Gladiator II - Just Why?

To say Gladiator 2 was a sequel no one asked for is an understatement.

The first Gladiator was fun, had some respect for historical accuracy, and was a pretty accurate reenactment of the Rome tactics and gladiatorial games of Marcus Aurelius' time.

 Gladiator 2, not so much.

To say it had so many blatant historical inaccuracies it would hurt a classicist's soul is accurate. Verily, it did.

Horrendously bad, it was. 

It begins with a Roman fleet attacking Numidia under the Emperors Caracalla and Geta sometime between 209 and 211 AD. The leader of Numidia at the time is named Jugurtha.

The problem is the Roman Republic's War with Jugurtha took place in 118 BC, prior to the Roman Empire, and Numidia had been under Roman domian and control since then.

This does let them get some DEI credit for the film though portraying Jugurtha as Black, rather than North African Berber so there's that. 

And no, the Roman generals at the time of Geta and Caracalla were not known to run ahead of their formation fighting enemies one-on-one.  Not how it worked.

It gets progressively, and dare I say diversely, worse from there.

Denzel Washington plays Macrinus, as the master of gladiators. He does a fine job chewing the scenery and basically portraying himself out of Training Day. He's an enjoyable actor, but it kills the history of the period all the more, but again awesome diversity DEI credit.

The real Macrinus was the commander of the Preaetorian Guard  and as far as is known was not involved in the death of Geta, but was involved in killing Caracalla and becoming Emperor for a short period before being killed himself.

Oh, and Macrinus, while from North Africa, wasn't Black, but again DEI cred.

Geta and Caracalla are portrayed as effeminate half-wit twin poofs.  Again for DEI credit I suppose, when the historical record is rather different. 

Also, they weren't twins with Caracalla being 11 months older. They were both active on military campaigns and Caracalla was held to be quite the military strategist and campaigner. They did hate each other though and far more than is portrayed in the movie.

Caracalla also never had a pet monkey.  Lawdog is likely happy to know that.

Gladiator 2 even literally jumped the shark by having sharks in the Colosseum during the nautical battle scene.

While Rome did stage a Naumachia in the Colosseum at least once, the Romans did not capture sharks and have them swimming around the Colosseum during such battles.

Hilariously and painfully the naval battle itself was announced as a remake of the Battle of Salamis and described as a battle between the "Trojans and the Persians".

The Battle of Salamis was between the Greeks and the Persian  - in 480 BC. The Trojan war was much, much earlier, in the 12th or 13th century BC between the Greeks and the Trojans.  

The movie then continues with more and more historical inaccuracies.

There's even people sipping coffee and reading newspapers during the movie. 

Coffee didn't come to Rome as a beverage before the 17th century AD,  and newspapers weren't invented until the 1400s AD - over a thousand years after the events in the film.

I mean you can take license with historical events, but asking the audience to disbelieve a thousand years worth of an anachronism is asking for a bit much. 

In short, if you haven't seen Gladiator 2 yet,  I recommend you disbelieve it ever existed.  Instead you can have a much better and more enjoyable use of your movie-watching time by watching Gladiator again.

Top Gun: Maverick - Go See It If You Haven't Already

I took Leah to see Top Gun: Maverick yesterday to celebrate her end of the school year that ended Tuesday and her first day of freedom.

Amazingly, we had the whole theater to ourselves, which was kinda strange, so we had the choice of seats.

To say the film is absolutely excellent and a joy to watch is to understate it. 

The film hits all the right notes throughout, and was highly enjoyable with a perfect homage to the original, while not being solely a look back or depending on the greatness of the original to be great itself.

A perfect summer action movie that is a truly fitting sequel to the original.

As the theater was all ours, we did get some of Leah's running commentary.

Best commentary of the night was during the make out scene between Tom Cruise and Jennifer Connely:  "You're too old to be making out like a couple teenagers, knock it off and grow up, seriously!".

To say I choked on my beverage while laughing at the time would be an understatement. Ah, youth.

Leah loved the film, and to celebrate asked if she could drive home and before she did so could she do some doughnuts in the rather empty movie theater parking lot.

So I put on the Top Gun theme in the car and let her celebrate accordingly.

While what she did weren't technically true doughnuts, she made a series of extremely tight and fast circles to celebrate and was rather pleased to do so.

Summer has officially begun, and Top Gun: Maverick is the movie of Summer 2022.

A Couple Decent Movies For Your Consideration

Went to the movies for the opening night of Free Guy.

The theater was almost empty, whether due to people forgetting there are movie theaters, or overblown fear of Covid, we got some excellent seats, but for an opener it was pretty much abandoned with at most 12 people in the whole theater.

On the upside, no one was chatting during the film, no obstructed views from people spreading out, nor anyone obnoxiously playing on their phones.  As such the few people there enjoyed the movie.

Ryan Reynolds, as is pretty much always the case with Ryan Reynolds,  delivered an excellent and fun comedic performance and really made the movie. 

Worth seeing and a lot of fun, quite a few laugh out loud moments, and a great summer flick.  No really serious message just a nice leave your mind behind and enjoy kind of film.

The movie delivers only one silly swipe at "gun violence" but hey, its Hollywood and they have to get some culture war nonsense in somewhere, but it doesn't overly detract from an otherwise solid action comedy that basically is Hollywood's obsession with showing gun violence writ large.

Then on Amazon Prime there's We Still Kill The Old Way. 

The movie is free to Prime subscribers and well worth the watch.

Ian Ogilvy delivers a superb performance as a older, urbane, and very stylish retired gentleman gangster.  He's brought back into it when his brother is killed by a bunch of today's youthful unrefined yobbos tearing up the East End of London.

It's a rather stylish movie that demonstrates why the adage “Beware of an old man in a profession where men usually die young." is a thing.

In short, the movie has age, cunning, style, and experience tear a swath through a gang of youthful vulgar toughs in a very smart, satisfying, and very, very, British manner.

Not one to be missed.

Yom Dim Sum and WW84

Yesterday was not only Christmas Day, it's the unofficial and unrecognized holiday of Yom Dim Sum, where Jews eat Chinese Food and take in a movie.

So Chinese Food was had and the family and I watched WW1984. This movie was chosen since Wonder Woman is one of the kid's favorite movies and, of course, Gal Gadot is Gal Gadot, and the ladies got to see Chris Pine again.

Unfortunately, WW1984 just doesn't live up to Wonder Woman.  At two and a half hours there was a lot that could be trimmed from the script or at least used to drive the story so much better - and the script writers Patty Jenkins (who also directs), Geoff Johns, and David Callaham should be taken out and beaten long and hard with a rubber chicken for writing such a crappy script and throwing away so much potential.  The only problem is they might enjoy that.

Hollywood deems the 1980s to be the decade of greed and the film plays on that theme, with he story being one of internal struggle against wanting what your heart desires, and over-plays on that, plus a little poke at a stand in for Ronald Reagan, of course.

The actors did their best with what they had, but the story lacked heart, substance, and any real compelling plot, and for all its length lacked a coherent flow and serious external adversary for Wonder Woman.

On the upside, we get the origin story of how Wonder Woman's invisible jet became invisible, but with a really implausible take off, so to speak.

The end, after the credits have rolled, so keep watching, has a proper salute, homage, and cameo to someone, that also ties up a minor plot point in the movie most satisfactorily.

But other than that homage, there's just very little of the weight, substance, conflict, and just plain fun from the first Gadot Wonder Woman movie that made it fantastic.

Need A Break From The Boring Wuhan-Flupocalypse?

Basically, this was Coronavirus was just not the apocalypse we were promised:

It's been a disappointment to most of my readers that this current apocalypse lacks zombies or at least some face-eating monkeys, I'm sure.

Anyways, in between chores around the house, you can watch proper zombie apocalypse movies, including some on YouTube for free:

Daylight's End is a fun little Zombie Apocalypse movie from 2016 with some pretty decent gun handling:

Quite good and realistic firearms handling, complete with reloading and people actually running out of ammo. The gun handling is good, as it should be as interestingly enough, both James Yeager and Sonny Puzikas (Both known and famous or perhaps infamous firearms trainers, depending on your point of view) have quite visible roles in the film.

Impressively in this film, the survivors are not complete morons.

It's not a masterpiece of a movie by any means, but hey, it's free, has some good gun work, and Murphy will like the M1A's starring role, and it is a quality time waster not requiring much grey matter to process. Basically it's brain candy that you shouldn't think about too much but just sit back and enjoy the zombie-blastin'.

Movies Worth Watching: They Shall Not Grow Old

Last night I drove in a un-forecast snow storm to meet up with Pete at a local movie theater and watch They Shall Not Grow Old.

To say it was a fantastic and powerful documentary about a small slice of the British soldier's life in the First World War would be an understatement.

Well worth seeing and the usage solely of 100 year old film footage and its flawless restoration and colorization was amazing both for the technical aspects as to its revival and for the raw power of the footage itself.

Definitely stick around for the documentary that runs after the credits close that goes into how the film was made and the techniques used. The technical aspects that went into selection of the audio and to restore and make usable 100-year-old film all shot with different frames per second is simply amazing. The stuff that can be done today with computers with what otherwise would be unusable footage is incredible, and to colorize it accurately was rather awesome.

Thence to drive home in yet more snow and unplowed streets, and then it was the first time this year that the car could not make it up the Driveway of Doom™, complete with a quality backslide down. Then to get the snowblower out and realize I couldn't make it up the driveway with the snowblower or without it in boots either. Rather slippery and a bit painful it was. Then put the cleats on the boots and I got it clean enough to have the car make it up.

Ready Player One - The Movie

On Saturday afternoon we went to see Ready Player One, in 3D of course.

While drawing on the book and following the story generally, the movie doesn't quite follow it chapter and verse and often departs from it in many interesting ways.

The contest itself is very different, with an opening scene in the movie that is completely different from how the contest works in the book, most likely to save time and compress the book into a length suitable for the movie. From the start you realize the film will not be faithful to the book, and you just have to go with it preserving the general idea and character names and basic plot line and then majorly adapting it to fit the visual format of the movie screen.

Characters tend to do different things than they did in the book, sometimes very major deviations. When you know character X did something important in the book and instead all of a sudden it is character Y is doing something almost the same but not quite it's a bit jarring. This happens quite a bit. However, the characters in many ways are true to the spirit of the book and would meet your expectations in imagining what they looked like from reading the book, its just their actions that appear off.

There's an entire dramatic episode in the film that does not occur in the book at all, again done in order to dramatically reveal something important that took many pages and encounters in the book for the characters to figure out.

Disappointingly, the band Rush isn't featured at all, and the band had a major part to play in the story.

Lots of things are rather compressed or ignored and that hurts the flavor of the book but makes the movie move along.

The ending seems pretty rushed and a bit contrived and again did not happen in the book, for pretty good reason, considering the villain does something very un-villain like that spoils his overly evil role up to that point.

The villain does it for no particular reason and could easily have continued his villany but stops without word or explanation. It was almost as if the screen writers backed themselves into a corner to have a dramatic ending and then decided to leap their way out of the corner without so much as an explanation.

The screen writers also toned down the 80s lore of the hunt, probably to draw in more millenials and such to the theaters who would likely not get the references in the book, but instead would enjoy the Spielberg effects. It was made much less of a cerebral riddle and problem-solving hunt as depicted in the book and more of an action scavenger hunt that would, given the nature of the imaginary world, have been solved years before the time depicted in the movie so that does detract from it somewhat.

The effects were quite cool throughout, and of course they needed to telescope the book severely to fit it in, and as it was the movie was over two hours. But, time went by rather quickly, but like I said, it felt like it built up to a rather rushed ending (without Rush mind you).

You really don't need to have read Ready Player One to see the movie, and if you didn't like the book due to the 80s references you may end up liking the move as it is quite different from the book.

Tash gave it a 6, I'd give it a solid 7. Not a movie I would pay to see again in theaters, but I would watch it when it comes out again on Netflix.

Worth Seeing: Wonder Woman

So this weekend we had a family movie night and went to see Wonder Woman.

Quick summary - great fun move, great characters, Gal Gadot and Chris Pine seriously rocked it and you should not deprive yourself of seeing this movie in 3D at the theater.

DC finally has a movie hit worthy of the name after a long dry spell.

It is, as so many superhero movies are, an origin story. This one works as an origin story with some great characters, and there's some twists to the tale - some you'll see coming and one you probably will not.

In short go see it, and watch Gal Gadot really be Wonder Woman.

Guardians of The Galaxy Vol 2 - A Fun Wisecracking Romp Of A Film

Leah really wanted to go see Guardians of The Galaxy 2 because Baby Groot.

So she and I went last Saturday to see it, in 3D to get the full experience. We practically had the theater to ourselves for the afternoon matinee and had the best seats in the house.

It was a fun action movie with a bit of spicy language, but nothing a ten-year-old with a decent vocabulary who has been in the car during traffic can't handle.

Leah informed me that she had, after all, heard the S word before and they were neat enough in the movie to consistently shorten one swear word down as you'll hear in the trailer. To say its a rockin' good movie where every actor is clearly enjoying themselves and putting on a good show would be an understatement. Leah had no problem keeping up with the irony and sarcasm in the film which is a bit of a scary sign in and of itself.

Lots of action, plenty of Groot time, and fun for the whole family and worth seeing.

On arriving home when Tash asked her how it was, she replied "I am Groot!"

The Movie That Would Have Kicked Off Clinton's Gun Control Push Is Released With A Whimper

There's a movie trailer popping up on Facebook and getting an awful lot of play for a movie now being only released to select theaters but is no longer relevant after flopping on its opening weekend US release making all of $59,797 which is one helluva flop by any description. It looks like the producers were banking on Hillary Clinton to have won the election and release this with a bang. Had Hillary Clinton actually won the election the release timing would have been dead on, but now it seems to be dead on arrival.

Miss Sloan, a not even thinly veiled portrayal of "Nasty Woman Takes On The Gun Lobby Troglodytes To Get More Gun Control In America" is every but the hit piece you think it would be. Yes, the words "Nasty Woman" even flash by in the trailer and the whole thing was pretty clearly produced to help a push for gun control on the assumption that Hillary Clinton would have won the election.

Unsurprisingly, the Facebook based trailer leads off with the false statement that "Any nutcase can buy an assault rifle at the Bowlarama without an ID", and it goes downhill from there.

If you think it's a coincidence that Miss Sloan was timed to be released now and its trailer features a fearless female lobbyist taking on the "gun lobby" with a catchphrase of "Nasty Woman", think again.

This was pretty clearly designed to be released under the assumption that Hillary would be elected and free to push for more gun control.

As a result, this political emotive hit piece of gun control propaganda masquerading as a movie is now only being "released to selected theaters". In other words, it's a propaganda piece that lost the leader it was written for and will likely fade out as a result, which is a darn good thing. On the upside for the film it's about to be released in France and will likely do well there amongst the chattering classes and perhaps will even bust its US opening weekend gross of $59,797.

Such a pity they just don't get that Americans really aren't interested in gun control hit pieces to aid a political candidate masquerading as a movie.

Undoubtedly, there would have been a full court press for gun bans had Hillary been elected with the media, entertainment industry, and the Clinton administration relentlessly pushing for it and we've dodged that particular scenario.

Star Trek Beyond

So today I went to see Star Trek Beyond with my step-sister and step-brother-in-law.

Overall, it is a solid movie.

While the plot has holes in it that you could steer the Enterprise through, the great special effects, and more importantly the cast interaction and chemistry really makes the movie.

Without giving too much away, the MacGuffin the bad guy is searching for is rather underwhelming, especially compared to the effort he has put into obtaining it and it's rather meh compared to what he already had. How he got it was impressively unlikely, and how he came to be the bad guy is a massive leap of wtf-really?, as is a rather huge list of other improbables.

Once you suspend your disbelief to the plot holes, the characters are the main drivers of this story and the crew of this Enterprise does not disappoint. There's some real chemistry with this bunch of actors and it works to save what would otherwise be a rather ho-hum plot driven by special effects.

Keeping true to the Star Trek canon, it's still really bad luck to be wearing a red shirt unless you are Scotty. The Spock stuff is starting to veer a bit, but again, it works.

Don't expect any earth-shattering or particularly deep messages, but if you like Star Trek and want to enjoy a decent experience for your movie-going entertainment dollar, Star Trek Beyond will fit the bill nicely.

Tonight's After Work Relaxation: Deadpool

After a hard day of work it was time to relax and enjoy something that just arrived in the mail.

Deadpool! I had missed it in theaters and had been looking forward to seeing it for quite some time now after enjoying the trailers, and I got to view it in the comfort of my own home.

The trailers really built up the movie, but didn't spoil it, and if you haven't watched it yet, you really should.

Ryan Reynolds and Morena Baccarin (of Firefly fame) really had fun making this movie and it showed.

Lots and lots of humor, deliberate breaking of the fourth wall, and fun overkill levels of action throughout. Think falling over laughing fun if you enjoy rough humor.

The movie has a fast pace and and 108 minutes are over before you know it. There's nothing unnecessary in the movie - it just rips along from one humorous scene, to action scene, to humorous action scene to humorous action scene non-stop.

It's a superhero movie that is definitely NOT for kids, think of it as a guilty pleasure for adults.

Simply excellent and mindless fun with no overbearing message that you often get at the movies these days.

The Force Awakens: Non-Spoiler Review

It did not suck, instead it was great and worthy successor to the original three and well worth seeing in theater.

Harrison Ford made the movie (Yes, you knew he would).

The Empire is 0-3 for gigantic super-weapons with fatal and readily attack-able flaws (Yes, you knew that would happen).

There are no Ewoks nor Jar-Jar Binks (You may breathe a sigh of relief accordingly).

Go forth and see it. Suspend your disbelief. Prepare to be entertained and . . . . .

May the Force Be With You.

Awoken And Now Off To See The Force

Heading out to a theater not so far away for a morning matinee showing of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

I hope it's as good as it strikes out to be, and that I return with a positive report.

Now That's How You Do A Trailer

The crew of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) did a US Navy-style recut of the trailer from The Force Awakens, and it's rather epic:

I'd watch that film.

Minions At The Drive-In

Yesterday night we took Leah to see Minions.

But not at a movie theater.

Instead we took her to the Summer Drive-In at Compuware Arena in Plymouth Township.

A classic drive-in experience, we paid, drove to the appropriate screen parking lot, backed in and setup to watch the movie from the trunk of the family runabout.

There was quite a crowd of cars there for the film yet it was quite family oriented and everyone present was well behaved. We had brought along a portable radio so we could leave the car off and not wear down the battery while watching film. It worked out very very well.

Minions was a darn fun movie. Telling the implausible origin of the Minions in an entertaining and historical way.  Set mainly in the 60s, it had a ton of classic rock music and references that adults got and kids enjoyed without knowing the context.

We didn't stay for the second film of the double feature because by the time the Minion movie ended it was already 11:30 pm and way past Leah's bedtime and she wasn't awake enough to want to stay and see the next movie, Max. Truth be told, it was a heckuva week and we weren't awake enough to stick around for it either.

The downsides to the experience was the ridiculous amount of advertisements shown before the movie began, that and the screen wasn't quite fully taunt so there were some annoying waves that were present when watching the film. Also, people with cars with exterior lights that would flash on whenever they opened their doors, and quite a few people had kids hopping in and out from car to car, which was also somewhat distracting.

The second downside was very apparent this morning, when I awoke with a very sore neck from leaning back in the trunk to watch the movie for two hours. Ouch. I can't turn my head to the left at the moment.

Tomorrowland - Enjoyable Yet Underwhelming

Monday we took the kids for a family movie experience and went to see Disney's latest film, Tomorrowland. I went in blind and without preconceptions as Natasha had selected it and I had not seen any trailers, nor any synopsis of the plot, before entering the theater.

While I enjoyed it well enough, I wouldn't say it was a great film nor really recommend others going to spend money see it. For me, it's a wait-for-it-'till-Netflix film.

Natasha did not like it, even with George Clooney acting as the female draw and eye candy in the film. She did however enjoy Hugh Laurie's excellent performance but that was a as far as she allowed herself to speak positively of the movie.

Leah liked the film, while Abby did not as she found too many plot holes that annoyed her, so it was a split opinion at the end.

I also found that it was kinda preachy with a bit of new age pap which was a bit of a turn-off.

Reasonably fun action scenes, some neat-o special effects, and while it did have a positive message at the end that wasn't enough to save it in our book.

It was good but it didn't make the cut to good enough to see again, and so to prevent any spoilers, that's all I'll say about it.

Kevin at The Smallest Minority has a different and more positive take on the film that is also worth your consideration.

UofM Caves To Anti-American Sniper Protesters

The Detroit Free Press: U-M cancels 'American Sniper' screening after complaints.

A planned screening of the Iraq war drama "American Sniper" at the University of Michigan has been canceled after complaints by students about portrayals of Arabs and the Middle East in the film.

The Michigan Daily reports the Center for Campus Involvement announced the decision Tuesday.

Sophomore Lamees Mekkaoui started a petition earlier in the day after learning that a showing of the film was planned for Friday. Mekkaoui says she identifies as Arab and Middle Eastern and feels the film "condones a lot of anti-Middle Eastern and North African propaganda."

So much for UofM being an institution of higher learning and free exchange of ideas and all that. All it takes is some protesters of leftist persuasion and they fold like a cheap suit.

This isn't the first film they've shut down and prevented from being screened, they banned the film Honor Diaries from being screened last year that showed the mistreatment of women in Islam-dominated countries.

Update: Apparently UofM got the message that they were being made to look like censorious politically-correct idiots so they will now show the film. Simultaneously, they are offering a screening of Paddington so all the anti-American progressive special snowflakes can watch a film that's more appropriate for their infantile intellectual level.

Such a Small Man Taking Up So Much Room And Air

Michael Moore sure likes drawing attention to himself, even as he comes off as a very small and petty fat man.

In an effort to put a little shine on his progressive street cred, which is rather hard to do living as  large (some would even say super-sized) and in luxury as he is, he had to open his pie hole and shourt "Hey! Look at me!" and be-clown himself regarding the success of the movie American Sniper:

Daily News: 'American Sniper' has a record-breaking opening weekend — but liberal filmmaker Michael Moore takes aim 

This couldn't have anything to do with the fact that American Sniper grossed in one weekend more than all but one of Michael more's films grossed in their entire run combined, and more than quadrupled the gross of any of even his best grossing his film's opening weekend, now could it?

A rather petulant effort from a failed "look at me" progressive.

This is of course, lest anyone forget, the same Michael Moore that was cheering for a defeat of America in Iraq and called terrorists there "minutemen", the very same terrorists that hero Chris Kyle was bagging by the score.

No wonder he's chapped at his failure compared to the success of Chris Kyle's legacy.

Quick Movie Review: Into The Woods

Took the kids to see Into The Woods on Christmas Day.



To say it was a little darker than expected is a tad of an understatement.  Certainly the darkest Disney film I can remember seeing.

Think the full Brothers Grimm - including the part of the Cinderella story they don't usually tell to children.

But for that, it was quite an enjoyable mash-up of Grimm's fairy tales and amazingly enough, the musical aspects of it worked.

Dark, intense and oft-times humerous, it's worth seeing.  Leah handled it well so a mature 8-year-old can see it, even with some scary moments, and it seems enough of the adult-aimed messages and innuendo still thankfully went over both the kids' heads and they didn't pickup on it.

Also, Johnny Depp plays a very bad, bad wolf indeed.