Awake not Woke!

Another unneeded sequel ruining a good name. This is just an attempt to keep these movies going for the gen z crowd. There are 3 new young characters introduced to replace the originals. 1 black male, 1 white male and 1 Spanish mixed half n half female. So DEI. They are annoying and unlikable. Everything they do is obvious and unrealistic, they aren't sneaky and stealthy. All the tricks are CG this time and look bad and take you right out of any plausibility they originals had. Then there's the woke. The first scene has the gen z 3 as I will call them steeling from 3 white male crypto bros. The villain is a ridiculous nasty girlboss sounded by beta males. Her accent and performance are hilariously bad. Lots of woke social justice comments thrown around throughout the movie. The overall theme here is the gen z 3 are better than the originals. The originals basically stand around the entire movie while they do everything and think of everything. This is a staple of woke replacement. Introduce new amazing character that you prop up while dragging down the originals by making them stupid and unneeded. I would bet they are planning another one with only the new characters. The villains family history is those pesky white supremacist Nazis again. They just had to have a scene with the midget 5 ft. 90lb female beating up and evading 3 large male police officers in an enclosed room. I made it through the entire thing but it is not a good movie. Can't really recommend this one. Spoilers.... The big reveal is the new DEI black kid is the brother of the white Nazi descendant female. Turns out her Nazi father was banging the black housemaid and had a kid and she thought she killed them. Yes really. Also DEI brother is the genius mastermind who set the entire heist and revenge plan up. Now that he has his birthright back he's giving up the diamond and all assets and giving everything to the South African communities. Wow.

I originally read the book back when it came out so it's been a while but from what I can remember this is incredibly close to the book. Great acting and writing, the FX are excellent and the humor is great. The book is fairly big and this sometimes feels a little condensed but at 2.5 hours it's already pretty long. Despite the runtime it never gets boring. There seems to be a divide here on whether or not it's woke so here's my response to some of the complaints. There is no climate change ever mentioned once anywhere in the movie. It is an invasive alien organism destroying the sun. That's it. The diversity in the panel is because it's a global initiative, this is not an America saving the world. This is on a global scale with many governments. Of course there will be diversity, why would there not. The female lead is not a girlboss in any way. She's quirky and awkward, not nasty, vile, aggressive or violent. Referring to him by Grace. It's literally his last name, many people call each other by their last name. It's not unusual. The alien species is a non humanoid species that looks rock like. Gender is never once brought up. When asking about the mates name using 'their' one single time in this case is the same as saying he/she when asking someone their pets name or gender. If gender was brought up then I would agree it's woke. Adrian is male, Adrienne is female. The name is dual sex the same as Nicky/Nikki or Danny/Dani or Terry/Teri. The only woke thing I saw was the black 'helper' Carl. He is not in the books and was added for the movie. This is clearly a DEI character put there for comedy and to help the white male lead. Not necessary and a woke point. I recommend both reading the book and watching the movie, they are both great.

Based on a true story from 2009. It's watchable but some lazy bad writing hurts this one a lot. The acting is pretty good but the story takes some liberties with what actually happened. There is a weird scene where the head of the coast guard makes a speech detailing hypothermia right after getting the call they are missing and before ordering the search. It's very out of place unrealistic and jarring to the flow of the story. There is also some editing issues where scenes change between night and day at odd times making the depiction of days versus the number of hours they were out there make no sense. There is also inconsistencies with the storm, sometimes torrential rain and the next scene barely raining and not storm clouds. Speaking of the storm it is called a tropical cyclone in a news report and many times radar is shown where a tropical cyclone or a hurricane/tropical storm is depicted. They even talk about the storm making landfall. This takes place in Feb in Florida, there are no tropical storms in the U.S. in Feb. This was a very strong storm pushed through by a cold front called a bomb cyclone but they do not move like cyclones. It is a straight line front that moves downward. Most of the acting is pretty good and the storm fix look good as well. The only woke I saw was the overrepresentation of females in the Coast Guard. Only about 15 percent is female but they are everywhere here including not 1 but both search pilots. The mixed race couple is accurate to real life so not woke and the race comment at the beginning I initially rolled my eyes at turned out to be a joke between friends so wouldn't really call that woke. Overall watchable if you are interested in the story but probably a one time watch.

Stylish albeit flawed.

The title says it all: some characters are going to run a Spanish Prisoner; it being the early archetype of the Nigerian prince scam, as described in the 19th century by French criminologist (and criminal) Vidocq (yes, he actually existed). The setup is usually more interesting as the pay-off, but in this case, the latter is creative. This one is a psychological thriller, not a flashy hesit flick, which won't be to everyone's taste. Martin is quite able to carry a non-comedic role here; the rest of the cast is quite adequate, although, to my opinion, the dialogues sound a tad contrived, as does the plot, on occasion. Especially the main character, he seems lacking in either common sense or basic survival instinct. Of note, a (short) appearance by Ed O'Neill, fresh off Married With Children. Alas, the cinematography lacks a strong tonal direction, and costumes & sets seem stuck in hesitation between contemporary and post-war. As for ideology, this is for the before time, so, none. Overall enjoyable if somewhat stiff.