Movie Review: Richard Jewell

Happy New Year and hello 2020! We're starting off the new set of dates fresh and looking forward to a lot of new adventures, films, games, and just about anything I can review and talk about - and what better way to start than with the very first film I caught this January 2020 - Clint Eastwood's newest biographical drama pic "Richard Jewell".

Based on the real life 1996 Olympic Centennial Park Bombing incident that saw the man of the same name saving lives and praised as a hero but quickly denounced as the suspect himself, "Richard Jewell" takes a good and long hard look at society, media, and government as they quickly become wrapped in suspicion, paranoia, and breaking the life of a common man who naively believes in the system but quickly learns the hard truth about it.

Thanks to Warner Bros. Pictures, I got to see the film last week in the brand new Estancia Cinemas wing - and what a tale this was featuring a stellar cast led by Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde, and Paul Walter Hauser as the titular character Richard Jewell. This is the kind of movie that should entertain anyone who likes drama and character study performances - Jewell's life as your common man, average joe redneck who has an idealistic impression about law enforcement quickly turns into a real-life tale of heroism when he discovers a bomb planted during his watch as a security guard in an Olympic Games concert held at Centennial Park. Jewell manages to inform his peers and prevent the bomb from claiming more casualties - but things turn upside down when the FBI and press twist his profile and are convinced "he is the bomber". With nowhere else to turn and his life with his mother turning upside down, Richard enlists the help of an old lawyer friend Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell) - and the fight to clear his name begins.


RICHARD JEWELL - Official Trailer
As the first film I got to see for the new year, Richard Jewell impresses and manages to tell a very relatable and compelling tale of an innocent man's quest to fight back against the system that wrongly judged him. We see in a pre-Social Media setting of 1996 just how gruelling that kind of experience is, and Eastwood has made one of his strongest biographical films yet with strong performances - particularly Sam Rockwell as lawyer Watson Bryant and Kathy Bates as Richard Jewell's mother "Bobi" (for which she has been nominated for an Academy Award). I'd definitely recommend the film to those who enjoy seeing a dramatization of a real life story.

Richard Jewell is now showing in theaters.

Rating - 4/5

Movie Review: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

It's the FINAL DAY of 2019 - and I should end it with a long overdue review of one of the most anticipated films of the soon to be past year!

It's been over a week since Disney and Lucasfilm finally released the long awaited final movie of the "Sequel Trilogy" to theaters worldwide - also billed as the final chapter of the "Skywalker Saga" that began with the very first "Star Wars" film released in 1977 that introduced us to Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa, Han Solo, Darth Vader, and the rest of the wide fictional universe filmmaker George Lucas created from a galaxy far, far away. In this saga, we are introduced to new players and heroes - such as Rey, Finn, Poe Dameron, and BB-8 who make up the key members of "The Resistance". That new rebel faction faces off against the dark forces of Kylo Ren and The First Order - who will stop at nothing to take over the galaxy and finish what the Empire and Sith started long ago.

Well, I finally got to see "The Rise of Skywalker" - three times in fact and for the most part it is a DECENT Star Wars film. I've said that in two of my video reviews which you can find at my YouTube page here (Non-Spoiler) and here (SPOILER), and I've delved into non-spoiler and SPOILER reactions for the film. Since enough time has passed and revelations are out in the wild, I'll give my honest thoughts in this post about Episode IX - and why I think its serviceable yet a movie that needed much more to make it a perfect conclusion.

Again, SPOILERS WILL FOLLOW after the jump, so read at your own risk.

Movie Review: Terminator: Dark Fate

Been a while since I got around to reviewing some movies on this page, but there's definitely "No Fate But What We Make" in trying to get back into what you need to do - and there were a couple of blockbuster films I've seen in the past few weeks that were hotly anticipated and finally are playing in theaters. Most of them are sequels to established franchises that were hits back in the early 80's - and one of them is the long-running Terminator film franchise - which once again brings the cyborg killer robots back to our present to wipe out the hope of a possible post-apocalyptic future, but not without some heroes and protectors to help out and kick their asses as well.

Thanks to 20th Century Fox Philippines, I got to see the latest film in the series in "Terminator: Dark Fate" last October 24th - which brings back Arnold Schwarzenegger as the iconic T-800 cyborg. This time however, he's joined by other returning series veteran Linda Hamilton - who reprises her role as the older and badass Sarah Connor. Her return coincides with the comeback of legendary filmmaker James Cameron - who directed the first two successful Terminator films and is joining this new venture as a producer. Dark Fate is meant to be inserted as a "fresh start sequel" that ignores the events of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Terminator: Salvation, and Terminator: Genisys. This is a movie catered to the fans of the old aging franchise - but does it deliver the goods? Here are my thoughts... And of course SPOILER WARNING if you want to catch the movie yourselves.