Rare New Release Friday

Escape Plan 2- Sequel to the 2013 film that featured a security expert named Ray Breslin, who used his skills to test out the reliability of maximum security prisons.  The first Escape Plan was a nominal hit here in the states but did really big business in China so overall it pulled in quite a bit of cash so a sequel was going to happen with or without Sly and Arnold one way or another.  Atleast Sly comes back for a little while.  I do not have anything against DTV movies, some of them are really good (Universal Soldier: Regeneration) but most are pretty bad and I do not have a good feeling about this one.  If you follow Sly on Instagram I think he spent maybe a week filming this and he has already filmed Escape Plan 3 as well.  This is a paycheck for Stallone and Bautista and I expect them each to be in the movie about 20 minutes of the 94-minute runtime.  A couple of scenes in the beginning and a few at the end and that is all.  But I am all in as I like these guys, so I will give it a spin.  I would like to thank China for co-financing this and throwing in for Rambo 5 and Expendables 4, apparently Sly is still a big draw there.

Dwayne Johnson Car Advice

New Release Tuesdays

Pacific Rim: Uprising- Jake Pentecost, son of Stacker Pentecost, reunites with Mako Mori to lead a new generation of Jaeger pilots, including rival Lambert and 15-year-old hacker Amara, against a new Kaiju threat.  Hey, its giant robots vs giant monsters so what’s not to like?  And besides Eastwood is in it too.  This is a fine popcorn movie, sit back and enjoy the beatings.  Scored the steelbook at Target and did not see any weirdos in the restroom.

Lionheart- An Ex-French Soldier begins participating in underground street fights to make money for his brother's family.  I have always thought this was Van Damme’s best movie (I have not seen JCVD) because the fight scenes in this are fantastic and this movie had some good production values behind it.  JCVD is still a bit hard to understand in this but his feet make up for that.  Highly recommended, secure a copy this and then go do the splits.

Night of the Lepus- Giant mutant rabbits terrorize the south-west.  I think I missed this one in my youth but we are talking about giant rabbits here, so I am all in.  I have a ton of rabbits in my front yard so I should go out and make a sequel to this movie.

Martian Chronicles- In the 21st century, Earth begins the colonization of Mars. However, things do not go as planned, at first due to the hostile Martian natives and later because of the self-destructive Earthmen.  Wow, I have not seen this since it originally aired on TV way back in 1980.  It was on for the a few nights and was a huge television event at the time.  I may have to re-discover this some time.  

Super Fly- The daily routine of cocaine dealer Priest who wants to score one more super deal and retire.  I have seen all of the Shafts but never got around to this one.  I will need to rectify that sometime.

Black Lightning- A crusading school principal gets back into action as the original African-American electrical superhero.  Black Vulcan was based on Black Lightning back in the day and was one of the third-tier super heroes (Remember Apache Chief and Samurai?) on Super Friends, apparently there was a rights issue back then on the character, so it will be cool to check this out to find out the origin story of this hero.