DarylKMiddlebrook

Maybe it's me. Maybe I've seen way too many action flicks in my lifetime that they all seem to run together when they are so badly written and they resurrect a plot line that has been done a million times. Bay Boys: Ride or Die is about as forgettable a movie as Speed 2, After Earth or anything The Rock has made in the last ten years.

Quickly with the plot: Mike and Marcus (Will and Martin) are still cops, but Mike is mellowing out, gets married, and is now questioning his style of taking death-defying chances. But when their deceased ex-captain's name is linked to a vicious drug cartel, the two are determined to clear his name.

The good: Special effects and stunts were cool, but in this CGI world, that's not as impressive as it use to be. Will and Martin's friendship chemistry is real and believable (sadly they had to blurt out some of the lamest lines and a bunch of recycled jokes reminiscent of a Madea movie).

The Bad: Everything else; the forgettable villians, the obvious plot of who was the mole in their organization, the cardboard secondary characters and the weird extreme closeups that made everybody look... weird.

The one good thing is that I waited until BB: Ride and Die streamed instead of slapping down $20 for a ticket or rental.

I'm glad to see Will Smith working his way back into audience's good graces after "The Slap" but come on Will, we can do better than this with the budgets your films usually command. Great black filmmakers are out their, with great plots and great stories, lets leave the recycled crap to the big studios and start supporting the independent, black filmmakers and story tellers that yours and Martin Lawrence's talent can be better exercised.

With all the hype over Fifty Shades of Gray, it's only natural that there would be several copycat type films tossed out to make a buck off of that market base. However, fans of 1990's late night erotic television can tell you that Fifty Shades is nothing new or in my opinion, all that great. Erotic-psychological fare has long been a staple of HBO and Showtime's After Dark rotation, with actresses such as Shannon Whirry, Julie Strain and Shannon Tweed kicking teenage males hormones into overdrive.

Bound, starring Charisma Carpenter (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel) is more in that HBO-Showtime mode than the Fifty Shades of Gray mode. In fact, it's not that bad a film, thanks in large part to the writers deciding to actually place a plot into the movie instead of depending on the sexual nature of the movie to draw viewers. But don't get me wrong, there is a definite erotic flavor to this film and the delectable and capable Charisma Carpenter looks most appealing dressed and undressed as the story's hero.

Carpenter, known for playing the bossy, assertive prom queen Cordelia Chase in the Buffy-Angel television series displays impressive range as Michelle Mulan, a mundane business woman simply dredging through her comfortable, orderly life which consists of her boyfriend, George (Mark McClain Wilson) who is a bore (in and out of the bedroom) and Dara(Morgan Obenreder), her whip of a teenage daughter who she has no control over. Michelle works at her father's (William Baldwin) real estate brokerage firm, which is on the verge of bankruptcy. Michelle however, believes that the firm can be saved via a merger. Unfortunately, the all-male board view mousy Michelle as nothing more than "daddy's little girl" and her advice and plans for a merger fall on deaf ears. She is even insulted by one of the board members in front of her father, but lacks the fortitude to defend herself and her ideas.

While having dinner at a restaurant with Dara, Michelle finds herself attracted to a handsome, yet shadowy man at the bar. After leaving the restaurant, she receives a call that she forgot to sign the credit card receipt. She returns to the restaurant where she encounters the man at the bar whose name she finds out is Ryan. Unsure of herself, yet helplessly intrigued, Michelle begins to fall under Ryan's Svengali-like charms. Eventually, he takes her completely out of her orderly world and has her smoking joints, drinking during the day and having a sexual rendezvous' in her father's office at the firm. But that's just the beginning. Ryan takes her to a secret S&M club. Michelle becomes intoxicated by her surroundings, fearful, but very much aroused. Soon she finds herself as Ryan's sex slave, submitting to his darkest desires.

Initially, Michelle is excited and intrigued about this new stage developing in her life. However, she soon finds out the truth about Ryan, and the high price that comes with his erotic influence, one that put both her family and career in danger.

The film works because it allows Michelle's character's arch to play out fully. Carpenter is convincing as the woman with everything, but nothing. She is smart, but vulnerable, beautiful but filled with self-doubt. When she begins to lose many of her sexual inhibitions, it is wonderfully shown through Michelle's slow, but effective grasp on a woman with an identity crisis who gradually learns who she is and what she really wants. Carpenter's transformation at the end is believable as the writers give us a reason (her daughter, her career) why she makes the 180-degree turn and is able to stand up against Ryan and his manipulative ways.

Director and writer Jared Cohn does a good job of allowing Carpenter's subtle reactions to her new world to play out. He doesn't try and force-feed us her transformation, instead we see Carpenter debating her choices and then agonizing over her mistakes in a believable manner that leads to a satisfactory end.

The film is visually stimulating, and the S&M scenes come off as both erotic as well as tasteful. Cinematographer Laura Beth Love gives the viewer a rich variety of colors and angles which move the story along, never lingering long enough to create an uncomfortable feeling over the erotic scenes. Carpenter is also filmed beautifully as we see her more dowdy early in the film, and as she gains back control of her life, her appearance softens and becomes more powerful.

If the first erotic thriller you have ever watched was Fifty Shades of Gray, this film might go over your head. However, for fans of the old HBO-Showtime, After Dark films, this is a well-directed, well acted and beautifully filmed movie that is worth a couple of hours.

Warner brother's Suicide Squad hit the theaters this past weekend and to say I was enthusiastically anticipating this film would be putting it lightly. After all the Avengers assembling, Guardians of the Galaxy guarding and Fantastic Four flopping, I was ready for a super hero film a little on the opaque side. The Dark Knight seemed years ago, and after the disappointment of Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, I just had the feeling DC was going to get this one right. I was wrong.

Before I get into everything that's wrong with Suicide Squad, let's cover what's right about this movie. Thumbs up number one: Will Smith. It's been a long time since the old "Big Willy" from the Independence Day and Bad Boys days has been on screen, but it was good to see that Will still has some street swagger left in him. His Deadshot is just the right mixture of gangster bravado mixed with family sentimentality to make him a likable man whose life work just happens to be murdering people.

The scene stealer in this movie however, is Margot Robbie. Everything that's this film was suppose to be is summed up in her part as Harley Quinn. She's messed up in the head, but she's really very intelligent. She is in love, but it's fatalistic. She's crazy, but insanely beautiful, a serious paradox for most men to grasp and she uses that as her ace in the hole brilliantly.

Now, what's wrong with Suicide Squad; it's too nice. This movie should be the super hero version of Apocalypse Now, and it actually starts off like that's what the audience is going to get. We're introduced first to Amanda Waller (played by the always perfect Viola Davis). She's conceived a plan to protect the people of Earth from Superman type meta-humans who don't share the big guy's love for the planet. She wants a team of some of the worst criminals on the planet, expendables, who if they can't repel these super threats, then they die in the process, and no one will care.

The trip through the mega-maximum security prison where Waller's Suicide Squad will be drafted is the best part of the movie. With an awesome shadowy soundtrack featuring the likes of The Animal's House of the Rising Sun and the Stones' Sympathy for the Devil, we get a grand tour of the facility and see the atrocious and inhumane way that these meta-menaces to society are held captive. Beaten, prodded, electrocuted and starved this should guarantee that a healthy dose of hate and rage towards the system has been installed in each of Waller's chosen few. But that doesn't happen.

Instead, these heinous criminal, once taken from their respective cages and dungeon pits, and put together for the first time, and get along better than a jamboree of boy scouts. I kid you not, this psychotic group of low lives jell together better than the Avengers, X-Men and Fantastic Four combined. And for this type of movie, that's not a good thing.

There is no internal fighting, no trying to be the top guy, no indignity of being told what to do. When they find out that the mission they thought they were on was bogus, do they tear up the city? No, they just take it in stride and even buddy up with Colonel Flagg (the unimpressive Joel Kinnaman), the man who has lied to them and threaten to kill them if they don't cooperate.

The jovial "cheerfulness's of this "Suicide Squad" is symptomatic of this movie's problems. Nothing works the way it should beginning with Jared Leto's Joker. Leto's take on the pasty- faced madman isn't bad as much as it's misplaced. His story and involvement with Harley Quinn seem to be some kind of "bonus movie" added to this film to give it some extra spice. Unfortunately, it just adds to the confusion.

The film's focal villain, The Enchantress (the equally unimpressive Cara Delevingne), may be the worst super villain since Richard Pryor's Gus Gorman in Superman III back in the day. The totally unbelievable love story between The Enchantress' alter ego, Dr. June Moone and Colonel Flagg is completely forgotten when the movie hit's its anti-climatic ending (which is a second rate CGI rip-off of the Avengers).

While Smith and Robbie give top-notch performances, the rest of the cast just seem to be there marking time, ready to give whatever uninteresting scrap of dialog they've been tossed to fill screen time.

Writer/Director David Ayer, who successfully pulled off such grim thrillers as Training Day, and Fury, appeared to be a great choice for making DC's first gritty super hero film outside the Batman trilogy. However, he seriously drops the ball on this one. This isn't the grim, anti-hero vessel we were promised. This is just a cookie-cuter super hero film with no substance; no cohesiveness and nothing left to savior once the credits begin to roll. The cinematography was spot on and it appeared that DP Roman Vasyanov followed his own vision about how this film should look despite what was happening with the script and direction.

Overall, Suicide Squad fails to deliver in much the same way that Batman Vs. Superman hit the wall. Both film seemed to lack vision or direction and didn't do enough to take advantage of potentially powerful and fascinating characters. What should have been DC's finest hour turned out to be nothing more than a big fat lie wrapped in a pretty box.