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Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

  • Title: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
  • IMDb: link

Adapted from Patrick O’Brian’s nautical novels, 2003’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World takes us aboard the HMS Surprise captained by Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) during the Napoleonic Wars. After barely escaping an attack by a superior French vessel, Aubrey and his crew repair the ship at sea rather than flee home in disgrace. After being bested again, and learning a bit about camouflage from a discussion with the ship’s doctor (Paul Bettany) about an insect on the Galapagos Islands he wishes to study (along with other flora and fauna), the captain sets on a plan to give his ship a fighting chance.

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The Accountant 2

  • Title: The Accountant 2
  • IMDb: link

Pretty much the entire cast from The Accountant returns for its sequel with the notable absence of Anna Kendrick. Following the death of her mentor Ray King (J.K. Simmons), Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) enlists the help of Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) who pulls in his brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal) making the sequel more of an odd couple buddy action-comedy. The mystery involving the death of Ray is a bit of a convoluted mess involving an amnesiac killing machine (Daniella Pineda) and a family fleeing El Salvador that eventually our protagonists will unwind.

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Nobody

  • Title: Nobody
  • IMDb: link

Falling into the same pattern of films such as First Blood, John Wick, The Equalizer, and Taken, Nobody offers the same advice that you should be very careful with who you pick a fight with. Bob Odenkirk stars an unassuming middle-aged family man who is woken out of his slumber by a break-in. Allowing the robbers to make off with a limited amount of cash, which only makes friends and neighbors think less of him, Hutch hits a breaking point that isn’t satisfied by tracking down the thieves. However, he is mollified by beating up a gang of thugs on-board his regular bus route that leads to an entirely new set of problems. Hutch’s wild night triggers a battle with Russian mobsters reveals his past as a covert agent working as an auditor and eliminating threats for the United States Government when no other outcomes were available.

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Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

  • Title: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
  • IMDb: link

Released in 1994, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective is little more than the window dressing of a plot to allow Jim Carrey to go crazy on film for 86 minutes. The film was heavily rewritten after Carrey was cast and much of the scenes were improvised on set to take advantage of Carrey’s humor and growing popularity. Much like his role in Batman Forever, Carrey is unleashed where films like The Mask, The Truman Show, and Dumb and Dumber made more effort to fit his style into the larger context of the film.

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In the Lost Lands

  • Title: In the Lost Lands
  • IMDb: link

There’s a moment, perhaps 80-minutes into the film, where our protagonists battle cursed skeleton warriors inside a hollowed-out nuclear reactor which provides the only momentary thrill of an otherwise dreadful adaptation of a George R. R. Martin short story featuring a witch (Milla Jovovich) with pulsating eyeballs and a hunter (Dave Bautista) traveling through a dystopian desert in search of a werewolf. Filmed on a modest budget for large-scale sci-fi/horror, In the Lost Lands earned back one-ninth of the film’s cost. The term is often overused nowadays, but this is what a true flop looks like. It did no better with critics than audiences with its hackneyed storytelling and half-developed concepts finding little to no support.

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