In between all these procedures and doc visits, we chose the most mindless movies we could think of to distract us.........and by and large, they did the job fairly well.......so here goes......
Shaft (2019).......so says John Shaft II (Samuel L. Jackson) playing, for the second time, the second generation of Shafts......(the first being Shaft The First, of course, in the person of Richard Roundtree)
3rd generation Shaft (Jessie T. Usher), is a millennial FBI data analyst forced to seek Dad's help to finding out who killed his best bud, the recovering drug addict army vet.
As you might expect,it's mostly played for generational-clash laughs, with Jackson giving you the full Samuel L........more than living up to the legendary Shaft reputation.....or as the song says...."they say that Shaft is one bad mother-"
No great shakes, but delivers the fun......3 stars (***)
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Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019.........hmmmm, we're detecting a theme in these movies, right? That line's uttered by the blisteringly tough shady criminal Shaw (Jason Statham), once again in an insult-laden alliance with professional world-saver Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson).....both on leave from their Fast & Furious crew, and tasked with rescuing humanity from a supervirus and a superbad, super-powered villain. (Idris Elba)......
We're starting to believe these "Fast & Furious" things aren't even written and directed by humans.......more likely meticulously assembled from pre-programmed chunks of the other films in the series. This film's more of a calculated marketing strategy, with the movie as its aftermath.......and for us, that kind of takes the fun out it.....
You can "oooo" and "ahhhh" and "wft!" over the action sequences, all them digitally animated by 1000's of CGI artists.......but for BQ, the only scene that ever comes alive is a riotous verbal joust on an airplane........Statham and Johnson swap an escalating series of withering put-downs, until they're interrupted by an Air Marshall(?)played by Kevin Hart.....who ups the scene into an even more frenzied 3-player verbal ping pong game. There should have been way more of this stuff and less CGI........
Mildly amusing, but mostly exhausting.......2 & 1/2 stars. (**1/2)
John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum (2019).......so says John Wick,(Keanu Reeves) the outcast assassin hunted by the 'High Table', a worldwide fraternity of hit-people with really, really strict rules of conduct........(killing a fellow assassin in one of their plush luxury hotels is a jumbo no-no....and guess what Wick did to piss them off.....)
This movie gives a whole new, literal meaning to 'Overkill'...........and some of visual jokery actually lands......(the High Table's operation center looks like a mini Wall Street stock exchange floor, exclusively staffed by heavily tattooed women.....)
The action sequences are perpetual, ferocious, even dazzling once or twice........but they don't know when to stop. The deliberately tedious length of the fights becomes sort of an in-joke.....after a while, you start laughing at the sheer, endless repetition of these scenes that threaten to have no stopping point.
By the end of the movie, we felt as weary and beat up as John Wick.
Sadly though, all the bloated action takes the movie out of the mainstream and makes it only palatable for its hardcore fan base and gamers who love first-person shooter games....
But hell, we laughed and cheered at more than a few moments through this, even as it dearly tested our patience........(and God knows it brightened the evening before we had to endure an indescribable urological procedure....) 3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)
And that wraps up our medical madess movie marathon.......as Wilford Brimley once said in John Carpenter's "The Thing"........"I'm feeling much better now...."
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