Movie Review: The Equalizer 3

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Despite a mediocre plot, lack of action and flat finale, Denzel Washington’s acting and charisma carry this film enough to make a fairly entertaining installment to the franchise. The plot is the weakest part of this film, as it’s not only cliché, but a lot of it doesn’t really connect until the final act and even then, it’s not quite the big payoff they were aiming for. (Not to mention the whole Equalizer concept is mostly dropped for the standard “stranger saving small town” trope.) Denzel once again shines here, but the film does little to explain who he is or why he does what he does and just hopes you’ve seen the previous films, and with the darker aspects of the character leading things off, it makes it harder to connect with him. Fortunately, Washington is allowed to drop the intensity and allow his charm to shine through. The secondary characters never quite click, from the CIA agents that cross paths with Denzel to the bad guys that have zero redeeming qualities, nobody really gets to be fleshed out. The film drags a bit at times, and there’s really very little action. Aside from a brief sequence at the start, another quick one before the third act and the third act itself, there’s not much to liven things up besides the bad guys beating up hapless townsfolk. While there are some payoffs at the end that toy with being emotional, they feel so far removed from the rest of the film that they just don’t have the impact that they were aiming for.

*** out of *****

Movie Review: Blue Beetle

Watch my SPOILER review on YouTube

A mostly formulaic superhero origin story that is strengthened by the strong family dynamic and lower-class setting. At this point, it’s hard to do much new with a superhero movie, especially an origin story. There’s a lot of similarities here with the “Venom” film, except the alien here has much less personality and Jamie’s powers look more like Iron Man’s. Even the villain has fairly similar goals. The film benefits greatly from the family elements, as they’re a part of the new superhero’s journey from start to finish. Despite some over-the-top antics, the emotional moments land. (Although the humor is more hit and miss and the love story felt like it moved a bit too fast.) It was also an interesting twist of setting it within a lower-class neighborhood and with a family of Mexican immigrants…even if some of the cultural references went over my head. The action was fine, even though the effects were a little wonky at times. The film also used a lot of needle drops to turn what could been darker moments into light-hearted ones. While the primary villain was stereotypical white-collar evil, they did make a late attempt to make the secondary villain more sympathetic. There is a brief mid-credits scene, but with the state of DC films, who knows if it will lead to anything.

**1/2 out of *****

TV Review: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Season 2)

**This review may contain minor SPOILERS**

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In its second season, “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” continues to excel with the best of classic Trek storytelling and gives us serialized stories coupled with strong, season-long character arcs.

Like the original “Star Trek” and “The Next Generation”, “Strange New Worlds” features serialized storytelling. This allows for a wide variety of stories from episode to episode. The show can go from courtroom drama to comedy, to stories out of a sitcom to a horror movie. Most of these work well, some better than others. (However, a few feel too much like scripts that could be interchangeable with almost any previous Trek series.) The downside of all of this is that there’s even less over an overarching story arc than last season, which was already pretty light in that department. Also, the way the episodes are structured it feels like we lose that sense of space exploration as it feels more like the crew just reacting to stuff that’s just kind of happening to them. Fortunately, the show does play to its greatest strength: Compelling character arcs that keep the audience invested in the crew of the Enterprise.

While almost every character gets a moment to shine this season, some really get some meatier storylines than others. (And everyone gets more to do than Ortegas, who once again gets no real storyline of her own.) While his story was probably the biggest thread throughout season one, Pike’s arc is much more subdued this time. Una gets some big moments early before dropping back into the crowd, while Uhura gets a couple episodes to take the lead. Dr. M’Benga is given some strong new material, but most of this seems to have just come out of nowhere considering none of it was even teased last season. La’an has a significant solo episode early, and that throughline continues for her the rest of the season. The biggest character stuff is given to Spock and Nurse Chapel. While it had some strong moments that built off of last season’s developments, it was a tad inconsistent and will take a lot of work to make it match up with their relationship on the original “Star Trek.”

Overall, the show still looks great, but sometimes the visual effects look a little bit like (great) video game graphics and the Stagecraft wall often fells flat like greenscreen effects. There’s some fun new and returning guest characters, including the debut of Chief Engineer Pelia and characters from the animated “Lower Decks” crossing over into live action.

“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” once again captures the classic, serialized storytelling of the earliest Trek series, while putting in much more complex character arcs then those shows. The lack of a season-long narrative does hurt the show a bit, especially with the wild variety of stories from week to week.

**** out of *****