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Love and Monsters

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  • Title: Love and Monsters
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Love and MonstersIt may seem weird to call a story centered around a 23 year-old man a coming of age story, but that’s exactly what Love and Monsters offers. Seven years after the end of the world, with people huddling in bunkers hiding from a wide assortment of mutated monsters roaming the earth, the cowardly Joel (Dylan O’Brien) decides to do something completely against his nature and travel 85 miles across the monster-infested post-apocalyptic landscape to find his girlfriend Aimee (Jessica Henwick) who he last saw seven years ago.

Narrated by the self-deprecating Joel who is both aware of his shortcomings and determined to overcome them, we follow the young man’s journey where he’ll face gruesome monsters and run into an assortment of odd characters including an unlikely pair of survivors (Michael Rooker and Ariana Greenblatt) living on the surface, a robot, and a dog.

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If Looks Could Kill

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  • Title: If Looks Could Kill (1991)
  • IMDb: link

If Looks Could Kill

Released six years before Mike Myers would bring Austin Powers to life in a spy parody about a man literally out of time, Richard Grieco stars as a high school student thrust into the spy world in the most unlikely way possible. Flashback Friday looks back at 1991’s If Looks Could Kill.

The movie has a little bit of everything for Bond fans including Linda Hunt in the role of an evil henchwoman playing homage to Lotte Lenya‘s Rosa Klebb in From Russia with Love. We also get Roger Rees as the typical evil businessman seeking world domination, plenty of spy gadgets, beautiful women including Gabrielle Anwar and Geraldine James, fast cars, and a tongue-in-cheek plot where the villain is literally crushed to death by his own greed.

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Lady Bloodfight

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  • Title: Lady Bloodfight
  • IMDb: link

Lady Bloodfight movie reviewThrowback Tuesday takes us back to to 2016 and an all-female martial arts tournament called the Kumite. The script by Bey Logan and Judd Bloch is more confusing than it needs to be with unnecessary subplots getting the way of what should be a straightforward fight film. The movie opens with two competitors fighting to a draw in the tournament, and each given the opportunity to train a fighter for the next Kumite. Each take their sweet time, finding a suitable student at the last minute.

The tranquil Shu (Muriel Hofmann) chooses the unlikely American Jane (Amy Johnston) whose sudden trip to Japan is more about learning about father’s participation years ago (when it wasn’t an all-female tournament?) than running away from the brutal beating she gives would-be gang rapists offering a particularly vulgar Southern hospitality half a world away. The vengeful Wai (Kathy Wu) chooses street thief Ling (Jenny Wu) with a mean streak that matches her own (in yet another twisty subplot). Despite the talented field, and the tampering of an unscrupulous gambler, there’s never a doubt who will settle the feud in the tournament’s final match.

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Vacation Friends

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  • Title: Vacation Friends
  • IMDb: link

Vacation Friends movie reviewVacation Friends offers your usual odd couple pairing when Marcus (Lil Rel Howery) and Emily (Yvonne Orji) meet the outrageous Ron (John Cena) and Kyla (Meredith Hagner) through a series of misadventures while on vacation in Mexico. Wackiness ensues. After having a far crazier vacation than they had planned, Emily and Marcus leave Mexico with no plans to ever see the other couple again until they show up months later uninvited at their wedding looking for their “best friends.”

Filled with equal amounts of laughs and groans, and just enough charm to keep you watching, the wacky Vacation Friends offers a nice (if obvious) message about how sometimes the people you least expect can become your closest friends (and not just a fun vacation story). Most of the movie features Marcus and/or Emily freaking out by what the other couple has done next only to realize their embarrassment over Ron and Kyla is blinding them to what the pair bring to their lives (aside from the chaos) and that the couples are better when they are in each other’s lives. It’s not something I’d recommend, but the right audience may have fun with Vacation Friends.

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Val

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  • Title: Val
  • IMDb: link

Val movie reviewNarrated by his son Jack Kilmer, Val takes a look at the life and career of Val Kilmer offering glimpses throughout his career with the self-shot footage Kilmer has collected for decades. The documentary also explores the personal side of Kilmer’s life, his fight with throat cancer, and his current struggles doing what he can to keep his career alive through appearances at conventions. It’s something to behold, and not always easy to watch.

Given the amount of footage and the film being framed by Kilmer’s own words, read by his son, and the glimpse inside of his day-to-day life, we get quite an intimate take on the ups and downs of the actor’s career. We see instances of the reputation earned for being hard to work with (such as his time on The Island of Dr. Moreau and why John Frankenheimer called the actor “impossible” to work with), and the Juilliard trained actor’s struggles to find meaningful roles in Hollywood. Some of his films get larger mentions then others, but for any fan curious about Val Kilmer’s life and often troubled career, Val provides an intriguing look into his world and the actor whose artistic nature caused him to often be his own worst enemy.

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