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Sequels everywhere!

Seems to be the month of sequels as I've watched 3 recently - Paddington in Peru, Moana 2 and Gladiator 2. All three of them are good if you liked the previous ones - they're playing up to their target audiences. But...

Gladiator 2 is so similar to the first movie, that you could be mistaken for thinking it is a remake. It reprises just 1 character from the original and is set a number of years later, but the meat of the plot is the same. Which I guess you'd kind of expect given that they called it Gladiator again.

Likewise, Moana 2 is again very similar to the first - she sails off, fights a god etc... There is at least some character development for her and some new songs, although nothing as good IMHO as "You're Welcome". It looks like they're going to do a third one too.

Paddington in Peru at least mixes things up, by having the story change location from London back to Paddington's birth place of Peru. But it is still Paddington getting into all kinds of silly trouble and styling it out with hilarious consequences. Its saving grace is Banderas - he seems to be having a whale of a time playing the villain.

Thoughts on Juror no. 2

Time for another #MovieReview . So I watched Juror no.2 and enjoyed it a lot. It's about a man serving jury duty on a murder case who realises that it is almost a certainty that he accidentally killed the victim, not the accused. The accused is a former gang member so the police and prosecution team are utterly biased towards him as the prime suspect, to the extent they didn't even consider anyone else. And despite the evidence being pretty flimsy, the majority of the jury think he's guilty too for a variety of reasons, mostly ones that are not geared towards giving him a fair trial. So the protagonist is stuck between sending a not so innocent man to jail or face going to jail himself and I found it very interesting to see it play out. I'd like to say more, but I'm wary of giving spoilers for this one. Not that it is particularly full of unexpected twists, but there is more to the plot than I've mentioned that makes the film more complicated.

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Red One review

Red One was awesome. Santa gets kidnapped by mercs and his head of security (Johnson) gets a person famed for his ability to find people (Evans) to help rescue him. It is very funny and silly. Just the sort of thing to take your mind off the drudgery of life. I think I prefer Violent Night, but that is more because the violence is more realistic - with this being a kids movie, you know that no-one is going to get actually hurt even though they really should. Like when Evans' character is slapped into oblivion and comes away with barely a scratch. But you're not watching it for the violence, you're watching it for the laughs which like a lot of movies aimed at kids, it has some humour aimed for the older audience too. I'm also seriously impressed and envious of how ripped J. K. Simmons was, although maybe he's always this buff, but cos he's usually wearing a shirt we didn't notice? #MovieReview

My thoughts on Anora

I can't remember where I read it, but someone likened Anora to Pretty Woman. Whilst there are some basic similarities, I'm not sure I'd entirely agree though. It has the basic premise of sex worker meets a rich man and there's the plot element of him buying her for a week. But Ivan is not at all like Edward - he's an immature, spoiled brat who is only rich because his parents fund his lavish lifestyle. And also the majority of the movie concerns the fall out from them getting married and his parents trying to get it annulled. Overall, I think I enjoyed it though - it has some funny parts, some sad parts, but the story is crucially engaging. And ultimately it is not the fairy tale that Pretty Woman portrays - it is a very realistic plot of what would happen in this situation I think. #MovieReview