On DVD & Blu-Ray: April 21, 2020


As an individual who holds a special place in their heart for what was the pinnacle of everything a sixteen year-old boy could want from a movie it always felt something like destiny that Bad Boys II arrived in theaters eight years after the original in the summer of 2003 shortly after I turned sixteen. Bad Boys II was undoubtedly one of the first R-rated features I saw in theaters and I saw it simply on the basis of loving both Will Smith and Martin Lawrence (I'd bought the DVD of Lawrence's live stand-up show, Runteldat, the year before and Smith had always felt near and dear to me as my dad exposed myself and my siblings to The Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff's records at such a young age that they would lead to my brothers and I performing his songs at our elementary school talent shows) and so, with no point of reference for why there was a roman numeral in the title I saw Bad Boys II multiple times that summer. The fact it was a sequel to a movie I hadn't seen didn't matter. What I witnessed was Lawrence and Smith unhinged and completely free to do, say and act however they wanted and while I didn't yet know who Michael Bay was I can remember thinking after seeing Bad Boys II that I loved the style of the movie; not just the grandiosity of it, but the saturated look of every moment as we didn't just take it at face value that the movie took place in Miami because the movie made us feel like we were IN Miami...and the movement of the camera-while calling attention to itself, certainly-was still some of the coolest, most inventive camera work I'd seen up until that point. Cut to seventeen years later and for one reason or another a third Bad Boys film never materialized until now. Is it kind of a shame Smith and Lawrence didn't make another Bad Boys flick in their forties thus saving the appropriate title of Bad Boys For Life for the fourth installment that could very well be the film we now have as the third in the series instead? Yeah, it's kind of a bummer, but the extended break also admittedly marks the return of Lawrence and Smith to the big screen as these characters as something truly special and something that-just as I'm beginning to genuinely feel older and rapidly approaching the age Smith was when he made Bad Boys II-no other franchise could have done at this moment in time as Bad Boys for Life both takes me back to what it felt like during that youthful summer when the sun never felt like it would set while also bringing me into the present and reminding me how critical it is that we keep moving forward and don't get too caught up in the past. Full review here. Video review here. B-

Given my 1987 born ass has always been a fan of writer/director Guy Ritchie's (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, RocknRolla) post-Tarantino style that pummels you with said style until you are essentially forced by submission into appreciating it one wouldn't be wrong in recognizing that Ritchie has strayed from that which made him a star in the late nineties/early aughts as his most recent, studio-centric efforts (King Arthur and Aladdin) have not only leaned toward the more conventional in their style, but also in their storytelling. 2015's The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was our first glimpse at the next step in Ritchie's evolution as it was meant to be (no, I didn't see Revolver, but have heard terrible, terrible things) delivering an action/spy thriller very much in line with the attitude of his earlier work while possessing a more refined, more finessed outward style. If the Robert Downey Jr./Jude Law Sherlock Holmes films were the apex of early Ritchie style with a big studio mentality then The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was Ritchie evolving before our eyes and taking it a couple of steps further than he needed to just to ensure us he was in fact maturing. With his return to form as it were though, Ritchie's The Gentlemen finds the filmmaker striking the best balance yet between his past and his contemporary status among his contemporaries. A more subdued and self-aware English gangster romp than his first few features, The Gentlemen compiles many of Ritchie's most recognizable tropes including classic English geezer names and clever overlapping narratives, but most importantly it retains the sense of fun those early films were regarded for as The Gentlemen's pomp and wit are at full exposure more so in the characters than they are anything having to do with the double-crossing, drug-dealing plot we've seen and heard countless times before. Video review here. B-

If we were to equate Like A Boss with Girls Trip then that would mean Natasha Rothwell is Like A Boss's Tiffany Haddish.

Give this woman all the roles and Groupon endorsements. C-













Writer/director Todd Robinson directs Sebastian Stan, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Plummer, William Hurt, Ed Harris, Bradley Whitford and Peter Honda in The Last Full Measure, a story that follows how Airman William H. Pitsenbarger, Jr. (Jeremy Irvine) was awarded the nation's highest military honor for his actions on the battlefield thirty-four years after his death.












The Turning stars a list of promising young talent in Mackenzie Davis, Finn Wolfhard, Brooklynn Prince as well as Joely Richardson about a young governess who is hired by a man who has become responsible for his young nephew and niece after their parents' deaths. This is noted as a modern take on Henry James' novella "The Turn of the Screw," but outside of some love for Stranger Things' Wolfhard this horror flick barely made a peep in January.

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