By Dave B.

Seven years after abandoning her life as the Manila underworld’s most deadly assassin, Maria’s past catches up with her when an old flame, who thought she was dead, discovers that she has started a new life and family and decides to destroy everything that she holds dear. Maria uses her dormant skills to embark on a bloody, action-filled quest for revenge. 

By Dave B.

​A year after murdering his father, Mary (Taraji P. Henson), a hitwoman, rescues a boy from a life of being a drug runner for an abusive dealer, precipitating a war between her Boston crime family and the Russian mob. Henson is solid as Mary, but pretty much everything else about Proud Mary is either boring, half-hearted, or formulaic. There aren’t really any surprises in the movie, the plot and dialogue are dull, and the action sequences are second-rate. It’s not a completely terrible film,  but it’s also definitely not worth you investing 89 minutes of your precious time to watch.

By Dave B.

In Equalizer 2, Denzel Washington reprises his role as vigilante Lyft driver Robert McCall. He helps people who have been wronged around town (and the world). His usual routine is shattered, however, when it’s his closest friend who needs to be avenged. 

By Dave B.

In Black Summer (Netflix), the prequel to the cult hit Z Nation, a group of survivors struggle to make it from the outskirts of an unnamed major city to a downtown where they will find evacuation to a safe haven. As they make their journey, they encounter increasingly dangerous situations as society crumbles around them. Are the bonds that they forge during this crisis durable enough to survive the challenges that they face? Or will they turn on each other when their individual survival seems most threatened?

By Dave B.

In Amazon Prime’s Hanna (a television adaptation of the 2011 film of the same name), baby Hanna is liberated from a secret CIA facility in Romania and raised in the deepest part of the forest by her father, Erik. He trains Hanna’s mind and body to be perfect weapons, capable of dispatching any enemy without hesitation. But Hanna, as many 15-year olds are wont to be, is rebellious and wants to see the world outside of the forest for herself. Her father reluctantly agrees, but before they can end their years of solitude, they must find and kill Marissa, the woman in charge of the secret CIA eugenics program than created Hanna, and the architect of the death of Hanna’s mother. 

By Dave B.

​In Skyscraper (2019), Dwayne Johnson plays a former FBI SWAT team leader who lost the lower part of his left leg and most of his team (as well as a family being held hostage) after hesitating in the line of duty. Years later, he’s an independent security consultant who’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime: testing the security and safety systems of the tallest building in the world, a ridiculously lavish skyscraper in Hong Kong. His family moves into the building with him, as the project is fairly time consuming. So when gangsters attempt to destroy the building in a complex scheme to silence the building’s billionaire owner, Johnson springs into action (or more accurately hops on one leg, which is something that he does several times throughout the film) in order to save his family (the only people living in the building, of course) from a rapidly rising inferno.

By Dave B. 

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s newest release, a Kree warrior, named Vers (played by Brie Larson), suffering from amnesia discovers that her true origins lie on Earth, leading her to question the reality of the few things that she does remember. Vers immerses herself into a battle of galactic proportions, with the help of old friends and new, in order to protect the innocent and discover not only who she was, but who she is and is meant to be. 

By Dave B. 

In Close (Netflix), Sam (Noomi Rapace) is a military contractor assigned to be the bodyguard of Zoe, a pampered teenage heiress who recently inherited her father’s majority shares in one of the largest mining companies in the world. Sam and Zoe travel to Morocco where Zoe’s stepmother wants to keep an eye on the wayward girl while she seeks to close a multi-billion dollar deal that would cripple a rival Chinese consortium. When an attempt to kidnap Zoe fails due to Sam’s heroics, the pair find themselves cast adrift in Morocco with no allies, forced to rely on each other to survive long enough to unravel the plot that threatens them both. 

By Dave B.

While a cyberneticist is rummaging through a huge pile of garbage, he makes an amazing find: the largely disembodied head of Alita, a combat cyborg that is equipped with a human mind and an advanced robotic body. Alita’s innate sense of justice puts her at odds with all of the injustice that exists in her 26th century surroundings. As she uncovers more of her past, she discovers that no matter the era, some enemies will always have to be confronted. 

By Dave B.

​On October 1, 1989, 43 children were born to women who hadn’t been pregnant before that day. An eccentric billionaire purchased seven of these children from women around the world and raised them to be a group of elite superheroes. The Umbrella Academy (Netflix) starts off with the death of their billionaire father bringing the estranged and embittered siblings back together for the first time in over a decade. While trying to reconcile their differences, the surviving members of The Umbrella Academy must put aside their grievances and unite in order to prevent the eradication of all life on Earth.