Tag: Prime Video

Red One (2024) | REVIEW

Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans star in Red One — PHOTO: Karen Neal/Prime.

Directed by Jake Kasdan — Screenplay by Chris Morgan — Story by Hiram Garcia.

In Jake Kasdan’s Red One, not to be confused with the similarly titled Red Notice also starring Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson, we follow Callum Drift (played by Dwayne Johnson), the commander of the so-called E.L.F. (Enforcement Logistics and Fortification), who spends his Christmases as the head of security for, and bodyguard to, Santa Claus (played by J.K. Simmons). However, after Callum has made it clear to his boss that he wants to retire because of how many people are on the naughty list this year, Santa Claus is kidnapped. Desperate to get him back to the North Pole safely, Callum Drift seeks out the black-hat hacker Jack O’Malley (played by Chris Evans) and demands that he helps him to get him back, since O’Malley was reportedly the person who revealed the secret location of Santa’s workshop.

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Brothers (2024) | REVIEW

Peter Dinklage, Glenn Close, and Josh Brolin in BROTHERS — PHOTO: Prime Video.

Directed by Max Barbakow — Screenplay by Macon Blair.

Max Barbakow’s Brothers, from a script by Macon Blair (I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore), is a buddy action crime comedy that follows twin brothers Moke (played by Josh Brolin) and Jady Munger (played by Peter Dinklage) who, after a shared history of crimes over the years, team-up to do ‘one last job’ together. During their previous ‘last job’ years ago, Jady was apprehended and sent to prison while Moke managed to get away, and so at the start of the film, they find themselves on opposite ends of life. Jady has just gotten out of prison, under suspicious circumstances, while Moke is trying to start a family and live as a law-abiding citizen. However, when Moke loses his job due to his criminal past, Jady finds an angle to convince his brother to join up with him for a road trip and a heist. Meanwhile, we discover that Jady made a shady deal with an aggressive crooked cop (played by Brendan Fraser) and his judge father (played by M. Emmet Walsh), who intend to keep track of whether or not Jady follows through on their deal.

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Mothers’ Instinct (2024) | REVIEW

Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain in Benoît Delhomme’s Mothers’ Instinct — PHOTO: Neon (Still image from trailer).

Directed by Benoît Delhomme — Screenplay by Sarah Conradt.

Based on the novel Derrière la haine from author Barbara Abel (and a remake of the 2018 Olivier Masset-Depasse adaptation), Benoît Delhomme’s Mothers’ Instinct tells the story of two 1960s American housewives and mothers, Celine (played by Anne Hathaway) and Alice (played by Jessica Chastain). After Celine’s son tragically died and Alice was too late to stop it from happening, Celine and Alice become distant, and, following Celine’s stay away from the suburbs that she called her home, Alice notices a change in her neighbor, who starts to become close with Alice’s son. As strange things start to happen, Alice begins to suspect that her grieving neighbor has cruel intentions.

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Road House (2024) | REVIEW

(L-R) Jake Gyllenhaal and Conor McGregor in ROAD HOUSE (2024) — PHOTO: Amazon MGM Studios / Prime Video (Still image from the trailer).

Directed by Doug Liman (Chaos Walking) — Screenplay by Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry.

Whether its fans liked it or not, for more than ten years, there had been talk of an attempt to remake the Rowdy Herrington 1989 action cult classic Road House starring Patrick Swayze. Now in 2024, it is finally here, as it has been remade for modern audiences by The Bourne Identity and Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Liman, whose remake stars Jake Gyllenhaal in the role popularized by Patrick Swayze’s iconic performance — Dalton. Like in the 1989 film, Dalton is hired to be the bouncer at a bar early on in Liman’s film, but there have been significant changes, including the fact that now Dalton has a background in UFC fighting. He doesn’t have the steely focus as a professional bouncer either. Rather we first meet him as he gets ready to scam fighters in an underground circuit. In these opening scenes, Dalton is suicidal and only narrowly survives a suicide attempt early in the film. When he finally gets to the bar that he is supposed to be the bouncer at — a sunny, tropical Florida-set bar called ‘The Road House’ — it doesn’t take long for him to get involved in a fight to get a motorcycle gang off the premises. Soon, a local crime boss (played by Billy Magnussen) tasks the psychotic enforcer Knox (played by Conor McGregor) with taking out Dalton for good.

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Ricky Stanicky (2024) | REVIEW

(Left-Right) Zac Efron, Andrew Santino, Jermaine Fowler, and John Cena in RICKY STANICKY — PHOTO: Prime (Still image from the trailer).

Directed by Peter Farrelly — Screenplay by Jeff Bushell, Brian Jarvis, James Lee Freeman, Peter Farrelly, Pete Jones, and Mike Cerrone.

Green Book and The Greatest Beer Run Ever-director Peter Farrelly’s Ricky Stanicky is a comedy about three lifelong friends (played by Zac Efron, Andrew Santino, and Jermaine Fowler) who routinely get out of situations, meetings, life events, responsibilities, and the like, both from family, significant others, and their jobs, by using a created imaginary friend — the titular character (played by John Cena) — and inventing some circumstance that requires their presence, thus justifying their absence from whatever — to them — bothersome scenario gets in their way.

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‘Hijack,’ ‘The Crowded Room,’ ‘Ted Lasso,’ ‘Silo,’ ‘Jury Duty,’ and ‘Black Mirror’ (2023) | Bite-Sized Reviews

(L-R) Jason Sudeikis in Ted Lasso (Apple TV+), Idris Elba in Hijack (Apple TV+), Rebecca Ferguson in Silo (Apple TV+), Tom Holland in The Crowded Room (Apple TV+), Ronald Gladden in Jury Duty (Amazon Studios), and Aaron Paul in Black Mirror (Netflix).

In this edition of Additional Bite-Sized Reviews, I take a look at six series or seasons that I recently finished, four of which are Apple TV+ releases. The outliers are Netflix’s latest season of Black Mirror and the Amazon surprise hit of the year titled Jury Duty, but the remaining four series do a good job of showcasing how Apple’s series library is growing rapidly. Are any of these worth your time? Well, let’s have a look.

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AIR (2023) | REVIEW

Matt Damon and Viola Davis in AIR — PHOTO: Amazon Prime Video.

Directed by Ben Affleck — Screenplay by Alex Convery.

Ben Affleck’s AIR is a biographical drama about the origin of the highly successful original AIR Jordan basketball shoe, which was designed with Michael Jordan in mind when he had yet to actually play an NBA game. It follows Sonny Vaccaro (played by Matt Damon), a basketball talent scout for Nike, as he tries to convince first Nike and then Michael Jordan and his parents, including his mother Deloris (played by Viola Davis), to choose Nike, which was, at that time, not the massive company that it is today, as his brand of choice. There are, however, quite a few obstacles that Sonny must overcome. Jordan allegedly prefers Adidas, Nike likely cannot afford to compete with Adidas for his signature, Nike is considering axing their basketball division, and Sonny doesn’t have the best relationship with Jordan’s agent (played by Chris Messina).

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REVIEW: Shotgun Wedding (2023)

Jennifer Lopez as Darcy Rivera and Josh Duhamel as Tom Fowler in Shotgun Wedding. — PHOTO: Ana Carballosa

Directed by Jason Moore (Pitch Perfect) — Screenplay by Mark Hammer.

The start of the new year is going by so fast. I’m still trying to catch up on some late 2022 releases, just as I’m trying to see notable 2023 releases. Well, one of the films I missed in January was Amazon Prime Video’s release of the Jennifer Lopez-led action rom-com Shotgun Wedding. I’ve now finally had the chance to check it out. And, well, in spite of a relatively star-studded cast, it’s mostly just ‘okay.’ It’s nowhere near as good as the films it’s clearly modeled after. 

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REVIEW: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – Season One (2022)

Morfydd Clark as Galadriel in THE RINGS OF POWER — PHOTO: Ben Rothstein/Prime Video

Show Developed by J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay — Season Directed by J. A. Bayona, Wayne Che Yip, and Charlotte Brändström.

Late next year we’ll be twenty years removed from the release of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. That means it’ll also be twenty years since ten-year-old me sat in a theater and sobbed as Frodo said his goodbyes. Peter Jackson’s first three films in the Tolkienverse fully got me. I remember asking my mother if movies would ever get that good again, and she assured me that they would. She was right.

However, you wouldn’t know it from Peter Jackson’s second Tolkien trilogy, the prequel films, The Hobbit trilogy. Those three films disappointed someone so deeply emotionally invested in the universe so much that I chose not to see all of them immediately as they were released in theaters. So, I was skeptical when it was announced that a return to Middle-Earth was on the horizon at Amazon Prime Video. However, while it suffers from some notable problems, I think the first season of The Rings of Power mostly works. In any case, I’m happy to say that I loved being back in a universe that I didn’t realize I had been missing for quite some time.

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REVIEW: Don’t Make Me Go (2022)

JOHN CHO and MIA ISAAC are father and daughter, respectively, in DON’T MAKE ME GO — PHOTOS: Amazon Studios.

Directed by Hannah Marks – Screenplay by Vera Herbert.

A dramedy road trip film, Don’t Make Me Go tells the story of the Park family, which consists of only the single father, Max (played by John Cho), and his teenage daughter, Wally (played by Mia Isaac). Together they embark on a cross-country road trip for the purpose of finding Wally’s estranged mother. Max has just learned that he has a terminal disease, so this is a priceless trip, on which he needs to spend his time wisely to prepare her for what is to come, bond with her, and give her lasting memories. He also has to find a way to tell his daughter what is going on with him, and, as far as she knows, she’s just going on the trip to learn how to drive and to accompany her father to his high school reunion.

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