was made in Puerto Rico and for some reason when they're outside, the backgrounds look like green screen.  The sky is an insanely bright fake blue--or maybe it's like that in Puerto Rico?  I doubt it.  One of the female henchpersons looks like the "After" picture in an article about botched plastic surgery.)

Detective Knight:  Rogue:  The first in a hastily-made trilogy it's...pretty much like the other Bruce Willis movies on the list.  He's the title character but he still doesn't do a whole lot.  Maybe for insurance reasons he can't even drive a car anymore.  Most of it feels like a lamer version of that Echo Boomers movie I watched a couple of months ago about a crew of young people who rip off Boomers.  Though these young(ish) people--led by a former NFL quarterback--aren't so specific in who they heist from.  When a job in LA (actually Vancouver) goes bad and wounds Willis's partner, he and a black detective from the Caribbean somewhere (I don't know if they didn't say or I just wasn't paying attention) go to New York (still Vancouver) to find them.  There's some complication thrown in about the boss of the bad guys having some dirt on Willis but it's all really dull and lethargic and been-there, done-that feeling.  But hey, there's 2 more.  Yay? (2/5) (Fun Fact:  One of the robbers is Wayne Gretzky's son(?) and they steal a rare Wayne Gretzky card.)

Detective Knight:  Redemption:  The nonessential sequel!  So there's a nutty preacher who works as a prison counselor who along with some other guys dresses as Santa to knock off banks.  He says he's doing this to "liberate" people and get back at greedy banks.  I suppose no one told him (or the screenwriters) that most banks are insured so the only one he's screwing are taxpayers--mostly the non-rich ones who can't afford to hide assets offshore.  Knight (Bruce Willis) is in jail awaiting trial for the end of the last movie.  Then evil Santa breaks out some prisoners in the easiest escape since Pressure Point.  I mean there was basically five guards and only one had a gun.  The former quarterback from the last movie escapes with evil Santa and joins his crew, but tries to sell them out to get immunity.  Meanwhile, Knight is sprung to hunt down the bad guys, but his partner in a wheelchair actually does more "leg" work than he does.  Willis saves most of his energy for a gunfight at the end.  I clocked it and I don't think he even has a line until 26 minutes in!  He's probably the title character with the fewest lines since Superman in Batman v Superman.  Again it's all really dull and lethargic. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  In a rather incompetently staged cookie scene, Willis is returned to duty full-time.)

Detective Knight:  Independence:  The unnecessary trilogy is completed!  This time Knight (Bruce Willis--still) is back in "LA" (played by New Mexico this time) and basically bookends action scenes at the beginning and end and in the middle has a couple of lethargic scenes.  Most of it is about a paramedic (Jack Kilmer, who kinda looks like a young Val Kilmer, only without much talent) who gets fired and steals a baggy police uniform that for some reason he wears the badge on his belt and no one has a problem with it.  There's also no name plaque, rank insignia, department patch, or even a hat!  Stripper uniforms are more convincing!  For some reason even though banks are closed on 4th of July, a bank manager and a couple of guards are in one and then mayhem ensues.  That mayhem involves CGI effects about as bad as Birdemic or Jurassic Shark.  This was pretty much a step down, which is saying something.  With someone a little more spry in the lead, they probably could have done a slightly better job. (1.5/5)

The Old Way:  This is basically a cut-rate version of True Grit starring Nic Cage.  Only instead of a girl hiring a marshal to track her father's killer, a girl accompanies her father to find who killed her mother. Or I guess you could say it's like Road to Perdition in the Old West.  

Nic Cage (in a cheesy fake mustache) is a former gunfighter who 20 years ago killed a boy's father and uncle.  Then he met a woman and settled down on a farm and opened a general store--and took off the fake mustache.  They had a girl who's 12 when the boy who lost his father and uncle tracks down Nic Cage's farm and kills his wife.  So Nic and the girl set out to find him and his gang.  In the process they bond a little and he teaches her how to shoot and stuff.

While Nic isn't exactly young, he's still able to carry a whole movie, unlike Bruce Willis or some of the other actors mentioned above.  If you like modern westerns this wasn't bad.  It wasn't great either.  You wouldn't be unforgiven if you thought you'd already seen most of it in another movie. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  the bad guy's gang includes Abraham Benrubi of ER and Robot Chicken and also Clint Howard.  Seriously.)

One Way:  Another cheap action movie on Hulu, but this one is Bruce Willis free!  Instead there's bacon...Kevin Bacon.  Who does...almost nothing.  Seriously I think he was in that Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special more than this.  Marvel probably pays better than Saban Films.

Anyway, some dude named Freddy who looks like Robert Pattinson playing a meth head Vanilla Ice character has stolen some cocaine and money.  He gets on a bus going through Georgia.  There's a young girl and a pregnant woman and a creep on the bus.  The pregnant woman largely does nothing.  Most of the "action" is on the phone as he calls people trying to get a ride while the bad guys try to find him.  Kevin Bacon is his scummy dad who of course sells him out.  Overall it was OK but would have been better if it featured a main character we could actually give a shit about. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  Every bus station they stop at looks like an old KMart for some reason; since they never go in the stations I wouldn't be surprised if they just threw some lighted letters on an old KMart to save money.)

The Enforcer:  My tour of cheap action movies on Hulu continues!  This is a pretty typical story in a lot of ways.  Antonio Banderas is "Cuda" because he drives a Barracuda muscle car.  He takes on "Stray," a young fighter and meets a runaway girl he puts up in a motel.  She soon disappears and he finds out his employer (Kate Bosworth in an Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction wig) is courting the people who took the girl.  So he sorta incompetently goes on a killing spree to get revenge.  I mean he goes to this building and beats up the front door guard with a golf club.  The guard is wearing a bulletproof vest, but Banderas only takes the guy's gun.  The vest would really have helped him later.  I'm just saying.  Anyway, it's not a terrible movie.  It's just the kind that's entertaining enough for about 90 minutes. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  Most of this movie was made in Greece though it's supposed to take place in Florida.  Banderas recently played a Greek billionaire in The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard.)

The Locksmith:  Another cheap action movie on Hulu.  This time it's a pretty familiar story:  a guy gets out of prison and tries to avoid the old life until someone pulls him back in.  This time it's Ryan Philippe (looking like white Pedro Pascal) who is the eponymous locksmith who went to jail when a robbery went bad.  His partner was killed by a crooked cop.  Ten years later he's out of prison and someone (Ving Rhames) sets him up with a job and place to live.  After trying to go straight and reconnect with his wife (Kate Bosworth--not in a wig this time) and daughter, his dead partner's girlfriend convinces him to help her steal some money from her boss.  But things go wrong and soon crooked cops are after him and his family.  It's mostly predictable but again another that's entertaining enough for about 90 minutes. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  This is a rare movie actually filmed where it's supposed to take place--New Mexico.)

Twenty Years Later:  I originally saw this movie on the Movie House app but it was one of those that wouldn't play.  Eventually I decided to see if it was on another app and found it on Amazon/Freevee.  This is a low-budget movie funded by indiegogo back in 2014.  It's about 3 friends who 20 years ago hid a "treasure" and then 20 years later one of them is given the map for his birthday by his overbearing mother and dragoons the other two friends into helping him find it.

This is the sort of movie that would have been a lot better with a real budget so it could have had actual actors, better cameras, locations that didn't seem like they were all in a recently built subdivision, and so on.  For what it is, it's an OK story about friends who drifted apart coming back together and reforging their bond.  It's just not really professional quality but not so bad that it'd be a good Rifftrax. (2.5/5) (Fun Facts:  the movie was shot entirely in Michigan, though I don't know where.  At one point one guy tosses a baseball and when another guy drops it, he's like "Nice one, Alan Trammell," who of course was a shortstop for the Tigers for 20 years; the captioning actually calls him Alvin Trammell, lol.  The writer/producer/director is this guy with a caveman forehead who of course gets to have sex with the hot girl way, way out of his league.  Can you say, "casting couch?")

The Search for Simon:  Like the previous entry, I first saw this on the Movie House app but it wouldn't play.  Eventually I found the "Director's Cut" on Tubi.  This is similarly a crowd-funded indie movie originally from around 2014 but it's British and made a little better.  Writer/director/producer/star Martin Gooch (who looks like older, skinnier Nick Frost) is David Jones, who believes his brother Simon was abducted by aliens 30 years ago.  Winning 63,000 quid in the British lottery has helped him to travel the world in a fruitless search for aliens.  Meanwhile his obsession has made even long-time friends embarrassed for him while a shrink wants to use him for a book.  In the shrink's support group, he meets a girl and quickly ruins her life.  Then the truth about Simon comes out.  There are funny parts, weird parts, and dramatic parts with a happy ending that uses a clever way to give David what he really needs.  The production values aren't great because obviously it's pretty low budget but it was still a decent movie. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  "Gothic Horror" is an anagram of "Martin Gooch" as shown in the opening.  One of the places David searches for Simon is in Offutt's backyard in Utah and it was the same year I was there.)