TERMINATOR GENISYS

Paramount Pictures

Rated PG-13

Running time: 126 Minutes
















Click below to watch a movie trailer of Terminator Genisys on YouTube.
 

Paramount Pictures Terminator Genisys, has an apocryphal future war in 2029 against computer artificial intelligence Skynet and it's robot Terminators bent on destroying the human race. Human Resistance soldier Jai Courtney is sent back in time by Human Resistance leader Jason Clarke to save and protect Clarke's mother, Emilia Clarke, from the robot Terminators Brett Azar and Byung-hun Lee that have been sent to kill Emilia Clarke in the past - before the war and before Jason Clarke is born.

The fifth installment in the Terminator series - and the first film in a proposed new Terminator trilogy - the first half of Terminator Genisys is basically a combination of The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The first half of the movie was to me the best and my favorite part of the movie, as the movie explored the various consequences of multiple timelines while time traveling. Courtney was very confused in that the situations were not what he expected to happen when he traveled back in time - as the timeline has been altered. The opposite situation as opposed to a strong kick-ass Emilia Clarke, who knew what was going on - which is opposite of what the original Terminator movie was. The second half of the movie goes off onto it's own story in order to stop Judgement Day from happening - with a Terminator still after them. I was not crazy about the direction of the second half of the story, even if the movie did have tributes to the TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles trying to stop Judgement Day from happening, but I did like the action of the second half of the movie and loved the relationship of the characters. Terminator Creator James Cameron says that he considers Terminator Genisys to be the official third film of the Terminator franchise.

The filmmakers studied the Back to the Future films about how time travel works. This was important as you can get lost with how convoluted the various timelines can become.

Fan favorite Matt Smith (credited as Matthew Smith) was pretty much wasted as a fan favorite as he had very little screen time, although he was an important character. Dayo Okeniyi and Courtney B. Vance's characters were hardly used and those characters are major characters in the series.

There is a very logical explanation of Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger's mature age in the movie, as he reprises his role, as the filmmakers did not use makeup or CGI to make Arnold younger. Arnold was just as bad-ass as always in this movie and he was fun for me to watch. Many actors in the series were considered to have the actors reprise their original roles, but for various reasons they did not do so. I also do not like Schwarzenegger's credit that was listed in the movie as that is not what his name was. All the questions in the movie were answered except for one, unless I missed the answer which was not obvious. That one question was answered in another movie and I was expecting it to be reiterated in this movie.

There is a mid credits scene at the end of the movie. The first Terminator movie with a mid credits scene. It is also the first film in the series to be shot digitally and the first in the series to be shot with an anamorphic lens.

Click below to watch another movie trailer of Terminator Genisys on YouTube.



Rated PG-13 for violence, language, nudity. Running time: 126 Minutes.

Pancho
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Insurgent

Lionsgate

Rated PG-13

Running Time: 119 Minutes

Click below to watch a movie trailer of Insurgent on YouTube.
 

In Lionsgate Insurgent, has Shailene Woodley and Theo James are on the run after evading a hostile takeover from Kate Winslet and her mind controlled soldiers in post-apocalyptic Chicago.

Based on the second book of the Divergent trilogy written by Veronica Roth, with Ansel Elgort, Ray Stevenson, Zoe Kravitz, Miles Teller, Maggie Q, and Mekhi Phifer returning from Divergent, the movie takes place a few days after the first movie. Jai Courtney and his soldiers search through the wreckage of Abnegation for an unknown box that has the symbols of all the factions. Winslet says that the box contains information from the city's founders with the means to end the Divergence problem which has grown beyond all control, but only a Divergent can open the box - so Winslet orders all Divergents to be hunted down and captured. An angry Woodley, who is the key to the box, goes after Winslet - who believes that Divergents will destroy their society.

I was not familiar with the Divergent series, but I did not have to see the first movie in order to follow what was happening in Insurgent.  It is good that most of the cast resumed their roles from the original movie to maintain continuity, with Insurgent being Kate Winslet's first sequel - although the movie Insurgent is different than the novel Insurgent. The movie had the feeling to me of The Maze Runner, especially towards the end, with both movies as post-apocalyptic movies.

This is the first film in the Divergent series to be released in 3-D.

The final book in the Divergent trilogy - Allegiant, will be made into two films, with Shailene Woodley, Theo James, and Naomi Watts reprising their roles.

Click below to watch another movie trailer of Insurgent on YouTube.



Rated PG-13 for violence, sexual situations. Running time: 119 Minutes.

Pancho 
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A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD

Twentieth Century Fox

Rated R

Running time: 97 minutes



Click below to watch the A Good Day to Die Hard trailer.



In Twentieth Century Fox's A Good Day to Die Hard, NYPD cop Bruce Willis leaves his home in American and travels to Russia to retrieve his wayward son Jai Courtney from a Moscow prison - and gets involved with Russian terrorist intrigue and the CIA.

In Moscow, high-ranking but corrupt Russian official Sergei Kolesnikov plans on incriminating political prisoner Sebastian Koch without a fair trail when Koch refuses to hand over a secret file believed to have evidence against Kolesnikov. Meanwhile, Courtney - who was arrested for an assasination - agrees to testify against Koch for a shorter sentence. Willis, arriving in Russia for his son arrives at the courthouse - just as Kolesnikov's men attempts their own explosive justice against Koch. Courtney and Koch escape into the streets of Moscow - with Willis and Kolesnikov's men, who are led by Radivoje Bukvic, now after them.

In this fifth installment of the Die Hard movies, this is perhaps the most dramatic Die Hard movie that I have seen, as well as the most dysfunctional family oriented movie in the series. Don't get me wrong - there is still a lot of action in the movie, especially with the car chase and the helicopters. It is a shame that Willis's wife Bonnie Bedelia is not in the movie. I would hope that in the next Die Hard film that Bedelia will be in the movie so that they can have the entire Willis family of Courtney, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Bedelia in a Die Hard film before Willis retires the character. Willis has expressed a desire to do a sixth installment in the franchise and it would be great to see the entire family. My favorite line of dialog in this movie was "the things we do for our kids."

The dysfunctional family dynamics between Willis and Courtney in partnership together, as well as with Koch and his daughter Yuliya Snigir working together were quite interesting - especially when all these characters all interacted with each other. That made these characters much more interesting than bad guy Kolesnikov. Even Kolesnikov's henchman Bukvic was more interesting than Kolesnikov. What happens to Kolesnikov was something out of The Godfather.

There are subtitles when the characters speak Russian, which added to the James Bond-like worldliness feel to the movie. It is interesting to see the evolution of the Die Hard series, from destruction in a claustrophobic building - and going beyond to a world wide scenario with MAD implications. Despite the americanization of taxi cab driver Pasha D. Lychnikoff, Russian security was pretty professional and the use of the military helicopter was intense. It is too bad that you did not see any official Russian response to the situations in the movie, you just saw the terrorist response.

I liked the scenes with the helicopter, the Mi-24 HIND. They actually shot the movie with the HIND firing live ammunition to get the most realistic action. This reminded me of Act of Valor and their live fire use of the Navy SEALs riverine warboats. While the car chase was a great car chase, especially with the Cougar HEV armored truck used by the terrorists, Willis did not care about what he was doing to other people with his cars that seemed very reckless and uncaring to me. What if I was in the cars that he was hitting?

This is the first Die Hard movie that was actually written as a Die Hard movie. The others were actually written as different movies and turned into a Die Hard movie. This is also the first Die Hard film released in the IMAX format.

Rated R for violence and language. Running time: 97 Minutes.

Pancho 
All people smile in the same language.

 Pancho's Movie Reviews