mistela67

I'm giving this one 9 stars, and I don't often rate that high. But when you factor in Mission: Impossible- The Final Reckoning's ability to entertain non-stop, it's very much deserving.

The action sequences are what you'd expect from a MI movie. Underwater, on land, in the air, you get it all with this one. What is particularly engaging is the pacing of the sequences. There is a particular underwater scene that you sort of think runs too long, especially because it has no dialogue. But the extension of the scene builds tension and adds a flair or realism, as the character navigates through a precarious, convoluted, and compacted environment. The length of the scene makes sense given the circumstances. The air scene at the end is also a bit long. It's effective, but it doesn't sting you like the underwater sequence did. Still, it's very entertaining and you get to see, perhaps for the last time, Tom Cruise do his amazing stunts.

Along with the excellent pacing is the high quality acting. Each character does his/her job effectively, be they villain, good guy, or the in-betweens. I won't give anything away here, but one scene is particularly emotional, yet not cheesy. Balanced, I'd say, and good acting made the scene what it was.

If I had to nitpick, I'd say the AI villain (The Entity) doesn't really make sense to me. Seems like it's too much of a stretch regarding what it does and what it plans to do. But it's not distracting to the overall feel of the movie.

MI8 does a great job of giving props to its predecessor movies, enough to where I plan on binging all the previous MI's this summer. And I liked the way MI8 ended, coming full circle, and leaving just enough of an opening for an almost impossible MI9...well, a guy can hope, can't he?

MI8 promises and delivers on a good time. Fun, emotional, tense, and very exciting. If this is it, then Cruise sends this one out with a bang.

9/10 - pacing, acting, just a fun time.

After reading some of these reviews, I wonder if I was watching the same movie others were.

A Quiet Place 3, Day One (AQP3) is NOT a bad movie at all, not even close. It definitely deserves a rating higher than what is depicted here on IMDB. The acting is excellent, the writing is appealing, the editing and directing is spot on. This is a movie that does alot with what little it has, just like the previous movies. Yes, there are a few details not explained, but it doesn't mean the narrative is lacking.

I do agree that this movie should not have been billed as a prequel. For a prequel, I need to see some origination of the plot. I need to see how the world first reacts to this alien invasion, and I need to see some fight from my fellow humans. If we lose, I need to see some soldiers and civilians going down bravely. That would have been some entertaining elements of a good prequel, but I suspect the initial fight against the creatures would have been so involved that it would have made for its own movie. A couple of other issues are that the connection to the human survivors being dependent on silence came too quickly for me. And what the aliens are and why they chose Earth is never delved into.

But all of this is just nitpicking. I am disappointed at the cynicism of these reviews. AQP3 is an entertaining movie that does what it's supposed to do. Yes, most of us predicted the ending, but still, it was executed with skill. Tough crowd out there reviewing this movie. Trust me, it's alot better than the rating here shows.

8/10 as good as the first two.

Gladiator 2 is a movie that comes up short. That's the best way to describe it. It's a good movie, but it's a movie that seems to be just enough to get what it's trying to get across, but not enough to make it intriguing.

Potential viewers of Gladiator 2 should not compare this to Gladiator 1, because Gladiator 1 was a complete movie; an epic of sort, with effective acting, writing, editing, cinematography and so forth. Everything Gladiator 1 did worked. It left the audience fulfilled and with something to reflect on later.

Gladiator 2 does not accomplish any of this. It's a movie that you watch, and then you move on. I won't go down any sort of list as to why I feel this way, but I will touch on the movie's writing and the acting. Gladiator 2's storyline was predictable, superficial, and unmoving. The script was inept. The audience is not given enough backstory on any of the main characters to understand them, or feel anything for or about them. A good example is the Denzel Washington character. I would have like to have known how he arrived to the status he has in the movie, but I was not given very much about that, which made his motivations for doing what he did unclear to me. The twin emperors were handled even worse, with nothing to qualify their bad-guy status other than their flippant attitude towards gladiator violence. The General, played by Pedro Pascal, was an unnecessary character, and Connie Nielsen's Lucilla did very little with what little she was given. And forgive me, but acting-wise, Paul Mescal is no Russell Crowe...I'll leave that right there.

The one thing this movie did was capture the sentiment of the Donald Trump era. This movie will not be criticized for being a gender-woke affair. Gladiator 2 was a testosterone-fest, complete with burly looking model-men and plenty of macho attitude, something along the lines of what the movie 300 gave audiences.

All in all, Gladiator 2 will make money, and people will enjoy it. It's not a horrible movie, it's just not that much to it. The acting doesn't live up to the performances of the first movie's cast, and the CGI is basement budget-level (especially the baboons). That said, if you are looking for action and warfare violence, this movie will supply it. And if you haven't seen it yet, my advice is to not expect too much, and try not to compare its quality to Russell Crowe's Gladiator.

6/10 not nearly to the standard of the original Gladiator.