Tag Archives: franchise

Final Destination: Bloodlines

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Vampire Owl: Is somebody talking about blood now?

Vampire Bat: I am sure that there is blood, but not as you think.

Vampire Owl: Maybe, they are talking about vampire bloodlines.

Vampire Bat: Vampire bloodlines no longer remain a topic of discussion at least among the awakened.

Vampire Owl: So, you are not going to listen to the vampire elders anymore.

Vampire Bat: The vampire elders do not call the shots these days.

Vampire Owl: They are no longer the unwritten rulers of vampire kind?

Vampire Bat: They have never been the rulers, but advisors.

Vampire Owl: Advisors who have always made decisions all by themselves.

Vampire Bat: Well, the value given to their decisions was certainly higher. But now, we live in a world of monster hunters.

[Gets a Mysore masala dosa and three cups of Munnar tea].

What is the movie about? :: Iris Campbell (Brec Bassinger) and her boyfriend Paul Campbell (Max Lloyd-Jones) manage to attend the grand opening of the Sky View, the tallest tower in the city which has been a prestigious project, and will have the richest and the most influential people around. He intended to propose to her at the top of the tower which also has the perfect restaurant for a classic romantic dinner. Iris who is about to accept his proposal and also reveal that she is pregnant with their child, has a premonition of that chain of events that causes the tower to collapse in parts, killing everyone inside. There would be nothing left in that area which would be in shambles. She managed to stop the major factors that set up the events in motion including stopping a kid from throwing a coin which gets stuck, and warning the attendees not to step on the glass floor which would and thus prevents the total collapse but, in doing so, she had disrupted Death’s intelligent design. The tower was then closed for renovation, but after many years, was torn down, and nobody talked about that incident again.

So, what happens with the events here as we just keep looking? :: Many years later, Iris and Paul’s granddaughter, bright college student Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) who spends most of her life in books, is haunted by repeated nightmares of the tower accident and returns home after a long time, seeking the right answers. She is welcomed at home by her father, Marty Reyes (Tinpo Lee) and younger brother Charlie Reyes (Teo Briones). Still, searching for answers, she leaves with Charlie to visit their uncle Howard Campbell (Alex Zahara), aunt Brenda Campbell (April Telek), along with their happy cousins Erik Campbell (Richard Harmon), Julia Campbell (Anna Lore), and Bobby Campbell (Owen Patrick Joyner). When Stefani asks about her grandmother, Howard explains that she was sick and had mental problems, often called crazy with no way to be normal again. But she finds letters from her grandmother in a cabin, and traces her to a highly fortified cabin in the woods where she lives, but terminally ill with cancer and awaiting the slow arrival of death instead of the quick and brutal one.

And what more is to follow here with death’s grand plans? :: Iris recounts the Sky View accident and tells her that Death is taking the lives of everyone in the specific order they should have died. Then there is that family that were not supposed to have, and Death is taking them too, one after the other in the order of their birth. The fact that Iris has remained alive for long has kept her bloodline alive too, but as she steps out of her barricaded house to give her granddaughter her research on escaping death, she also shows how Death works, with a simple sequence of events leading to her brutal impaled death. She does not completely believe that death is coming to them in the specified order, but then the brutal death of Howard awakens her. The rest of the family realizes the seriousness only when Julia who has been confident herself and does not listen to others, falls into a garbage truck and gets squeezed in between. Now, they realize that deaths are going to keep happening, and it might just end their family. Can they find a way to stop Death from unleashing the eerie plans perfectly on them? Death who is a master of doing his perfect work shall not wait though, as he is already late.

The defence of Final Destination: Bloodlines :: The opening scene with the destruction of the tower and the deaths is one of the impressive beginnings that one can ever have, and it is one of those occasions when the death of a kid character is so much satisfactory. The visuals are the most stunning during those moments, and has us scared this time about going to the top of a tower – this actually released at a time when we were in Colombo and about to go to the top of the Lotus Tower – the effectiveness was right there to be taken. The deaths remain impressive, and the way in which the death’s plan comes to meet the requirements remain classic and something that we will remember for a long time. The familial side seems to work better than the previous movies too, as death seems to mean more here as it haunts the bloodlines. When death would come to haunt a family, things are always going to get more personal and fueling emotions. The appreciation that the movie received in comparison to previous movies will further fuel more viewers on Jio Hotstar where it finally reached. The lad role is well done by Kaitlyn Santa Juana, who would always be a lovely scream queen and we feel that Brec Bassinger would shine the same, as we remember her from 47 Meters Down: Uncaged.

The claws of flaw :: The predictability factor remains here too, and visual effects could have also scored more. The characters are also not given that much of importance as we look at them. As it is all about death anyway, the movie does not innovate in an overall manner, even though deaths get that focus as expected. The film never gets that much innovative out of the best idea, which seems to repeat a little too around. Still, the side characters are not provided that much significance, especially that of people like Anna Lore who plays Julia who just dies off too soon. The effects used here are not of quality all the time, as some of them feels like coming from a lower level. The gore is just given more importance over suspense, twists and haunting – there seems to be not that power in the investigation to cheat death, and nothing much seems to be gained by the same. There could have been some variety or some findings that come as the special ingredient here, but the same is not there to be taken.

How it finishes :: This seems to be the Final Destination movie with the best opinions so far, even though the third with the roller coaster deaths was the one which had me going as a child despite knowing well enough about the flight and truck deaths. The movie keeps the nostalgia running, surely in a stronger way than the recent flicks from the same world of death, those with the bridge collapses and racing car accidents. Its presence in Jio Hotstar makes it very much accessible to many. For those who are fans of Final Destination style classic deaths, this is more than worth watching, starting from the opening sequence, seemingly bringing some quality back around here. Still, it hesitates to use the movie’s full potential and develop on what could be its strength as bloodlines also come into the picture. Well, Fast and Furious showed us the power of family, but this one, despite having such a family hunt around, do not bring enough focus around here. Still, this remains very much fun, and a reminder that we are all going to die, and possibly a very painful one, reflecting our own painful existence in a sad and depressing world.

Release date: 16th May 2025
Running time: 110 minutes
Directed by: Zach Lipovsky, Adam Stein
Starring: Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Anna Lore, Brec Bassinger, Tony Todd

<<< Click here to go to the previous review.

<<< Click here to go to the previous English film review.

@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.

Despicable Me 3

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Vampire Owl: I would like to use this particular title for myself too.

Vampire Bat: Why do you want to be called the vampire deserving hatred and contempt?

Vampire Owl: Because I am going to take over the world.

Vampire Bat: You have had that thought since you became a vampire apprentice for the first time. It is not real.

Vampire Owl: Doctor Frankenstein has always believed in alternate realities.

Vampire Bat: But you don’t believe in Mr. Frankenstein.

Vampire Owl: He is just not part of my reality. But his methods surely are.

Vampire Bat: You cannot pretend to put things into different realities, and speak as if you are from one reality in which is independent of the others when all of these is just one reality.

Vampire Owl: Do you know that with regular practice and with finding inner peace, we can create our own realities with our minds?

Vampire Bat: This is exactly why I feel that zombies without brains are awesome.

[Gets the tickets with masala tea and caramel popcorn].

What is the movie about? :: Felonious Gru (Steve Carell) is spending some nice time as a secret agent of the anti-villain league along with his newfound love, Lucy Wilde (Kristen Wiig) who is also trying hard to be a loving mother to the three adopted kids, Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier) and Agnes (Nev Scharrel). Balthazar Bratt (Trey Parker), a supervillain obsessed with the television character that he played, has become Gru’s biggest opponent, and even evades him and Lucy on so many occasions. After the last encounter between the two, Gru and Lucy end up being fired from the league by the new chief of the league. Now left without any job, the minions led by Mel (Pierre Coffin) wishes for him to go evil again, so that they will all have something to do. But Gru doesn’t want go back to be the villain again as it would be against all he had hoped for, and so the minions just decide to quit, except for two.

So, what happens next? :: Meanwhile, Balthazar continues to have more and more success with his evil plans, stealing world’s most precious diamond without even having to think twice about it. It is during those times that Gru comes to know that he has a twin brother named Dru (again Steve Carell), who seems to be rather a successful businessman with his pig farms. They had separated when they were kids, as Gru was taken by his mother and Dru by his father, both not knowing about each other until now. When it is revealed, Dru does invite Gru and his family to his special place, where they are given a grand welcome. With golden hair on the head and being a more cheerful and successful man, Dru does make Gru jealous, but it is not the visit is more about. Dru reveals that Gru has always been a role-model in the form of a master villain, even with his failures – he claims that it is Gru who has kept the family tradition going.

And, what is to follow next in the adventure? :: Meanwhile, minions end up in prison, and come up with some special plans to get back with Gru due to the nostalgia keeping on troubling them. Dru wants Gru to go back to crime with him, as he feels that both of them could get the family crime legacy to the next level. Gru who is now married to his love and being the father of three adopted children, doesn’t really want to do the same, but wants to get even with Balthazar. He plans to get the diamond from the criminal, and get it to the anti-villain league along with the villain himself, so that he could find him and his wife back in the job. But his brother is interested in this because they could get their hands on the most valuable diamond in the world, and the heist would thus go down in history. But our evil villain does have other plans starting from Hollywood, and going on for mass destruction. Will Gru be able to stop him this time?

The defence of Despicable Me 3:: There is the focus on laughter here, and attempts are regularly made at the same. With the attempt to bring in more action sequences, and situations made for comedy, we are surely seeing an entertainment which finishes without taking that much of our time. It also leaves things open in the end which means that we can have something to go for with a fourth movie which will be something better if good imagination gets the right inspiration. Minions, even though out of the main tale, making almost no impact, are still fun to watch – there are some rare cases here that has repetition being fun. The kids are surely going to love this one a lot – there is no reason why they shouldn’t, as silliness is written again and again on screen with this movie around. Everyone from that age really wants to be Gru or at least with him in an animated world full of action and minions, don’t they? Well, be there early as this one released in India before it did in the United States of America.

The claws of flaw :: Well, Despicable Me 3 is just too childish – surely more childish than the first movie as well as Despicable Me 2. There is almost no thinking regarding the story-line here, as we get to know that quite early. We see not much happening here, and even the usual messages are not present. With what seems to be a random mixture of things, the emotional side is rather lost, something which can be rather catastrophic of an animated movie – the kids have almost no significance in the tale along with the minions who are just there for the laughter, and there are the two brothers whose story just seemed to have been brought for the sake of the adventure, and there is the villain who seems to have the appeal rather too much on the kids rather than anyone else. You would also realise that there have been two movies before this and a spin-off, and a better result still evades the makers and the fans alike. 3D is also not that much of a difference maker.

How it finishes :: Well, Despicable Me 3 is fun for sure, even though it seems to trail behind Despicable Me and Despicable Me 2 without even trying well enough to make much of an impact. Maybe, everyone have already felt that this franchise is in an eternal safe zone, like Ice Age, Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda series might have been thinking already. But, if we compare the number of screens and the number of viewers for Cars 3 and this one, it is clear that safe zone is slowly and steadily becoming a myth – there are always new movies which are not sequels made out of special creativity, like Moana, Zootopia, Frozen and Inside Out, ready to conquer the animated area. They will surely have to put the extra effort for the next movie, if people are going to continue believing in the same – this will work as of now with its comic side and how good it looks on the screen, but an animated movie is going to require more than that in order to have a long and better run.

Release date: 16th June 2017 (India); 30th June 2017 (USA)
Running time: 89 minutes
Directed by: Pierre Coffin, Kyle Balda
Starring: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Trey Parker, Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, Nev Scharrel, Steve Coogan, Julie Andrews, Jenny Slate, Pierre Coffin

@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.

MI: Rogue Nation

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miv

Vampire Owl :: We have been missing the impossible.

Vampire Bat :: Well, we haven’t tried anything impossible for some time.

Vampire Owl :: Actually, we take no risks except when watching those terrible movies.

Vampire Bat :: Well, everyone can’t be Tom Cruise!

Vampire Owl :: Somehow, he never really gets old.

Vampire Bat :: May be he is immortal too, in another way.

Vampire Owl :: There is that special feeling when we hear that Mission Impossible music; I don’t know what it is.

[Gets the tickets].

✠ This was recently posted by me at Kiagia.com: http://www.kiagia.com/index.php/current-film-releases-movie/947-mission-impossible-5-review.html

We return to the super-hit franchise again. Tom Cruise, the Mission: Impossible franchise and the action movie fans have had a very good relationship in the last few years. Even as the third movie of the series was the least impressive of them all, they successfully made things a lot better with the fourth, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Inspired by a much older television series, Mission Impossible franchise has been making a very heavy impact on the fans since the first movie in 1996. It is no different in the case of this fifth movie which has everyone’s attention ever since the trailer began to show up in the theatres.

As his adventures continue, Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) comes face to face against a dangerous criminal organization called the Syndicate. But despite his best efforts, CIA and other organizations completely deny its existence. Meanwhile, the director of the CIA Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) gets IMF disbanded and taken into the CIA itself, with a mission to catch Ethan as early as possible. At the same time, Ethan is captured by the Syndicate, and is saved by a former MI6 agent working for the criminal organization, Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson). As IMF is disbanded and CIA is refusing to believe them, Ethan decides to take things into his own hands.

As Ethan remains on the run with CIA on his tail, he almost gets hold of a Syndicate member while attending an opera, but the Chancellor of Austria is killed at the same venue despite his best efforts. At the same time, Ilsa leaves him with clues which will help him to get to her at Casablanca. With the help of his friends Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and William Brandt (Jeremy Renner), Ethan has to figure this out and confront the leader of the Syndicate, Solomon Lane (Sean Harris). It turns out that the Syndicate is not a regular criminal organization as they thought it was, but something more with origin in secret government organizations.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation is exactly the movie of the series that the fans might have wanted for a long time. It is surely intelligent and has a very interesting story despite having no spectacular sequences to finish it – the ending could have had bigger action and the villain also could have been a more menacing one face to face. The highlight of the movie, the sequence with Tom Cruise hanging outside the airplane comes very early. It is just one of those stylish action highlights of the movie which has others like an interesting sequence at an opera, a high voltage motor-bike chase and an underwater heist. These are also done at some of the best locations possible.

We know how well Mad Max: Fury Road managed to be a wonderful full action movie, and this one follows that path using its strength. The rest of the things are just means to this strength, and you can also admire the fact that the smartness of the plot supports it. You should notice how well things come together as the locations shift between different nations – you will love Morocco shown in this movie more than the rest. The sequences are also more believable. I was still a little disappointed that Jeremy Renner doesn’t take part in much of the big action here. But there is enough here to make up for that, and our cast surely does the job very well.

In a movie which has some nice twists and change of sides, Tom Cruise manages to emerge as the awesome action star once again. There is no difficulty there is making us believe in the impossible with this man around. It was great to see Rebecca Ferguson get a role which is very much on par with him, with just lesser in screen presence only to Tom Cruise. She is the best heroine ever in a Mission: Impossible movie and she has a part in almost every action sequence with our protagonist, and at the same time having no romantic side with the hero. She is perfectly suited for this role. She does those stunts in style and also brings the suspense as the person who is the most difficult to figure out in the whole movie. She is the one complicated person on whom the whole mission depends on. She becomes the big advantage that none of the other movies of the franchise had. Along with Jeremy Renner, Ving Rhames also has a little too less to do in this flick.

The franchise achieves new heights with Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, as the latest flick becomes a superior entertainer in the list of movies which have served us for almost twenty years. There is a certain improvement with this movie, which was thought to be a hard task, but it has been done. It won’t be easy to forget this one soon, as the thrilling experience will stay on the mind of viewers for quite a long time. Even though there have been so many movies with big action sequences, you can still take the level of action to an even higher level – it is not impossible, and this movie proves the same with ease. Look out for this movie this weekend, and it can make you forget Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.

[After the movie]

Vampire Owl :: Well, Rebecca Ferguson does save the day more times than Tom Cruise, and that should be a first.

Vampire Bat :: She is too good! Most of the time, her character surely is the smartest one around!

Release date: 6th August 2015 (India); 31st July 2015 (US)
Running time: 131 minutes
Directed by: Christopher McQuarrie
Starring: Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Sean Harris, Alec Baldwin, Simon McBurney, Jens Hultén, Tom Hollander

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@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.