Borderlands (2024) Film Review!

Returning to her home planet Pandora, an infamous bounty hunter forms an unexpected alliance with a ragtag team of misfits. Together, they battle alien monsters and dangerous bandits to uncover one of Pandora’s most explosive secrets.

Borderlands is directed by Eli Roth director of Cabin Fever (2002), Hostel (2005), Hostel: Part II (2007), The Green Inferno (2013), Knock Knock (2014), Death Wish (2018), The House With a Clock In its Walls (2018) and Thanksgiving (2023). Borderlands is based on the video game series of the same name.

Borderlands was never going to be something decent, the movie was in development hell for years, nobody seemed to want to do the project at all, writers left the project it was a gigantic mess that predictably ended up being a trainwreck. Especially when the trailer came out, that’s pretty much the point where the movie’s fate was sealed.

The best way I can describe Borderlands is if you took everything that people (myself included) loved about the Guardians Of The Galaxy movies and somehow made it terrible. It’s very clear Borderlands was going trying to do what GOTG did from the character types to some of the approach to humor. The problem is none of it adds up to anything and falls completely flat in every single category.

The acting quite terrible here, Cate Blanchett gives an incredibly bland performance. We get very little backstory to her character Lilith and what we do get ultimately gets lost in the movie, Kevin Hart and Florian Munteau are about the same as Blanchett they aren’t necessarily horrible but feel incredibly out of place (seriously why was Kevin Hart casted as Roland?) Jack Black, Jamie Lee Curtis and Ariana Greenblatt are the worst offenders here. Jack Black as Claptrap is incredibly harmful to the ears and delivers the worst jokes of the movie. Jamie Lee Curtis gives one of if not her worst performance of her career, this is the very definition of phoning in a performance because there was no passion at all here. Finally Ariana Greenblatt is mostly hurt due to the writing, you can tell she’s trying at times but when you have a line such as “I think some of it went into my mouth” (it being piss) you really can’t do much at all.

The writing is the main offender of why this movie immediately falls apart, there’s no development for any of these characters or any moment where the movie tries to make you care about them. It’s all stock character personalities that aren’t even expanded upon, the story is nothing interesting at all and has had similar plots been executed far better elsewhere. The main villain Atlas is forgettable and shows up during the third act of the movie, no build up, no interesting background information about him absolutely nothing. It really feels like they completely forgot to put him in the movie so they shoehorned him in at the very last minute.

What made GOTG so excellent and why it worked for many people is the characters, they got the proper development they needed, they were written incredibly well and there was genuine emotion put into them. Something that made them feel surprisingly realistic despite being in a superhero film. Borderlands fails to do any of that throughout it’s painful 101 minute running time, I’m not trying to say I expected masterful writing but at the very least try to make your audience care about what your putting on screen.

We have seen some recently strong video game adaptions such as Fallout or Sonic The Hedgehog so I do think Borderlands could have worked if it was a series, it needed far better writing, direction and a lot more time to craft it’s characters. Overall Borderlands takes the cake as the worst movie of the year so far.

Borderlands is available on all VOD platforms.

Disgrace To Cinema F

The Beast (2024) Film Review

As artificial intelligence reigns, emotions have become a threat; to get rid of it, Gabrielle must purify her DNA by diving back into her past lives; she finds a great love there as well as a bad feeling.

The Beast is directed by Bertrand Bonello director of Nocturama (2016), Zombi Child (2019), Coma (2022), On War (2008) and a few others.

The Beast is a powerful one, dealing with many themes such as loss, narcissism, loneliness and much more.

To start off the performances are all fantastic here Léa Seydoux and George MacKay bounce off of each other during their conversations in a very natural way that’s quite beautiful and moves the story along at a beautiful pace. But it’s the performance by Seydoux that’s the standout and is honestly a career best worthy performance, she is able to adapt to the film’s many themes and time periods the film uses. Each new period we learn something new about her character Gabrielle which she gets more and more investing as the film goes on.

Seydoux also blends incredibly well with the film’s mysterious atmosphere, I’ve talked before about the sense of the unknown in some other reviews, this film uses that cleverly. Each time period, each scene or even dialogue you never know what’s going to happen. The film challenges the viewer to look at the film closely and try to figure out what exactly is going on here, it takes a lot of turns that I most certainly wasn’t expecting but glad the film made the decisions it did.

The script is incredibly well written, it tackles the themes of loss, loneliness and such incredibly well. Particularly loss, throughout these time periods there’s this sense of the characters losing parts of their lives, given what ends up happening in the film that does seem to be the case. It’s haunting yet beautiful portrayal of loss that is quite different from how other films portrayed it as. Loneliness mostly comes from the atmosphere and just the storytelling, it really seems abandoned especially towards the end that really hits you with the loneliness feel. It’s quite scary, raw but at the same time beautiful.

Speaking of which the film itself is beautifully shot, it’s one of the best looking films so far this year and that really comes from just how fluently the film moves, how the story adds to the cinematography, the character’s movements and so much more.

The Beast is definitely not going to be for everyone, as it does take a lot of time to get going. However if you are patient the film rewards the viewer greatly, it’s a fascinating film that I do highly recommend checking out.

The Beast is available on all VOD platforms.

10/10 A+

A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) Film Review

When New York City comes under attack from an alien invasion, a woman and other survivors try to find a way to safety. They soon learn that they must remain absolutely silent as the mysterious creatures are drawn to the slightest sound.

A Quiet Place: Day One is directed by Michael Sarnoski who previously directed Pig (2021). A Quiet Place: Day One is the third installment to the Quiet Place series and serves as a spin-off and prequel to the first film.

The first two Quite Places films are quite excellent, some of my favorite modern horror films that I’m glad to see get a lot of love. When I heard Michael Sarnoski’s next film after Pig (2021) a film in which is one of my favorite films of the 2020s so far was going to be a new Quiet Place film I was very intrigued where he was going to take the series. Sarnoski definitely took the franchise in a much different direction that’s for sure, a direction that some fans may not like but I absolutely loved for sure.

To start out with the performances are fantastic, Lupita Nyong’o once again shows that she is one of the best actresses working today, a lot of this film really relies on her and Joseph Quinn (who I will get to in a second) and they both absolutely nail it. Nyong’o’s character Samira is a terminally ill cancer patient who is slowly but surely dying, she absolutely feels this and seems to just sort of accept that she’s dying. However there’s a lot of nuance to the performance especially in later scenes as we get to know Samira as a character that leads to some of the most beautiful moments in this series so far.

Nyong’o just interacting with the rest of the cast is captivating she brings so much emotion to this series and perfectly captures the atmosphere around her, there’s one scene in particular during the last half of the film that brought me to tears, it’s a moment that I strongly believe is the best scene of the series so far. Between the build up to the scene, the direction and the performances from Nyong’o and Quinn it’s truly beautiful that truly made me cry.

Joseph Quinn is the other half of this film, his character Eric sort of just decides to join Samira and honestly that’s a pretty real depiction if an alien invasion actually happened, right from the start the viewer can tell Eric has a ton of anxiety and is alone, he’s in shock, has tons of anxiety and does not want to go back to being alone. Eric’s introduction is some of the best character introduction I’ve seen in a film so far this year and just seeing Eric and Samira interact with one another, talking about their backstories is just truly beautiful. Combined together Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn give powerhouse performances that end up being some of the very best so far this year.

A performance I was not expecting to be this good was Frodo the cat who is actually played by two different cats Nico and Schnitzel. Frodo actually plays quite a lot of important parts to the story and I’m not exactly sure how they are able to get a cat to jump around, or climb that perfectly but it’s truly fascinating how great Nico and Schnitzel are. Frodo is Samira’s cat and throughout the film he’s a lookout for any danger and does quite a good job of doing so.

As I’ve hinted at from talking about the performances, Michael Sarnoski focuses much more on the human elements of the series rather than the monsters, sure there are some action and chase scenes that are still very effective. But that’s not the main focus here, much like when Pig (2021) was about Nicolas Cage and the people he interacts with. A Quiet Place: Day One is very similar only less characters, heck there’s this theme of life and death throughout the film. Samira wants to do one last thing before she dies, as she goes on this journey with Eric she tells the viewer a bit about her life every so often until we are eventually given that scene I mentioned earlier that made me cry (which I won’t spoil). Sarnoski does such a fantastic job of bringing such a fresh direction to the series and gives us such a powerful character filled moment story.

Overall A Quiet Place: Day One is one of the best films so far this year, never did I expect to cry my eyes out to a film in the Quiet Place series. But as they say life is full of surprises.

A Quiet Place: Day One is currently in theaters.

10/10 A+

Ultraman Rising (2024) Film Review

When Tokyo is threatened by giant monsters, an all-star athlete reluctantly returns home to take on the mantle of Ultraman, and become a legendary hero.

Ultraman Rising is directed by Shannon Tindle which is his directorial debut.

I don’t know much about Ultraman I’ve seen maybe one or two of the films, so I went into this one blindly. Luckily it does seem like (from what I’ve read from people who are fans) is that this movie takes place in a new timeline.

What sticks out immediately is the animation which is quite beautiful and incredibly fun to look at, there’s a lot of attention to detail with the character designs that add to the film’s characters. Plus the world the film takes place in has a lot of style, which only adds to the film’s already high level of charm. So when it comes to style Ultraman Rising nails it completely but what about script and character wise?

Well the characters and script are quite fun as well, there’s this whole parental/child story that’s quite charming. Ken (voiced by Christopher Sean) is quite an interesting character he juggles around being a father, a baseball player and Ultraman during the course of the film. Which ultimately leads into some quite touching moments.

The film is much more about parents and children than it is about fighting monsters, which was actually surprised about but it’s a very welcoming choice that while not every single viewer will get behind if you dig these types of stories and are looking for more than just fighting giant monsters you get that here.

While I don’t think the film is doing anything brand new with the parent and children plot line, it’s charming enough to grab the viewer’s attention and really invest into these characters.

Ultraman Rising is available on Netflix.

7/10 B

Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes (2024) Film Review

Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he’s been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.

Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes is directed by Wes Ball who previously directed all three of The Maze Runner films.

Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes is a standalone sequel to War Of The Planet Of The Apes. It’s the fourth film in the Planet Of The Apes reboot films and is the tenth overall film of the franchise.

Planet Of The Apes is a film franchise that I truly love and I’m always excited to hear when a new installment is releasing, I wasn’t sure how they could follow up from the excellent Matt Reeves trilogy (Rise, Dawn and War) but I was interested to see what they were going to do.

This film takes 300 years after War the previous film, Ceaser is dead and almost immediately one of the film’s main themes comes into play…manipulation and twisting someone’s words to mean something else entirely. In this case that someone is Ceaser who taught peace between humans and apes, the film’s main villain Proximus completely alters that and manages to create a clan of apes that believe whatever he says.

The introduction of Proximus is really excellent here, he’s a manipulative monarch that uses others to get what he wants. What really makes him excellent is he’s played by Kevin Durand who gives my favorite performance of the film, what really fascinates me is Durand’s performance whether intentional or not comes off as a direct opposite of Andy Serkis’s performance as Ceaser. Ceaser used his emotions accordingly and was genuinely excellent leader, that came with Andy Serkis completely hitting it out of the park. Proximus is manipulative and has so much power in his voice.

Proximus as a villain is also a lot of fun as well, every time you see him on screen you just sort of want to be the fly in the room to hear the conversations that are being had to get the full impact. It all comes from Kevin Durand’s performance that always makes sure to never go over the top and to truly capture Proximus’s manipulative nature.

The rest of the cast are quite great here Owen Teague plays the main protagonist Noah who the film centers around, a lot of the film is sort of creating a hero’s journey type of story which although not entirely new everything else around it really makes up for it. Peter Macon as Raka and Freya Allan as Mae are also some standouts as well. I don’t think the three are as strong character wise as Proximus is, but they are still a lot of fun and the world around them does compliment them well.

One of the best parts of Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes is the atmosphere and the world itself, almost immediately we are struck by incredible visuals that completely capture the beauty of the Reeves trilogy. The film’s beginning moments really set up and give the viewer an idea of what to expect as it takes you on the journey. The atmosphere during the action scenes and the third act is truly fantastic, it’s suspenseful and truly leaves you at the edge of your seat. There’s so much going on and the amount of detail the film goes over is truly great, what’s also great here is that you genuinely care about these characters. Noah starts out as a very basic protagonist but as the film goes on you really start to care for him, you want him to save his family and to succeed in his goal.

Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes is a worthy sequel to War and is a very promising start to a new trilogy, I am very interested to see exactly where they go with this series!

Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes is playing in theaters.

9/10 A

Atlas (2024) Film Review

A brilliant data analyst with a deep distrust of AI finds it may be her only hope when a mission to capture a renegade robot goes awry.

Atlas is directed by Brad Peyton who has previously directed Cats & Dogs: The Revenge Of Kitty Galore (2010), Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012), San Andreas (2015), Incarnate (2016) and Rampage (2017).

Look going into Atlas I didn’t expect an Oscar worthy masterpiece especially given a majority of Brad Peyton’s previous work. However there comes a point where “this movie is dumb” isn’t an excuse anymore, the problem here is Atlas is incredibly painful to sit through and quite frankly one of the ugliest and horribly written movies I’ve seen so far this year. Heck there is an argument to be made that this is THE worst movie so far this year.

The performances are dreadful even great actors such as Sterling K. Brown can’t save this mess (it doesn’t help that he really isn’t given a whole lot to really do.) Simu Liu is a terrible villain who’s incredibly one note and has so little to offer performance wise, Jennifer Lopez is truly terrible here as well. I’m not entirely sure what she was going for here, but if it was to come off as a badass heroine she completely missed the mark, her character Atlas Shepherd has no meaningful character development. She’s thrown at the viewer and the movie expects the viewer to instantly connect with her which is not exactly how character development and connecting the viewer with a character works.

The biggest problem here is Atlas has nothing going for it, the movie contains every single sci-fi trope you could possibly think of, it borrows from so many other far better movies, books and video games of the same genre but forgets to do something interesting with those ideas. The writing doesn’t bother to explore anything about this world, the most you get is a brief introduction at the beginning and that’s about it. You are left in the dark for the rest of the movie which is 2 hours which it clearly did not need to be that long.

The movie itself is ugly, the CGI is incredibly undercooked and really seems like it was rushed out the door for release, even the big CGI moments in this movie look disastrous. I have seen straight to video sci-fi films that look far more appealing to the eye than this, films where there was so much passion and even if they didn’t have the best writing you still respect the amount of work that was put into making them. I can’t say the same for Atlas this is a prime example of a sci-fi movie that fails on every single level.

Atlas is available on Netflix

Disgrace To Cinema F

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024) Film Review

Godzilla and the almighty Kong face a colossal threat hidden deep within the planet, challenging their very existence and the survival of the human race.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is directed by Adam Wingard who has previously directed Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), Death Note (2017), Blair Witch (2016), The Guest (2014), You’re Next (2013) and a few others. The film servers as a sequel to Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), the fifth film in the Monsterverse and the 38th film in the overall Godzilla franchise.

I was kind of excited for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire especially after its predecessor Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) which was a genuinely fun movie that I would even go as far as to say that I really liked it. Unfortunately with The New Empire a lot of what made the previous movie exciting is completely absent here and is very noticeable drop in quality.

Rebecca Hall is pretty solid here once again and the addition of Dan Stevens who’s just having the time of his life here is always great. Stevens is some of the movie’s best moments mainly due to making the human character parts more fun and a bit more interesting. Where as I actually did not mind the human characters in the previous movie, it does feel like once again the human characters have become such a chore to watch, they were poorly written in Godzilla: King Of The Monsters (2019) and they are somehow even more poorly written here.

The action scenes with Godzilla and King Kong are fine enough, but part of the charm with the previous movie is we hadn’t seen Godzilla and Kong face off on the big screen in years. This movie doing the exact same sort of thing again loses the impact and hype that the first movie left the viewer. It doesn’t help that there really isn’t anything here that makes the movie itself standout. Sure the fights look really neat and there’s undeniably some cheer worthy moments, but is there really anything here that’s particularly memorable?

If anything the monsters interacting with each other Suko and King Kong for example is genuinely funny at times (the rest of the humor just does not work at all) and much more memorable than a lot of the action scenes. The New Empire really seems like they put together a half baked plot and threw some monsters on the screen and said “let’s hope for the best.” I wasn’t expecting an Oscar worthy script but seeing how the Monsterverse has shown in the past that there can be really great writing, it’s disappointing to see it get bogged down this low.

Having that said I did have fun with this movie for the most part, but this is definitely something I’m never going to go back to. If you just want some neat action scenes you might like this fine enough.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is available on all VOD platforms.

5/10 C

Breathe (2024) Film Review

Maya and her young daughter, Zora, are forced to live underground when Earth is left uninhabitable due to a lack of oxygen. When a mysterious couple arrive and claim to know the fate of Maya’s husband, she tentatively agrees to let them into the bunker. However, mother and daughter soon find themselves in a fight for survival when the truth about the strangers comes to light.

Breathe is directed by Stefon Bristol director of See You Yesterday (2019).

My only question after watching Breathe is how in god’s name were they able to get this much talent in this movie? Jennifer Hudson? Common? Quvenzhané Wallis? What exactly is going on here? The script reads like someone had no brainstorming going on and just decided to write it without any sort of outlining or any plan at all.

Milla Jovovich and Sam Worthington are also here which doesn’t help the movie all that much, the characters in general are just horribly written with very little personality outside of cliche character traits. The acting is abysmal, it’s very baffling to see some of these very talented people give performances that could be strongly considered as some of the worst performances so far this year. Jennifer Hudson is given so little to work with from the script despite being the lead, in fact that can be said for everyone involved. The script is so predictable, so terribly written and a huge waste that none of the people involved can pull off a somewhat decent performance.

The movie also spends a pretty decent amount of time with simply trying to open a door, it might have been one thing if the dialogue was at least interesting or there was some sort of mind game going on or maybe an investing back and forth. But unfortunately that’s not what you get here, instead you get some incredibly bad dialogue that makes you want to turn this movie off.

What else can I really say? Breathe is one of the worst movies so far this year, it fails on every single level. How they got so many recognizable names to sign on to this movie is going to remain life’s biggest questions.

Breathe is available on all VOD Platforms.

Disgrace To Cinema F

Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver (2024) Film Review

A colony on the edge of the galaxy fights for survival against a tyrannical ruling force, relying on the efforts of a small group of rebels.

Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver is directed by Zack Snyder who has directed by Rebel Moon (2023), Army Of The Dead (2021), Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice (2016), Dawn Of The Dead (2004), Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021), 300 (2007) and many others.

Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver is only a slight improvement over the first movie, in fact a majority of my criticisms and positives I had with part one can be applied with this one. It’s honestly not that much different outside of largely taking place on a farm which does hurt the scale of the movie quite a lot.

Anthony Hopkins at least is given more to do this time around and he remains as one of the positives of the movie. The same can be said with Sofia Boutella who really tries her very best with the script she’s given, unfortunately it’s not enough to get the viewer into the movie despite once again giving a decently fun performance. One improvement this movie does have over it’s predecessor is Ed Skrein is a bit better here, we are definitely given a lot more about him as a villain and he honestly does a better job this time around even if there are some incredibly lacking areas.

The movie itself is once again beautiful to look at, even though we are restricted to the farm for a majority of the movie. There are still a lot of really solid shots that are undeniably beautiful, finally there’s the action scenes which are pretty neat. They aren’t anything completely mind blowing but are absolutely one of the movie’s best parts.

Unfortunately that’s where this movie ends for me, a major issue I had with part one is it completely failed to make the viewer care about the characters and did not give them any meaningful character development. That applies with part two, sure we are given crumbs but not anything the viewer can really work with, it doesn’t help that the writing is once again very sloppy and remains completely hollow character wise. There’s nothing here that makes the viewer want to invest in these characters at all, it’s all very mindless and goes on for way too long until it decides to end.

It’s a shame really because I want to like these movies, I want to be invested in the movie’s world and it’s characters but unfortunately the movie gives very little reason for the viewer to really care at all. Perhaps Zack Snyder’s cut of this movie and part one (hasn’t been released at the time this was written) will expand on these characters and the world but for now this is a complete mess.

Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver is available on Netflix.

4/10 D+

The Animal Kingdom (2024) Film Review

In a world hit by a wave of mutations transforming humans into animals, François does everything he can to save his wife. As some of the creatures disappear into a nearby forest, he and their son embark on a quest that will change their lives.

The Animal Kingdom is directed by Thomas Cailley who previously directed Love at First Flight (2014).

The Animal Kingdom is definitely an interesting one for sure, the film takes place in a world where humans gradually transform into animals. We follow François (played by Roman Duris) and his son Émile (played by Paul Kircher) who go on a journey together which becomes quite an experience.

Going into this movie I did not really know what to expect, but the movie delivers quite well, for starters the performances from both Kricher and Duris are fantastic. The father and son bond works incredibly well and the two share a lot of heartwarming moments between one another, the body horror elements are quite neat as well with some neat looking visuals. The theme of change is present throughout the film and how the characters have to go through it, although this isn’t something new as many films before have explored this before. The way the film goes about it with the whole animal transformation element makes it much more interesting and in a way sort of sad.

If there’s one major criticism it’s most definitely the running time which is 130 minutes long, the ideas of the film start to lose steam towards the end due to just how long the film goes on and it starts to repeat itself a bit. It also does lose its focus towards the end as well, like it almost forgets what it’s exactly trying to say.

However that really is not enough to stop the film from being quite beautiful, it’s a beautifully told film with a mix of great makeup and visual effects that do a really great job of telling the story. Some of the film’s strongest moments is Émile interacting with the animals, you can tell through the expressive visual effects and makeup the feelings and actions of the animals and what they are thinking. Which really fits for this movie!

Overall The Animal Kingdom might not be saying anything incredibly new but it is a very interesting film that executes its ideas quite well for the most part!

The Animal Kingdom is available on all VOD platforms.

7/10 B