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Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

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  • Title: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
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Borat Subsequent Moviefilm movie reviewIt’s been 14 years since Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan was a success in the United States. Unfortunately for the Kazakh television journalist Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen), the movie did not do so well at home leading to trouble for the would-be documentarian who was imprisoned for bringing shame on his country. As the sequel opens, Borat is given a second chance to redeem his honor, and that of his country, by presenting a gift to Vice Premier, er… Vice President, Mike Pence.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is very similar to Borat in setting Sacha Baron Cohen loose in public and letting the cameras roll. Because of the recognizability of the character at this point, there’s even a Halloween costume of him, Borat is forced to disguise himself over the course of the film whose primary target this time around is the Christian Right, Trump supporters, and the Republican Party who, as Cohen proves, don’t need much help to look foolish on film. Maria Bakalova co-stars as Borat’s daughter whose relationship with her father provides the emotional undercurrent of the film.

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Terminator: Dark Fate

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  • Title: Terminator: Dark Fate
  • IMDb: link

Terminator: Dark Fate movie reviewThe latest desperate attempt to breathe new life into the franchise is awkwardly inconsistent while pushing a laudable girl power message through a mine field of a plot that often blows up in the actors’ faces. Knocking off John Connor in the pre-credit sequence (which apparently cures his mother’s cancer?) creates a new timeline for Terminator: Dark Fate in which Skynet never rose but an almost identical artificial intelligence with time-travelling robots (lamely named Legion) comes to power. Set in the present, a Terminator (Gabriel Luna) and an enhanced soldier (Mackenzie Davis) are sent back in time. The target is a young woman (Natalia Reyes) who will grow to fill the void left by John’s death.

Ignoring all events after T2, the new timeline allows for the return of Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Skynet’s final Terminator now passing for human. Although it earns points for removing Terminator Salvation from continuity, the brain-melting Dark Fate is inferior in every way to Rise of the Machines which remains the only Terminator movie that thought out the lasting ramifications of time travel.

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Double Dragon

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  • Title: Double Dragon
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Double Dragon DVD review

Based on the video game series, Double Dragon offers the story of brothers Billy Lee (Scott Wolf) and Jimmy Lee (Mark Dacascos) living in a dystopian 2007 New Angeles who are tasked with preventing one hell of a goofy super-villain (Robert Patrick) from getting his hands on both halves of an ancient Chinese talisman. While neither the best nor worst movie based off a video game, Double Dragon is a fair example of just what kind of mixed results the genre is known for.

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The Lie

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  • Title: The Lie
  • IMDb: link

The Lie movie posterThe Lie is a joyless exercise featuring Peter Sarsgaard and Mireille Enos as a pair of divorced parents who decide to to work together to hide the fact that their daughter (Joey King) is responsible for the death of one of her friends (Devery Jacobs) during a contrived set-up in the film’s tiresome first act.

The film features the parents making a series of bad decisions, including trying to throw suspicion on the missing girl’s father (Cas Anvar) as the reason for her disappearance by painting him as a child abuser while forcing their daughter to echo the lies to the police. Sarsgaard and Enos do what they can, but there’s not much here to work with, while King is stuck with a character the script can never properly come to terms with. Melodramatic as a tween with her first phone, events spiral out of control and even an absurd late twist can’t save what is best forgotten.

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The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

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  • Title: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
  • IMDb: link

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie reviewThrowback Tuesday takes back at 2003’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Adapted from the comic by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill, the film takes place at the end of the 19th Century when a terrorist organization begins pushing countries to a world war. Tasked to prevent such an outcome, a select team is put together including professional big game hunter and adventurer Allan Quartermain (Sean Connery), Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah), vampire scientist Mina Harker (Peta Wilson), invisible thief Rodney Skinner (Tony Curran), immortal doucebag Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend), Dr. Henry Jekyll and his monstrous alter-ego (Jason Flemyng), and tagging along for the ride is uninvited American Agent Tom Sawyer (Shane West).

Although the film did well enough internationally to earn back more than double its costs, it had mixed reaction from both fans and critics (and Connery even stated it was a deciding factor in his decision to retire). The convoluted screenplay by James Robinson overcomplicating what should be a straightforward action adventure certainly didn’t do the project any favors.

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