VOYAGERS
Rated: PG-13
Release Date: April 9, 2021
Director: Neil Burger
Stars: Tye Sheridan, Lily-Rose Depp, Colin Farrell
Plot: A group of teens are the go-between generation taking humans from earth to a new planet
Clint Says: See this if you are a fan of Sci-Fi movies
This is like a lot of Sci-Fi flicks in that it is a good film, but it could have been a lot better with a faster pace and some more excitement throughout. It does get very exciting and compelling when it finally gets to the main conflict, but it takes a while to get there and then it feels like it resolves too quickly.
One odd point is that the acting feels very wooden and stilted, but there is a good reason for that, so it is difficult to tell if the acting isn’t great or if the actors are really good at being boring and monotonous. (I’m leaning towards them being really good actors based on their previous roles). In either case, the outcome is the same. You have to watch boring people doing their boring routines for about half of the movie.
Once the story gets going there is a lot of suspense and compelling conflict to keep you engaged. It will give you a few moments of holding your breath, a few good jump scares, and throw you a couple of twists as well.
While this isn’t a movie that I would consider to be great by any standard, it is a good one. It’s also the kind of film that makes you think about the importance of every life. Some lives may seem greater than others, but this film shows that all lives have great value no matter how mundane the task may seem to be.
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THUNDER FORCE
Rated: PG-13
Release Date: April 9, 2021
Director: Ben Falcone
Stars: Melissa McCarthy, Octavia Spencer, Jason Bateman, Bobby Cannavale
Plot: Two middle-aged women become superheroes in order to stop the supervillains from taking over their city
Clint Says: It’s worth streaming once
I’m not sure that most of the world knew that we needed a couple of middle-aged superheroes in our lives, but Netflix did, and now we have Thunder Force.
Melissa McCarthy has made some interesting role choices over the last several years, and to her credit, she has done a great job in almost all of those films. This one is no exception. Yes, she plays the character you would expect her to play, but she does it in convincing and fun fashion.
Octavia Spencer does a great job as the buttoned-up, too-serious, the-real-brains-behind-the-duo sidekick. She gives McCarthy the space and time to do her thing and make the movie funny.
My only issue with this movie is that it tried to be too much and it fell short everywhere. It wants to be a comedy, but it also wants to be a superhero flick. And rather than choosing one or the other, it tries to do both, which means it isn’t nearly as funny as one would hope, and it isn’t nearly as suspenseful or exciting as you would want a superhero movie to be.
It would have been a much more entertaining movie if they had decided to ham it up more with the villains and the superheroes. It would have been a much more suspenseful film had they left some of the slapstick on the editing room floor. (It’s 2021, we should update this to “left it in the desktop recycle bin).
This isn’t a bad film. It has its moments of fun, funny, and excitement, but it isn’t one that you are going to want to watch over and over again. Give it a shot, you might be surprised by how much you like it. Then again, maybe you won’t. In which case you can just go back to browsing through all of the thousands of movies you haven’t seen yet, but surprisingly none of them look good at the moment.
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For more information and past reviews go to https://www.clintsmoviereviews.com/.
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