Tron: Ares and Wake up, Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

Sequels that continue a franchise.

Tron: Ares

In a world where arcade game machines have enough power to create a fully immersive and digital world that you can enter by "digitizing" yourself, this latest movie of Tron actually goes the other way around where a created program (played by Jared Leto) wants to export itself to the real world. While the effects are much better than the older Tron movies (except the part that intentionally goes old school), there are some major plot holes that you'll need to jump over. Like, if Jared Leto is your best program why wouldn't you just make multiples of him instead of making different, inferior versions? Even non-techy audiences will need to leave common sense at the door.

Wake up, Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

Benoit Blanc (played by Daniel Craig) is back, this time solving an impossible crime in a small parish with a crazy priest and a small congregation of psycho almost-cultists. Like the previous movies this one has good cinematography and a pretty interesting puzzle to solve. While there's a bit of "god bashing" in it mostly done for laughs, I do like that it's tempered with the "good priest". Also, it's definitely better than the second movie (Glass Onion). Recommended! 

Morbius and The Tomorrow War

Where science is magic!

Morbius

A brilliant doctor (played by Jared Leto) suffering from a blood disease uses the magic of science on some vampire bats which cures his condition, but in exchange he also becomes a blood thirsty vampire! While there aren't any surprises in the story, the scary segments are decent but in a surprise fail it's actually the CGI that lets this superhero (*cough* villain *cough*) movie down. They really need to end CGI brawl fests altogether. All up an average movie that my wife enjoyed a lot.

The Tomorrow War

In this sci-fi movie that stars Chris Pratt, time travelers from the future convince world governments to help them by sending people from the present into a future war (that they are losing badly) against alien beasties. The critters look really great and menacing, the action scenes are good, and the pacing is quite quick (except for one bit in the last part where someone thought another "walking through a dark interior lit only by flashlights" would be a good idea, even though there's no more suspense by that point).

Still a very enjoyable watch, even though the plot itself must have been mangled by one of the aliens due to all the logic holes in it, and not just from the timey wimey stuff. There are many points I thought "why didn't x do y?" And the answer was always: because that would make the movie too short. Lol.

Suicide Squad

Too many characters, not enough development.

When the government decides to leverage "gifted" criminals into working as a team against an equally overpowered foe, one has to ask what could go wrong?. "Plenty," is the correct answer. The plot features a fair bit of action with good effects that go eclectic at times but not much else as it is mired in clumsy story telling.

Part of the problem is having too many characters who don't actually need to be there (similar to my Thor: Ragnarok review). Captain Boomerang, Killer Croc and Katana could easily be dropped. Acting wise everyone (except the overly "dancey" main bad guy) is ok, with Margot Robbie (Harley) being fantastic. I had reservations with Will Smith being Deadshot but he pulls it off well enough when he isn't wearing a pimp hat.

Could have halfed the team and made a better story.

I also liked Jared Leto's Joker, but again his use in most of the non-flashback segments feels forced. I should mention the antagonists of the film make little sense too, but with everything else going sideways they just get a shrug. I give this 2.5 floating rings of trash out of 5, and can't really recommend it to anyone.