Movie Review: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

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A mildly entertaining film that feels like a bit of a throwback to late 90’s era action flicks. The pacing is little all over the place early on and it’s hard to see exactly where the plot is heading but once it gets on track things get pretty predictable. The action is shockingly lackluster. It feels like every time things are about to get good the scene is over. The special effects are fine, but like some of the action scenes, quick cuts sometimes make it hard to see what’s going on. While the characters are fine, their arcs are fairly cliche. Thankfully, the actors are able to elevate most of the material especially with the humor. There’s some funny moments and some solid one-liners, particular from the Michelle Rodriguez’s Holga. While Hugh Grant is fun as the secondary bad guy, the main villain is one-note and not remotely compelling.(Not to mention the whole evil plan just seems lackluster.) There is a quick mid-credit scene that’s just a fun extra bit.

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

Movie Review: John Wick: Chapter 4

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Despite a slow start, this film eventually becomes another solid action flick and one of the better films in the franchise. Things move fairly slowly in the beginning, and there’s not much indication of what the plot is supposed to be. And when we do finally get to the first action sequence, it doesn’t really do anything that different that what we saw in the last film. (Including having an attack dog.) Add in some new characters with questionable allegiances and it feels like the set up for a bit of a mess. However, once the plot gets laid out, things start to pull together. The cinematography and music began to add more personality to the film and then the final act pumps the action up to insane levels with some creative fight scenes. While the ending initially seems to knock it out of the park, it takes a strange turn that feel more anticlimactic then anything else. The acting is serviceable, but all the main players bring their best for the action scenes, with Keanu Reeves and Donny Yen being the standouts. (There is a post-credit scene that I didn’t catch, but it didn’t sound like it was anything too special.)

*** out of *****

Movie Review: Shazam! Fury of the Gods

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A fun follow-up that has a strong emotional core, but trio of villains with vaguely-defined powers and motivations hamper the much of the film. The movie tries to balance out the time spent between the six members of the Shazam family in both their human forms and their super-powered forms. They do a decent job, leaning more towards the heroic versions of the characters. While Billy Batson and Freddie Freeman were the leads of the first film, here Freddy is once again human most of the story, but Billy appears in his Shazam form almost the whole time. The plot is solid, but the villains’ masterplan is too poorly-defined until late in the film, which makes it hard to understand the stakes. Having three bad guys doesn’t really help either. Their motivations are all over the place, their abilities aren’t explained very well and having multiple villains doesn’t even really help even out the odds and give all the super-heroes more to fight. The finale could’ve been strong, but I never really bought that they were going to go the route they were building towards. The effects were decent, and there was a lot of obvious CG, but the character designs were well done and kind of popped when on screen. There’s a mid-credit scene they could have led to something cool, but with the DCEU reboot on the horizon, it probably doesn’t matter. The end-credit scene is more stand-alone, but not really worth sticking around for.

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