Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)

Movies based on video games tend to be a mixed bag.  Pokémon had more than a few movies come out.  Pokémon Detective Pikachu was a pretty good movie.  I’m assuming that the others performed well enough.  I remember the Super Mario Brothers movie not doing as well.  I’ve never seen it but I seem to recall hearing that it bombed hard and with just cause.

Enter Sonic the Hedgehog.  It looks like someone got the idea to dust off some old Sega cartridges and see what they could do.  Nostalgia factor?  Check.  Characters that seem to stay true to the video game?  Check.  Original plot that has nothing to do with the video game?  Check.

On the one hand, the story is pretty generic.  It fits the very definition of paint by numbers.  [Insert hero name] goes from [place] to [place].  [Hero] gets help from [soon-to-be best friend].  They have to accomplish [goal].  Along the way, they are chased by [villain].

It’s exactly the kind of movie that sets itself up for some friendly joking.  The “I have no idea” scene has all the markings of a short-lived meme.  In fact, I would suggest maybe redubbing some of Sonic’s scenes with other celebrities, much like the scenes of Darth Vader with the voice of Samuel L. Jackson.  I could very much see Jimmy Fallon having Wallace Shawn on his show for just that purpose.  (I’d say Christopher Walken, but I don’t think that would work as well as Shawn would.  Danny DeVito, maybe.)

Don’t get me wrong.  The movie is entertaining.  There aren’t a lot of great jokes.  There aren’t any unforeseen plot twists.  In fact, there were fewer plot twists than I expected.  It’s one of those movies where if you’ve seen the coming attractions, you can guess how the movie plays out.  It’s the kind of movie you can enjoy if someone else is paying for it.

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Proud Mary (2018)

I’ve always wondered how professionals feel about how their professions are portrayed in popular media.  Do police officers look at shows like Law & Order and pick out all the mistakes?  Do doctors look at ER or House and think that medicine is portrayed as overly dramatic?  While watching Proud Mary, I wondered if any hitmen had seen the movie.  Does Taraji P. Henson’s portrayal of a hitwoman named Mary even come close to the reality?  (If you actually do this for a living, I don’t expect a response.)

The movie begins with Mary carrying out a contract.  She kills the target only to realize that his son is in the house.  He’s playing video games with his headphones on, so Mary is able to leave unnoticed.  Fast forward a year and the boy, Danny, is delivering drugs for a man who goes by Uncle.  Uncle is not a nice man.  He either beats or threatens to harm Danny for transgressions like stealing.  (Danny took some money to buy a pastry.)  Mary catches up with Danny after he collapses in an alley. She takes him in, neglecting to mention who she is.

It turns out that Mary works for a crime family that’s competing with Uncle’s family.  Mary has inadvertently started a war between the two families.  Uncle’s side knows that it was Mary’s side, but not Mary specifically.  Benny is the head of Mary’s family.  Benny assures the other side that he’ll look into it and take whatever action is appropriate.  Mary now knows that she has to get out.  She soon realizes that that’s not going to happen.

This is a movie I probably never would have seen without MoviePass.  I don’t even think I would have seen it on DVD.  This is a movie I would have added to my Netflix queue and let sit there until it was about to be removed from the streaming service.  I’m not saying that the movie isn’t entertaining.  My feeling is that a better job could have been done with the material.

The timeline of the movie is pretty straight forward.  I don’t think there were any flashbacks or exposition.  What little history there is tends to be minimal.  Mary was going out with Benny’s Son, although I think that’s only used to explain why he has a key to her place.  Danny tells Mary about what happened in the intervening year, but I get the impression that’s only to explain to the audience why he’s on the street.  Otherwise, we’d be wondering if he doesn’t have any other family.

The story basically serves to prop up the lies Mary has to tell and the gun battles she has to engage in.  I’d say that this is the Lifetime version of Léon: The Professional, but I think that Lifetime could have done a better job with it.  It’s hard to see Mary and Danny as anything more than basic characters.  Mary has a nice apartment and a nice car.  There’s exactly one moment where she tells Danny that she was once like him.  I didn’t sense any depth to the characters.

There are a few characters that serve only to die.  Uncle, for instance, sticks around just long enough for us to get that he’s a horrible person.  Then, Mary kills him.  Poor Walter meets a similar fate.  Mary and Walter work together, but she kills him hoping to make it look like the other family killed him for retribution.

We’re even denied any sort of a happy ending.  Yes, both Mary and Danny survive.  In fact, I think they’re the only main characters that do make it to the end.  However, the end has them simply driving off into the proverbial sunset.  We don’t even know exactly where they’re going.  We just know that it’s over.  I suppose I can at least be thankful for that.

IMDb page

Minority Report (2002)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

Before I start, I should warn you that I’m going to be giving away some details that you might not want to hear. Some of them are gross and some of them are plot details. I’ll also be mentioning where the movie’s name comes from. Read on at your own risk.


It’s 2054 and a special program, known as Precrime, has been in existence for six years. Lamar Burgess, played by Max von Sydow, is precrime’s leader. John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, is the lead officer. It’s only a trial run in Washington, D.C., but there’s soon going to be a vote on whether or not to take it national. (This is why a federal agent, played by Colin Farrell, comes in to see how everything works.) The results have been great. Murder was cut by 90% initially, and then eliminated. Since most people know of its success, premeditated murders in the D.C. area are rarely predicted. Precrime gets mostly crimes of passion.

The movie opens with Precrime being shown a vision of a man about to kill two people. Three precogs generate the vision. (I’ll explain what a precog is later.) Each one generates their own image and the three images are worked into a composite. All the police have to work with is this image. With enough of a vision, the police can garner clues like a merry-go-round or the style of houses.

The precogs are the result of pregnancies during which the mothers were addicted to drugs. I’m not sure if it’s the nature of the drug or the nature of the treatment that does it to them, but the result is that they can see murders while they sleep. I have no idea why it’s limited to such a violent crime. It would have been just as likely for them to come up with jaywalking or next weeks Lotto numbers. (It was mentioned that the precogs were known to have these violent dreams, but I don’t know if they were referring to all precogs or just the three used by the police. The details of how it worked weren’t mentioned.)

Now, I know what you’re thinking. I’ve mentioned this in any review on time travel and precognitive ability and other reviewers have mentioned this about this movie. How can the precogs predict a murder and thus allow the police to stop it? The movie gives an example. Anderton rolls a ball down a table. It falls off the edge, but the federal agent catches it before it hits the ground. Was the ball really going to hit the ground?

Sometimes, the police catch the people actually attempting the murder. However, there is some doubt in many of the cases. Sometimes, one precog sees alternate future, thus generating what is called a minority report, hence the name of the movie. (One such minority report plays a big role in the movie.)

The action begins when Anderton starts digging into an old vision. Agatha, the ‘lead’ precog, can’t seem to get the image out of her head. Before Anderton can do much about it, a new crime is predicted. John Anderton’s name comes up as that of the criminal’s. He’s supposed to murder a man he hasn’t met yet and he’s supposed to do it in a part of town he has no business in.

Here’s where it gets confusing. (I’m going to have to tell you part of the plot to explain it as clearly as I can.) The murder that Anderton is supposed to commit is actually a setup. By looking into the old murder that Agatha was replaying, he was going to figure something out. However, on its face, it seems that the course of events leading up to the murder is set in motion by the prediction of the murder itself. Had the prediction not come through, there’s no way of telling if Anderton would have known to look for the person. However, if the murder had been set up and was going to occur, that might have been enough to cause the prediction. It seems as though Anderton’s committing the murder is predicated on him being in a position to see the prediction and to do something about it.

Like I said, it’s confusing. All I can say is that you have to pay attention.

The central question seems to be whether or not you can change the future. Like I said, there is room for two futures to be predicted. Also, the police can stop the murder from happening. How certain is the future?

Another thing to consider is that D.C. seems to have found the perfect system. There is no perfect system. There’s always a way to cheat it or to manipulate it to your advantage. This comes up a few times in the movie.

The movie has a 1984 feel to it. There are retinal scanners and customer databases that keep track of your purchases. There’s a ton of product placement. Futuristic billboards advertise Pepsi and Aquafina. Anderton walks into The Gap to get some clothing for Agatha.

It can be an enjoyable movie if you don’t think about it. If you do think about it, you’ll probably want to watch the movie several times.

IMDb page