Predator Badlands

Okay that pretty much was what I was expecting!

I wasn't aware of a new Predator movie in the works til' I saw the trailer about 2 months ago, and considering last time I talked about this series was 2018 it's high time to see something new. And my God what an extraordinarily simple yet good story with a young inexperienced warrior named Dek who after some family drama takes up a hunt for a legendary indestructible beast, and while on a planet where it seems every aspect is meant to kill and maim he runs across a synthetic chatterbox named Thia who of course is on the planet for Weyland-Yutani purposes as they make a unlikely duo. What I vastly enjoy so much about it is because it's such a simple story, with not that extensive of a cast, and you get a fair bit of the the Yautja culture present with subtitles galore (Huzzah!), anybody can watch it knowing next to nothing about this series and still very much enjoy it! It's unapologetically sci-fi with a fair bit of cheese and silliness as is hard baked into the very genre, it's got a very good sense of humor, the action is shot well, the environments are unique as well as all the strange creatures, the director certainly had a distinct vision for what he wanted to do and in my opinion succeded! But I'm honestly not sure how it will perform, most movies I can view as sure fire hits or flagging bombs with relative ease but this is such an intricately different beast to where either it's gonna do decent and become a fan favorite over time...or just be too short and then become a fan favorite over time. It very much worked for me in all it's facets and is a fun science fiction adventure that I wouldn't mind seeing again! So sure fire recommendation in my book and I hope it gets some love cause they did do a very good job with it. 3 stars, 7.5/10 from me, and the monster mash isn't over yet!

Leap!

Well I've been wanting to see this movie for quite awhile, so how was it?

While Leap is not the most original movie, it is still a harmless, fun, and very decent family movie. It follows two orphans escaping their orphanage and travelling to Paris, where one named Victor dreams of becoming a great inventor, and Felicia who is determined to be a ballet dancer. What follows is a mish-mash of funny originality, and almost painfully retreaded cliches. I know I can say the best part of the movie is easily the relationship between Felicia and Victor, they bicker and take shots at each other like a married couple but you still can feel they are great friends and it's done very well. But sadly most of the other characters save one, are boring and predictable. We have a humble cleaner who teaches Felicia basically Karate Kid style and shock of all shocks she used to be a dancer too before an accident damaged her leg, I'm honestly surprised they didn't pull a particular twist with her character and her connection to Felicia but thankfully all that was not here! We have a stuck up, bitchy snob who I swear is the Evil Stepmother from Cinderella's sister, and her hell spawn of a daughter. Honestly there's several scenes where I was waiting for Felicia to just lay 5 fingers across her face but sadly to no avail. Now the only character who has even a touch of an arc is the dance instructor, he's a stick in the mud, very strict and mean but gradually commends Felicia's efforts and wants her to win. That's great, that is a good character arc, more of that please! The music, I hate it. You know my qualms I had with The Peanuts Movie and it's soundtrack? Quantify that immensely, it sucks. The best song is Swan Lake, but it's Swan Lake, the song is beautiful and will forever remind me of Bela Lugosi, I love it to death. But that's the one song I liked. The animation style is quite good though it does look like early Dreamworks animation but it's decent, the voice acting is.....beyond bizzare. As far as I know this film was originally released in France, it's A Monster In Paris situation. They took a french film, and brought it here in the States with a complete redo of the voice work, hell it almost does a Studio Ghibli with bringing in popular actors. But with one exception. There are moments when the lip syncing is way, way off. It is so damn odd! There are moments when the lip movements and voice match perfectly yet with other moments the voice comes nowhere close to syncing. Like almost Final Fantasy X-2 levels of off-ness. It created this severe disconnect for me. And the fact that the movie is so friggin' predictable. I don't want to bash the movie but there were way, way too many times where I was like, "Okay that's like Karate Kid. Oh that's like Chicken Run. Oh that's like every single godforsaken sports movie since time immemorial." and it draaaags. Oh sweet baby Jesus does it drag! Move on! Come on! Move!!! We know how this goes, snap to!! Ugh. I mean the parts that are good, do it really good but there is so much you got to sift through. You know the message of this movie by watching the trailer, it's so cookie cutter basic. It hurts cause I saw the trailer and thought, hey that looks like a fun good movie, and it mostly fell flat for me. I can't really and truly say I can recommend it, cause there are so many better movies that do this better. I genuinely hate to say this but Leap has fallen flat on it's face.