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Tag Archive: Paramount+

Now streaming–Wrath of Man falls short for a Jason Statham action fix

April 30, 2022

Review by C.J. Bunce

Taking on your next Jason Statham movie is a lot like flashing back to the 1980s and early 1990s to watch the next Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. Both almost-A list but really B list actors mastered the tough guy genre of their eras, and both have movies that can always be looked back on again and re-watched by fans. Along with those better-quality flicks are those movies that lag behind the others by way of storytelling, energy, and action. Unfortunately Guy Ritchie’s Wrath of Man falls in the latter camp–with cardboard characters and a preposterous script even for a “movie for guys who like movies” flick. It’s not among the best Statham movies nor a great Ritchie movie.

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Tags: Andy Garcia, Babs Olusanmokun, Eddie Marsan, Gerald Tyler, Guy Ritchie, Holt McCallany, Jason Statham, Jason Statham movies, Jeffrey Donovan, Now streaming, Paramount Plus, Paramount+, Wrath of Man, Wrath of Man movie review

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Infinite–Defending Your Life meets Altered Carbon and Assassin’s Creed on Paramount+

Filed under: Fantasy Realms, Movies, Sci-Fi Café, TV — Leave a comment

April 29, 2022

Review by C.J. Bunce

Streaming service Paramount+’s 2021 release Infinite has elements of Fast & Furious, Doctor Strange, Bloodshot, Captain America: Winter Soldier, New Mutants, The Adjustment Bureau, and Mortal Kombat. Lots of tropes are blended into this expensive, giant, sci-fi action fantasy mash-up. Infinite isn’t as good as any of these movies, but if you subscribe to Paramount+ you’ll find worse ways to spend a few hours.

The biggest surprise is Infinite is not derived from an existing property like a video game or comic book. At the center is Mark Wahlberg as a man named Evan McCauley, raised to believe he was schizophrenic (a la Moon Knight) only to find he is part of a supernatural truth where 500 people have the power to recall their reincarnated pasts, and he’s one of them–only he doesn’t remember.

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The Godfather’s 50th anniversary arrives with a movie and a series about how they made it

Filed under: Backstage Pass, Movies, Retro Fix, TV — Leave a comment

April 1, 2022

Fifty years ago this week The Godfather premiered in theaters across America. That fiftieth anniversary is netting more than one re-creation from Hollywood of the making of that movie. Barry Levinson is directing Francis and The Godfather, a movie starring Oscar Isaac as The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola facing off against Jake Gyllenhaal as producer Robert Evans (an actor who eventually produced Chinatown), with Elle Fanning as Ali MacGraw, and Elisabeth Moss as Eleanor Coppola. It began filming last year, so expect it in theaters or streaming by year end.

Before that arrives, a limited series that is also about the making of The Godfather is heading to streaming service Paramount+ next month. The Offer has an impressive cast, all seemingly well cast against their real-life counterparts. Dan Fogler (Fantastic Beasts) plays Coppola, Matthew Goode (Watchmen) plays Evans, and Miles Teller (Fantastic Four, Top Gun: Maverick) plays producer Albert S. Ruddy.

Here is the trailer for The Offer:

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Now streaming–Scream gets it right the fifth time around

Filed under: Movies, Retro Fix, TV — Leave a comment

March 19, 2022

Review by C.J. Bunce

When we think of the big horror franchises, Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street come to mind. But for audiences coming of age in the 1990s, you may need to add Scream to that list. Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette, and Skeet Ulrich are back again in the unlucky town of Woodsboro, where the serial killers behind the long “ghostface” mask first made their mark on the town 25 years ago. Another movie delayed by the pandemic, this new Scream delivers goofy slasher horror fun with all the right beats, proving once and for all this franchise is here to stay. Scream is now in theaters and available on streaming platforms including Paramount+ and Amazon Prime.

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Paramount unveils first trailer for second season of Star Trek: Picard

Filed under: Sci-Fi Café, TV — Leave a comment

June 17, 2021

When we last saw Patrick Stewart′s good Captain Jean-Luc Picard, he seemingly died and came back to life as something new. In the first season of CBS All Access’s latest live-action Star Trek incarnation, Star Trek: Picard, audiences met a primarily new crew of characters supporting the efforts of Picard–and a range of good villains. Stewart has said he decided to bring his character back to the screen because of the role he performed for even more years than Picard–Charles Xavier in the X-Men series–specifically the strong finish he was able to give the character in James Mangold’s Oscar-nominated finale Logan. Stewart succeeded, as Star Trek: Picard showcased the beloved character as Old Man Picard and wrapped far better fans’ last meeting with not only Picard, but Data, Riker, and Troi, too. And surprisingly it did that for Star Trek Voyager, specifically for Jeri Ryan′s Seven of Nine, who also had a rather anticlimactic finale in the last episode of that series.

Now audiences have a first look at Season 2, and an official poster with hints at a voyage back to an era closer to our own time as seen in Star Trek Voyager and Star Trek IV–and echoes of the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Check it out below.

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Infinite trailer–Mark Wahlberg supernatural action thriller arrives in June

Filed under: Movies — Leave a comment

May 31, 2021

If you secretly wished the winner of the top spy contest in Kingsman: The Secret Service was Eggsy’s friend Roxy, you’ll get to see what that might have looked like in the new Mark Wahlberg supernatural thriller Infinite. The Kingsman’s Sophie Cookson, Chiwetel Ejiofor (Doctor Strange, The Old Guard), Rupert Friend (Obi-Wan Kenobi), and the prolific Toby Jones (Captain America: The First Avenger, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Doctor Who, Snow White and The Huntsman, The Hunger Games) join the typically wise-cracking Bostonian Wahlberg in a different kind of search to uncover secrets. Tapping into the supernatural time travel trope, with hints of Assassin’s Creed and the secret spy league of The Adjustment Bureau, Infinite finds Wahlberg as a man with hallucinations that are actually a window into his past lives (a la reincarnation–remember Albert Brooks’ “past lives pavilion”?). Antoine Fuqua steps in to direct, hopefully conjuring some of that high-octane action he brought to the screen in his The Magnificent Seven remake, The Equalizer and The Equalizer 2, and Shooter.