“From the World of John Wick: Ballerina” - Killing Eve (or John Wick: Chapter 3.5).

Yes, that’s the actual title of the movie. Not just Ballerina, but From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. I triple-checked it. Lionsgate Films is making sure that everyone knows Ballerina is a John Wick movie. But that’s not all. Ballerina isn’t just a movie in the John Wick world, it’s a movie that features literal John Wick in much more than a cameo role. That’s how little faith Lionsgate has in a spinoff movie that’s ostensibly about a female assassin named Eve (Ana de Armas).

Like all John Wick films, Ballerina exists as little more than an action vehicle with just the tiniest hint of plot and a dash of world-building. Were you hoping Ballerina would shed some light on the High Table? Maybe get some real backstory and depth on the Continental Hotel chain? Or even just any character spending a couple of minutes actually explaining the hallowed rules of this assassin world? You know - the rules that everyone mentions but that nobody actually respects or follows? Well, keep on hoping.

Ballerina takes place between the events of John Wick 3 and John Wick 4. Remember early in John Wick 3 when John goes to a ballet theater owned by the Ruska Roma to meet with The Director (Anjelica Huston)? Me either. But that scene was partially recreated, followed by a quick conversation between Eve and John, to justify this movie’s existence. Eve is part of the Ruska Roma, having joined them as a child after her father was murdered by The Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne), leader of a mysterious and ruthless cult of assassins.

Again, like the other films, Ballerina gives frustratingly little information about its main entities - in this case the Ruska Roma and the assassin cult. The Ruska Roma are either assassins, ballet dancers, or both, but their business appears to be security protection rather than murder for hire. Honestly, it doesn’t actually matter. When Eve crosses paths with an assassin from the mystery cult, she confronts The Director for more information but is explicitly ordered not to pursue the cult due to a vaguely referenced agreement between the cult and the Ruska. But the rules of this world are broken all the time or simply not followed at all in the case of the cult. Eve wants vengeance for her father so, naturally, Eve ignores The Director.

What morsels we learn about the cult is a fraction of the little we learn about the Ruska. The cult lives in (and fully populates) a secret European mountain village, does not tolerate any members leaving, and...that’s really all we get. Eve’s dad was killed because he tried to leave with Eve. As Eve is searching for cult’s location, Eve tracks down a cult member staying at one of the Continentals (Norman Reedus). Turns out, he is doing the same with his daughter. The film gives a token attempt at tying this into Eve’s quest, but it’s really just another excuse to show how nobody follows the rules. In this case, an action sequence ensues in which a bunch of assassins “conduct business on Continental grounds,” which is expressly forbidden according to Winston (Ian McShane), but has happened in literally every John Wick movie. This universe is in the dumbest timeline.

But I get it - nobody is watching these movies hoping for rich world-building, clever dialogue, well-written plots, or fully fleshed-out characters. No, they’re here for the sweet, sweet action. And in that regard, nobody will be disappointed. de Armas is a very worthy choice as the next spotlighted assassin in this ultraviolent franchise, is easily as convincing a super assassin as Keanu Reeves. Like John, Eve is practically invincible, never misses a shot, can kill with anything she can get her hands on, and even takes quite the beating on multiple occasions.

And because this is movie number five in the franchise, the action scenes have steadily grown crazier and sillier to keep our attention. I particularly enjoyed Eve taking on a bunch of bad guys within the confines of an arms dealer’s hideout, as well as Eve battling her way through a town where even assassin children are trying to kill her. There are scenes featuring guns, knives, grenades, flame thrower duels, ice skates, and even dinner plates. Yeah, it’s as bonkers as it sounds and you should love every second of those scenes because, again, that’s why you’re there.

But none of those scenes can cover up for an egregious decision made by the filmmakers/studio - indulging in fan service that undercuts the value of Eve. You know, the protagonist of the film? I won’t give away the specifics (the previews featuring John took care of that), but John’s inclusion in the climax proves how little the writers and filmmakers care about the “World of John Wick” (heavy emphasis on the air quotes) or trust anything or anyone in it not named John Wick. And that, in a nutshell, is why I’ve always disliked this franchise.

Rating: Ask for fifteen dollars back because this was supposed to be Eve’s movie.

“Deep Water” - That’s definitely not a candy bar floating in the pool.

One of the first things they teach students in screenwriting class is to write a sympathetic protagonist so the audience has someone to root for. Apparently, the writers of Deep Water - Zach Helm and Sam Levinson - missed that week of class because every character in Deep Water is a character you’d like to see drown in a toilet. This includes Trixie, the adolescent daughter of loathsome couple Vic and Melinda Van Allen (Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, respectively). To be fair, Helm and Levinson adapted a novel of the same name written way back in 1957, but even if the characters are shits in the book, at least one of them could have been modified for the movie to make them, you know, not shits. Ooh, maybe that’s the twist - we’re supposed to root for the deep water.

(SPOILERS - Not even Disney cares if this movie gets spoiled. They removed it from opening in theaters and sent it straight to Hulu.)

Vic and Melinda have a marriage best described as “huh?” We first meet Vic setting his bicycle against the front door of his house, then turning to look up at Melinda. Melinda is sitting halfway up a staircase, mumbles something to Vic, then gets up and disappears up the stairs. Vic begins to follow her, then abruptly turns into another doorway halfway up the stairs. Clearly, these two are not on good terms. Maybe it’s because Vic is retired after having invented the chip in drones that finds and kills people and being “rich as fuck” to quote his friend Grant (Lil Rey Howery). Or maybe it’s something else.

Adding to their misery is Trixie, whom Melinda appears to hate, but only when she notices Trixie in the same room with her. Vic doesn’t hate Trixie, but doesn’t seem to care a whole lot about her either. More like he tolerates her while going through parenting motions like giving her a bath or taking her to school. And what did Trixie ever do to them? I mean besides ignoring Melinda’s pleas to stop telling Alexa to play the same song over and over at ear-splitting volume and, asking Vic if he murdered Melinda’s boyfriends and hinting that she might not keep it to herself? I mean, can you blame Trixie? What kind of asshole parents intentionally name their daughter Trixie?

I know what you’re thinking...what song? And, yes, you read that correctly - Melinda’s boyfriends are not a secret to Trixie. Nor are they a secret to Vic. In fact, he is well aware of them, apparently even condoning them. After the first couple of scenes, we meet Melinda’s current boyfriend, Joel (Brendan C. Miller), at a party at Grant’s house. Joel literally thanks Vic for being so cool about inviting him into their home and letting him have a relationship with Melinda. Since I had not read the film’s synopsis, nor had the trailers even hinted at this, I was confused and intrigued at the same time. All I knew was the film was billed as an erotic thriller, so my brain immediately starting coming up with different sexual fantasies and situations that could explain this setup, plus what kinds of scenes we were about to witness. Then, Vic proceeds to scare the shit out of Joel by telling Joel that he murdered the last guy that Melinda had a relationship with.

Unfortunately, this was the high point of the story. At that precise moment in the film, I thought the eventual reveal would be Vic and Melinda’s relationship was based on the two of them getting off on Vic watching Melinda screw other dudes, then murdering said dudes, then Vic and Melinda having raw, animal, Earth-shattering sex on the corpse of her lovers. It wouldn’t be the first Affleck film to feature that kind of disturbing sex (Gone Girl). Not only was I wrong about their relationship, but the film was neither erotic nor a thriller.

Turns out, Vic just doesn’t want a divorce, so he tolerates his wife fucking every hot dude that comes along. Why, you ask? Beats me. Maybe he just doesn’t want to be like Ross from Friends. Maybe Melinda is the best lay in the history of mankind. Maybe he just wants to go Soylent Green on these dudes and feed them to his pet snails. Yes, he actually has pet snails. Don’t all retired engineering geniuses with hot, unfaithful wives have pet snails? The point is we don’t know because the film doesn’t ever tell us how they got to this point in the first place.

And now you see where the writing utterly lets down the viewer. Melinda and Vic have no motivation we are ever made aware of to explain this bizarre situation. We don’t know what led Melinda to the point where she is banging other men nor how she feels about Vic at all. We are quite literally introduced to her staring daggers at Vic, then indiscreetly having sex with other dudes...in her and Vic’s home...while Vic is in the house. Ordinarily, this behavior would make us sympathize with Vic. Except, we don’t because Vic is at first okay with Melinda’s behavior, then dances one time with a friend, Kelly (Kristen Connolly), at a party but it’s totally innocent - even though we are absolutely rooting for him to get naked with Kelly, not just because of Melinda, but because Kelly’s husband is an ass hat - then plays with his snails a bit, then becomes jealous to the point of actual murder. The only sympathy we have at this point is for the snails having to put up with this shriveled sac of a human.

Now I see why Disney opted to bury this movie. Not only is it full of boring and terrible human beings, but the film didn’t even have the decency to throw in the erotic part of erotic thriller. There is one sex scene between Vic and Melinda that makes us feel the opposite of a horny and another scene in which we see Melinda’s tits while Vic is helping her drunken ass crawl into bed. And I use the word tits instead of breasts because using the word breasts would indicate I have any kind of respect for this double-flusher of a film.

Rating: Not even worth the toilet paper it was written on.

“No Time to Die” - The end of an era.

It has been six long, long years since the last James Bond film (Spectre) graced us with its presence. In fact, those years were so long that I forgot that I created a review format for James Bond films. This is a pleasant surprise for me because I was struggling with how I was going to talk about the newest Bond flick, No Time to Die. I also forgot how Spectre had really fallen back into the very standard formula for Bond movies. You know, the one that Austin Powers (among others) makes fun of.

The trick is going to be avoiding spoilers because I think you should see No Time to Die and I really want to talk about it. A friend asked me what I thought of the movie and when I started to talk about my one real criticism, in very general terms mind you, he said all he wanted to know was if I thought it was good or not because he didn’t want the movie spoiled. While that is fair, that isn’t what he asked me and, maybe don’t ask a film critic their opinion of a movie if all you want to know is thumbs up or thumbs down. Plus, the things in a movie that cause my thumb to point in a certain direction are probably wildly different than most people. I mean, I hated John Wick for many of the reasons people liked it. In fact, you probably shouldn’t ask anything at all if you are worried about someone else’s opinion coloring your idea of the movie before you see it. In other words, run away from this review until you’ve seen the movie.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk No Time to Die, with just a dash of MILD SPOILERS. Leave now or forever hold your peace.

Opening Song

After the ghastly opening number of Spectre, Billie Eilish gives us “No Time to Die,” a haunting song in the vein of Adele’s “Skyfall” that foreshadows the general mood of the movie. Considering this is definitely, I promise, we swear this time, Daniel Craig’s last turn as James Bond, it’s a very good song for Craig’s, er, swan song.

Gadgets

The nanobots are back to monitor James’ vital signs, as well as of the new double-O agent we meet, Nomi (Lashana Lynch). Tell me again - why do we need to monitor their vital signs? It’s not like there is a medivac team hovering over the mission site, just in case one of them needs a de-fib. There isn’t a circling drone loaded with a pharmacy of poison antidotes that’s going to swoop in and fire syringes into their necks. Even from a movie perspective, it doesn’t add drama since we are literally watching Bond and Nomi fight their way through bad guys. Even Q (Ben Whishaw) isn’t paying attention to the vital signs since he is busy working other tech parts of the job during the big mission.

Bond also gets a new watch because his watch in Spectre was a bomb. This time, his watch can emit an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP), which can knock out electronics. The idea that a tiny little watch can emit an EMP is hilarious, but we’ll accept it in a James Bond film, as long as they stop talking after saying “the watch has an EMP.” No, seriously Q, stop talking. Stop telling us its range. No, don’t tell us it only works on hard-wired electronics. Oh, for fuck’s sake, now I’m going to notice how it contradicts exactly those things when Bond decides to use it. Also, why didn’t Nomi get a cool watch?

Bond Car

Unless you are very much a gearhead, there are only two cars that will stand out. The first is the Aston Martin DB5, a car we saw in Spectre and six other Bond flicks, including the first Bond movie, Goldfinger. And yes, it has all the silly gadgets from those films as well. Smoke, exploding spike balls, miniguns in the headlights, bulletproof glass, the ability to spin in a circle without going anywhere. It’s a pretty car, but I would have much preferred Nomi’s Aston Martin DBS Superleggera being the featured car.

Speaking of aesthetics, they also decided to dust off the hideous Aston Martin Vantage from 1977’s The Living Daylights (featuring Timothy Dalton) as the second featured Bond car. To me, muscle cars are ugly monstrosities that scream “I’m compensating for something.” The Vantage looks like a Mustang ate an Aston Martin because it ran out of Viagra. I don’t know how the Vantage found it’s way back into the franchise, but it should have stayed in the museum of misfit cars where it belongs.

Bond Girls

Cars aren’t the only thing recycled in No Time to Die. The memory of Vesper Lynd makes a return and Bond’s new love (also returning from the previous film), Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux), insists he makes his peace with Vesper’s death if he and Madeleine are to remain a couple. This being a Bond film, their relationship doesn’t make it out of the opening scene intact due to bullets flying, cars racing around, and Bond believing Madeleine betrayed him to Spectre.

The new Bond girl in this film is Paloma (Ana de Armas), a CIA agent working with Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright). Except, she turns out not to be a true Bond girl since she never gets naked with him. Her task is to escort Bond into a high-class party to find and secure a missing scientist (David Dencik). In what is the best scene in the film, the two of them are dressed to the nines, two criminally gorgeous people clearly at ease with each other. Paloma is practically giddy with excitement, as she is a newly minted agent, and clearly enjoying herself on the mission. Then, the action starts and the two perform in the best action sequence of the film. It’s a scene that stands out for the quality of its components while not ending in the cliched Bond conquest of other films, including the quick death of said female conquest. While we all debate and guess at who will play the next James Bond, I would love to see de Armas succeed Felix as the next CIA buddy.

Henchmen

Spectre brought back the head henchman cliche in Dave Bautista, but didn’t give him a gimmick. This time, we get the whole package in Primo (Dali Benssalah). He’s lethal, he barely speaks, and he has a bionic eye. The eye doesn’t appear to be useful to Primo in any way, but does appear to be useful to his master. On the plus side, it’s not a goofy razor hat, but on the negative side, it should have been a goofy bionic eye.

Villain

The new villain is my one real criticism of the movie. He is a very generic villain whose presence is almost an afterthought to the plot. The plot itself seems to be more about wrapping up any and all loose ends that may still be dangling, stretching back to Casino Royale, than whatever the new villain is up to. Why am I still referring to him as the new villain instead of by name? Because his name is never enunciated enough for me to understand it and I had to Google it to learn that it’s Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek). Even the story of how his face became disfigured was lost upon me because it was so boring and doesn’t matter to the plot. But the main way you know Safin wasn’t a good villain is because Spectre’s villain, Blofeld (Christoph Waltz), is featured in just one single scene and it completely overshadows all of Safin’s scenes combined. It’s a shame because I was really looking forward to seeing Malek give us a memorable villain.

The Death Ray

Nanobots. No, not the vital sign monitoring nanobots. These other nanobots are spread like the plague and target people based on pre-programmed DNA and also DNA that is similar, but not too similar. Don’t ask. And they can never be destroyed. In the wrong hands, it’s the end of the world, but that seems to be Safin’s objective only after his other objectives have run their course. It’s like he does it out of inertia rather than desire. And, the nanobots are originally created by MI6. What would a spy movie be without government secrets? At least it’s not an actual death ray.

The Lair

Another deserted island housing an abandoned military installation, complete with missile silos and blast doors. The Safin family had converted it into their evil lair and Lyutsifer now runs it. The main features are a poison garden and pools filled with acid and dozens of peons stirring the acid while standing in the acid. I mean, I think it was acid. A bad guy melts in it when he falls in during the climax. But it has no purpose other than to be an obstacle, which means the acid is also just the Chompers.

Political Content

If this movie hadn’t been slated for release pre-Covid pandemic, I’d say it was the idea of government scientists genetically modifying diseases in labs. Not that movies haven’t used this plot before in many various forms, be it diseases or technology or weapons, all in the name of protecting the country and/or the world. It’s pretty standard for political thrillers and spy movies. Hell, it’s the plot of Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. There is also the idea that science playing God will be the end of us all. We see this scare the shit out of easily frightened people every couple of years, whether it’s cloning, stem cells, artificial intelligence, condoms, evolution, gravity, vaccines, heliocentrism, and the wheel. This time it’s nanotechnology. Next time it’ll be voting machines.

If you have more questions than “good or bad,” the next question from people is where does No Time to Die rank against the other Daniel Craig films? The answer is below Casino Royale. I’ve enjoyed all five of Craig’s Bond films, but Casino Royale is easily the best. After that, throw a dart. The other four are all very entertaining and feature good components, as well as their flaws and cliches. No Time to Die isn’t particularly memorable compared to the rest, just like the rest aren’t particularly memorable. That in itself is a little disappointing since it would have been nice for Craig’s last Bond film to be as amazing as his first. I mean, thumbs up...mostly.

Rating: Ask for two dollars back because Bond villains should be worth the price of admission.