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| EFC STATS |
| Movies Listed: |
32784 |
| Total Ratings: |
249795 |
| Total Reviews: |
28841 |
![[202171896 Hits]](/cgi-bin/gd.cgi?202171896)
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| MORTAL KOMBAT (2021) |
"Finish him."
Lybarger says... "Twenty-four years ago, I had to sit through the follow up to one of the few successful movies based on a video game. Like its predecessor, it lacked the grisly violence of the game, but it had nothing to offer that could replace it." (more)
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| MORTAL KOMBAT (2021) |
"You'll Be Screaming "Finish It!""
Peter Sobczynski says... "I suppose I should probably confess upfront that I harbor no particular nostalgia towards “Mortal Kombat” in either its video game or big screen incarnations from the 1990s. Regarding the former, I no doubt threw a few quarters into it while killing time waiting for a movie to begin but only if there wasn’t a better game available in the lobby—something like “Smash TV” or that “T2” adaptation. As for the movies, I vaguely recall seeing the original 1995 film, the first game-to-screen adaptation by Paul W.S. Anderson, the only thing I really remember about it was the bizarre decision to take a game that was primarily famous for its graphic and over-the-top violence and transform it into a blandly innocuous work that strained to achieve its PG-13 rating. As for 1997’s “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation,” even I had better things to do than sit through that one and nothing that I have seen or read about it over the years has caused me to question that particular life choice for even a second. Now, after years of rumors, false starts and legal issues, a new cinematic endeavor, cunningly entitled “Mortal Kombat,” is upon and if you are looking for a review that will explore in granular detail the ways in which it fits in with the franchise and its legacy, I would gently suggest that over the next couple of days, you should be able to easily find hundreds of reviews that will perform that task more effectively than I possibly could and you should probably look to them instead." (more)
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| FATHER, THE |
"The best of 2020's Best Picture nominees."
Rob Gonsalves says... "“Pray, do not mock me: I am a very foolish fond old man, fourscore and upward, not an hour more or less; and, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind.” Anthony Hopkins spoke those words as King Lear in 1986 and again in 2018, and he voices the sentiment in different words, or with no words at all, in the devastating drama "The Father."" (more)
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| IN THE EARTH |
"Ambition and atmosphere, at least."
Jay Seaver says... ""In the Earth" is simultaneously a movie that Ben Wheatley pulled together quickly as something he could make while folks were self-isolating - it was allegedly written and directed in two weeks - and something that must have been kicking around his head for a while, which leads to a certain tension. There's big ideas and times when the film either has too much or too little to do to get to the next leg, messy in a way you might expect from a film made under weird conditions." (more)
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| HOT WATER (2021) |
"Really (Not) Hot And Awfully (Not) Wet"
Erik Childress says... "Trying to recreate the moment in time when the creative minds behind the National Lampoon took their anti-establishment humor into the movies is a daunting task. The style of that humor has evolved, not to mention society which funnels every archaic joke through a modern perspective that can now register as problematic. The next thankless task is to just say screw it and try to mirror the kind of softcare Hardbodies genre that would gain play from horny teenagers on late night cable. Even if the message was still the same, behavior got dumber and clothing became more optional. Cinemax does not even run those sort of movies anymore so the only thing left for filmmakers is to either copy a bygone era or satirize it. Larry Rippenkroeger’s Hot Water has all of the ingredients to pick either of those lanes but somehow is asking its horned-up, summer-lovin’ beach body wanting audience to supposed to kinda sorta take it…seriously?" (more)
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| TRANSFERENCE: A LOVE STORY |
"The Heart Wants What The Heart(less) Wants?"
Erik Childress says... "Sex and love are so often confused in everyday courtship that any attempt to put a definition on them is usually the catalyst to neither existing in the future of a relationship. One can certainly turn into the other – from both directions – that the fantasy of such a happy ending through various definitions is what has us reaching for the simplicity of a movie romance. Raffaello Degruttola’s Transference starts off on the uneasy path between the two and does not make things much easier, but after a promising start also has trouble defining its two lovers in the high stakes world of emotional acceptance." (more)
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| THUNDER FORCE |
"The Blah Falcone"
Peter Sobczynski says... "My guess is that the pitch meeting for “Thunder Force” consisted entirely of writer-director Ben Falcone walking into Netflix headquarters, uttering the magic words “Melissa McCarthy is a superhero” and walked out with the requisite number of wheelbarrows filled with cash needed to bring it to fruition. As premises go, that one is not too bad but it quickly becomes apparent that nobody involved ever bothered to develop that premise in potentially interesting and funny ways, assuming that the sight of McCarthy and co-star Octavia Spencer wreaking comedic havoc with their powers to satisfy viewers. That works for a few minutes, to be charitable about it, but the whole thing just grows increasingly silly and tiresome as it goes on. To make matters even more frustrating, it does hit upon a potentially ingenious conceit—one that could have easily fueled an entire film on its own—but then kind of squanders it on only a couple of scenes (albeit the best ones) before retreating to the nonsense." (more)
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| VOYAGERS |
"Lord Of The Lasercats"
Peter Sobczynski says... "As “Voyagers” opens, it is the not-too-distant future and mankind has inevitably screwed the pooch, ecologically speaking, and extinction is imminent. Borrowing a page from the likes of “The Midnight Sky” and “Breach,” a plan is developed to send a group of people on a voyage to an inhabitable planet in deep space so that humanity can continue to live. Since the journey to the planet will take 86 years, the plan is to raise 30 genetically designed kids from birth in a lab setting and send them on a mission that will end up being completed by their grandchildren—the theory is that since they have never known what normal life is like, they are less likely to succumb to the loneliness and isolation of such a trip." (more)
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'WHERE DOES IT SAY THAT YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KICK DOWN DOORS, TORTURE SUSPECTS, DENY MEDICAL ATTENTION AND LEGAL COUNSEL?'
- D.A. Rothko, Dirty Harry
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