Rush Hour 2 - 2/5

This movie makes the classic sequel blunder: it has less of what made its predecessor great and more of what brought it down. There is only one good action scene here, instead of the three to four in Rush Hour 1, and they’ve ramped up the stupid humor to give Chris Tucker more of a driving force in the narrative than before. They’ve also introduced a whole theme of ogling women in their underwear, bringing down the quality of the film making even further. The martial arts scene is really well done, but the rest of this movie is pablum.

Closest comparison: It’s like the martial arts of The Medallion pasted over with the raunchiness (but not the humor) of History of the World part 1.

Setting: Buddy Cop
Plot: Buddy Cop
Tone: Brash Comedy

Godzilla: King of the Monsters - 3/5

The monster visuals are gorgeous, and that’s certainly where they put their money. Unfortunately, the plot is very dumb and overly complicated, to the point that we don’t get to see monster stuff until about 50 minutes into the movie. The upshot is that the parts with humans fall back into the ‘so bad it’s good’ category, so if you like imitating Mystery Science Theater 3000 you’ll have something to do while you wait for the monster fights to start. Once the fighting starts it’s exciting and very entertaining, well worth the price of the ticket on its own, though it seems overly focused on giving the audience good PC desktop wallpapers.

Closest comparison: It’s better than Godzilla (2014), but not as good as Kong: Skull Island.

Setting: Kaiju Monster
Plot: Adventure
Tone: Action/Drama

The Cloverfield Paradox (Netflix) - 3/5

This is a fun sci-fi disaster movie and wisely moves fast enough to keep the audience questions to a minimum. By avoiding specifics the plot is able to adopt a 'here's what's happening, just go with it' attitude that works well enough. Lots of fun sci-fi ideas, most of which have been done before. Like many disaster movies it suffers from character contrivances that put themselves in more danger than necessary, but if that doesn't bother you then you may really enjoy this one.