12 Strong and Changing Lanes (2002)

Movies of conflict - on the opposite ends of the scale! Wait... all movies have conflict...

12 Strong

After the 9/11 attacks, Captain Mitch Nelson (played by Chris Hemsworth) is eager to take on the Taliban on their home turf and is deployed covertly with a small squad (its in the name) to do just that. It does help that he has some significant air support though! Inspired by real events, most of this film is gun play - almost too much of it actually, because outside plenty war action bits there's not really much happening story wise (outside the, "we gotta go kill those guys"). Perfect if you just want to see people shooting each other and getting blown up though.    

Changing Lanes

Rushing to get to court a lawyer (played by Ben Affleck) has a minor collision with a recovering alcoholic (played by Samuel L. Jackson) which screws up both their respective cases: the alcoholic loses his custodial parenting rights while the lawyer loses an important document collected by the other man. So ensues a feud of escalation between the two parties which is the main focus for this film and while this two thirds of the movie is decently interesting, the first third where it just sets up the two characters is very slow. Watch it if there's nothing else on, but feel free to multi-task until that initial collision scene which is where the movie should have started.

Glass (2019), Hit Man (2023) and Blue Beetle (2023)

One of these is not like the other.

Glass

M. Night Shyamalan's "third chapter" of Unbreakable and Split has all the main characters rounded up and put in a psychiatric facility to try be cured of their notions of being "super human". It's definitely a change of pace to your standard superhero fare and the ending might even piss you off, but the tale being told is a good one with the extremely talented James McAvoy actually stealing the show over both Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson's title character. Recommendation for this one is a bit tricky, but I'm pretty sure if you are a fan of James McAvoy and/or Split, you will enjoy this. Also recommended if you just like all of M. Night's movies anyway. :P

Hit Man

If you were playing the "which one is not like the other" game in this post, this comedy movie is the answer. In it a regular but pretty smart guy (played by the exceptional Glen Powell) moonlights as an aide to the police department by pretending to be multiple "Hit Men", catering the "Hit Man" per client and then getting them to admit via recording their intenet to murder people which leads to their arrests. Shenanigans occur when one of his fake personas become better than his regular persona. Unlike Glass, this one is easy to recommend as it is very light hearted and entertaining. Go see it if you haven't yet!

Blue Beetle

Jaime Reyes (Xolo Mariduena doing the best he can with the script) is just trying to get a job to support his poor (but incredibly annoying and obnoxious) family when he becomes selected by an alien Scarab and sentient weapon to turn him into the titular superhero Blue Beetle. I'm going to assume this was made for the younger Mexican audience as the plot really caters to them but boy do I have issues with it. Like, is Jaime really the hero or are all his "heroics" controlled by the scarab anyway? Sure he doesn't want to kill, at the start anyway (and then what happens?). This doesn't stop the rest of his family from totally murdering those generic bad guy soldiers though. Getting grandma to chain gun a whole bunch without taking any hits in return really must get the laughs right? So... yeah. It's that type of movie and despite having the DC budget is the worst of this trio.

Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves and Secret Invasion

Mindflayers among us? Just kidding BG3 fans.

Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves

After escaping from incarceration for theft, a bard (Chris Pine) and barbarian (Michelle Rodriguez) are out to reclaim what was stolen from them but face numerous and often hilarious complications along the way. While the story at its core is simple, this excellent cast of characters, effects and fight scenes makes it very enjoyable and a big step up from the previous films while adding all the little technical details and cameos D&D fans would enjoy. Highly recommended, even if you aren't into D&D! 

That's better than a club!

Secret Invasion (TV Series)

When shapeshifting aliens threaten the safety of the world, who else is there to turn to but the Avenge... I mean, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson)? Literally anyone else actually. This six episode series unintentionally depicts just how irrelevant he is, which is kinda bad given he's meant to be the main character. Guess what, if you remove him from the story entirely it can still play out just the same as there are characters already doing his role in almost every scene. The best thing this has going for it is the nice opening song. Not recommended.

The Hitman's Bodyguard

Can't plan for everything!

Why would a hitman (Samuel Jackson) need a bodyguard (Ryan Reynolds)? Because he happens to be the key witness in a trial against one evil president (Gary Oldman). As expected, it is not even close to smooth sailing as the pair are just as likely to kill each other in this entertaining action comedy.

It's a fun time!

Expect a decent body count and a lot of swearing. There are some surprisingly good fight and chase sequences too, definite props to the stunt team for that. I don't want to give anything more away so I'll head straight to my score: 3.5 Jags out of 5 and I would definitely watch it again.

Captain Marvel

Always be nice to cats! :P

This is one hero I knew very little about, but boy did Marvel give her a good movie. It helps that the main character "Vers" (Brie Larson) starts out as an amnesiac Kree enforcer, which helps the audience learn about her past while she does.

If she looks OP it's because she is.

Much like the high budget CGI here, the acting is splendid all around with Samuel Jackson, Jude Law, and  Ben Mendelsohn being the highlights. As a fan of Agents of Shield, it was also great to see Clark Gregg too but I think my new favorite is "Goose" the cat.

The story is well told and the characters are great as is the unexpected humour which is found in spades here. The Stan Lee tribute at the opening is also touching. I'm actually struggling to find some negatives here, other than Captain Marvel might be overpowered? Fantastic movie and one I highly recommend, I give it 5 science guys out of 5.

Unbreakable (2000)

One heck of a low key superhero movie.

After miraculously surviving a terrible accident, David (Bruce Willis) is contacted art gallery owner and comic book enthusiast Price (Samuel Jackson) who believes that David might actually have super human qualities.

Doesn't actually qualify as an action movie!

The entire movie is just character building for these two. There's very little action, very little in terms of special effects, but very good cinematography, acting and script. Definitely one of M. Night Shyamalan's better works and one I would watch again.

I give it 3 glass canes out of 5, and recommend it to everyone who doesn't mind very little action. It's a different genre but if you liked the Sixth Sense, you'll probably like this. If not, stay away.

Kingsman: The Secret Service

"Manners maketh man."

Kingsman tells the story of a kid with wasted potential being recruited into a super secret, non-government run spy agency and obviously ends up trying to help save the world from a crazy megalomaniac. As cliche as I made it sound, this film actually has a very good story and very good action and special FX to back it up. It also has many likable characters - actually pretty much all of them, even the blood / violence phobic villain played by Samuel L. Jackson who does a fantastic job here.

Don't mess with the Kingsmen.

I quite liked the many nods to the other spy flicks too, though the incredibly poor shooting by the generic bad guy minions near the end versus the heroes near perfect aim took it a little bit too far but that's just a minor point. I also love the Maccas advertisement they managed to work into the plot. All up I give this very enjoyable flick four and a half leg blades out of five (Yes, I'm trying to move away from continually using "bullets" :P). Highly, highly recommended and one I'd love to see again!

Robocop (2014)

50% Robocop. 50% Filler.

Much like the original movie, the protagonist police officer gets seriously injured early on and thanks to movie science becomes an android hybrid who continues his previous role as Robocop - who then goes on to finish investigating the run of the mill case he was on when he was so rudely interrupted by almost certain death. The actor who plays him here is a bit of a robot, but that works in his favor as mostly he is one for the majority of his screen time anyway.

I'm also quite happy that they somewhat kept the original theme music, and armor too - though I don't mind his black "tactical" version either. Having the robots out in full circulation right at the start was a welcome change for me as well, since it setup the stage for awesome action scenes. There are many little problems in the movie too like, bad guys not knowing how to shoot and bad guys simply not being threatening enough to the hero but the biggest, biggest flaw is simply that a huge chunk of the movie doesn't have Robocop in it.

Sums it up nicely.

Every single shot with Samuel L. Jackson could have been cut. All the political stuff could have just been setup as background noise. Michael Keaton definitely didn't need that many assistants. I'm not saying any of them were of poor acting quality, it just felt like they were fluff pieces to pad time to the film. Simply put, I felt there wasn't enough Robocop in Robocop and give it one and a half bullets out of five. Not only do I not want to watch it again, but I can strongly recommend to everyone else - even action fans, to give this a miss. There are simply better films out there.