Movies Merica Van Ebert

We go rough and tumble this week on Movies Merica with a retro review of the gritty cop drama End Of Watch. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena star as LAPD cops, Brian and Mike, who patrol one of the worst, if not the worst, crime-ridden parts of L.A. This film shows the seedy world they have to protect and serve the citizens of, all while not getting killed by any number of criminal scum. Gyllenhaal’s character, Brian, takes up filming his, and Mike’s, exploits in this world with his per...

In 1995, Michael Bay made Bad Boys and introduced us to the characters of Marcus Burnett and Mike Lowrey, played respectively by Martin Lawrence and Will Smith. Now 29 years later, they’re back in the fourth Bad Boys movie, Bad Boys: Ride Or Die. Again it brings you some more intense action than you’d expect in a comedy but also of course the slap you in the face laughs you’d expect. Since it’s all these years after the first movie, Marcus and Mike have much more complicated off-duty lives. H...

It’s a retro review this week for Movies Merica with the political thriller “The Contender” that flew under the radar when it was released in 2000. It’s the story of a political figure that is going to shake things up in Washington D.C. in a way many D.C. power players don’t want. As a result, those power players launch an all-out legal and media assault on them to drive them out of D.C. Sound familiar? Joan Allen plays Laine Hanson who is picked as a replacement for the Vice President to Jef...

It’s been 9 years that we’ve been waiting for director George Miller to make another Mad Max movie. We’ll have to keep waiting because he still hasn’t made a Mad Max movie with the new movie, Furiosa. In the 2015 smash hit Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa was really a co-lead character with Mad Max ironically enough given Mad Max is literally in the movie title. As a result, the assumption by some is that the world was begging for a Furiosa origins movie and now they get it. Furiosa stars Anya Tay...

John Krasinski is most famously known for playing Jim Halpert on “The Office.” However, he’s also a movie director. His last two movies, “A Quiet Place” and “A Quiet Place Part II”, were ones that would give kids nightmares. In his latest movie, “If”, he tries to take them, and their parents, to a happy place instead. “If” is the story of Bea, a 12 year old girl that has gone through a tragedy and is staring a potential one head on. Her Dad is going through surgery for a heart problem. ...

We’ve been getting Planet of the Apes movies for decades now and the latest installment is Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. This installment jumps many generations into the future after the events of the last Apes movie, 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes. We meet the main character of this installment, Noa, and his friends and family. They’re part of a peaceful ape clan who raise eagles as part of their tradition. On the eve of Noa’s bonding ceremony with his eagle, murderous invaders l...