Aggressively sexist and passively racist, Battle Drone fails in every respect except inspiring me to rewatch The Losers, the excellent 2010 alternative to the inferior The Expendables.
The fight scenes are excellent, as one should expect of a professional stunt man and martial artist directed by a former stunt man, but the script and acting and irrelevant women leave everything to be desired.
This film shamelessly stole the plot of Stallone’s 1987 Over the Top, replacing arm wrestling with giant robot boxing but keeping the unearned emotions and false tension.
The great setup—five minutes of superpower from pills mysteriously appearing on the street—is marred by nonsensical “animal genetics” explanations, and by the woman-as-objective that remains so common in stories.
Angel Has Fallen is so basic you’d think Michael Bay directed it.
Green Room is a top-of-the-line modern horror movie that reminds us that the real monsters are Nazis and Patrick Stewart.
“Ours is one hell of a love story,” the main character says at the end, trying to convince itself and us that its frequent, affectless narration and muddled messages don’t make this movie very, very boring.