Ice Age: Collision Course (2016)

I was looking for something to watch and I figured I would check something out from Disney Plus and I have always been a fan of the Ice Age movies. I know i have seen most of them and I wasn't sure where I left off, but I knew I hadn't seen 2016's Ice Age: Collision Course which is the fifth film in the series and was directed by Michael Thurmeier  and Galen Tan Chu (Ice Age: Continentel Drift). Everyone's favorite gang of prehistoric creatures is back, but their about to have a whole lot of problems all thanks to Scrat who while chasing his Acorn manages to find a spaceship that just happens to set off so many events including an asteroid that is heading to destroy Earth and the gang has to scramble to save it from happening. The film stars Ray Romano (The Irishman) as Manny, Queen Latifah (Chicago) as Ellie, John Leguizamo (Spun) as Sid, Denis Leary (The Amazing Spider-Man) as Diego, Keke Palmer (Hustlers) as Peaches, Adam Devine (Jexi) as Julian, Jennifer Lopez (Hustlers) as Shira, Wanda Sykes (Bad Moms) as Granny, Simon Pegg (Shaun Of The Dead) as Buck, Seann William Scott (American Pie) as Crash, Josh Peck (Spun) as Eddie, Nick Offerman (The Little Hours) as Gavin, Jessie J as Brooke, Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family) as Shangri Llama,  and Stephanie Beatriz (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) as Gertie.

I liked some of the cameos in the film like the one done by Neil deGrasse Tyson, but even that couldn't really save the film for me. I definitely loved how they explained how the universe came to be all thanks to Scrat, but I thought the film overall was OK. It had a solid premise and they checked all the boxes of turning points, the hook, subplots, and all that stuff when it comes to the writing, but the film just wasn't as funny as any of the other ones that I had seen. One thing that is for sure is that if it was a Disney movie from the start, it probably would have better, but this is why 20TH Century Fox is no longer a thing. There was definitely a lot of potential for this film because I loved a lot of the subplots and I even loved the voice acting and the animation, but a lot of the stuff just wasn't as funny as previous films. They had a who's who of actors in this film and they all did very well, but there is a reason there is not a number six on the way besides the fact that Disney is probably not interested anyways. I always thought that Ray Romano was always a perfect choice to play a Mastodon thanks to his voice and actually most of them fit their characters pretty well. I know the flying dinosaurs were somewhat a part of the film, but I thought their presence could have been a little more than it was. Too much time spent on Scrat and his space adventures which some were funny and some were meh. I am going to give this one an B- for a final grade.

The Irishman (2019)

If there was ever one film that everyone was talking about then it was definitely 2019's The Irishman which was directed by Martin Scorcese (The Wolf Of Wall Street) as he reunites with Robert De Niro (The Score) and Joe Pesci (Raging Bull) for the first time since 1995's Casino. The film stars De Niro as aging hitman Frank Sheeran who has to try and balance his loyalty towards the mafia and to his friend and boss Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) through the 1950's until Hoffa's disappearance in the 1970's. Sit back and relax as Frank tells you the tale of having both a privileged and dangerous life that came with its consequences. The film also stars Pesci as Russell Bufalino, Harvey Keitel (Pulp Fiction) as Angelo Bruno, Ray Romano (Everybody Loves Raymond) as Bill Bufalino, Bobby Cannavale (Boardwalk Empire) as Skinny Razor, Anna Paquin (X-Men) as Peggy Sheeran, Stephen Graham (Boardwalk Empire) as Anthony 'Tony Pro' Provenzano, Jack Huston (Boardwalk Empire) as Robert Kennedy, Jesse Plemons (Game Night) as Chuckie O'Brien, Paul Herman (Silver Linings Playbook) as Whispers DiTullio, Louis Cancelmi (21 Bridges) as Sally Bugs, Sebastian Maniscalco (The House) as Crazy Joe Gallo, Steven Van Zandt (The Sopranos) as Jerry Vale, and Stephanie Kurtzuba (The Wolf Of Wall Street) as Irene Sheeran.

There are a few things you have to be willing to do in order to watch this film and one of those is that you have to be willing to devote three hours of your life to this film because it goes for that long. It's a really good story and it's well acted if you give those three hours of your life to it. The other thing you have to do is that you have to get used to the fact that they used CGI to make everyone younger, but the fact of the matter is that Robert De Niro had no business trying to beat the crap out of a guy during the film. What I mean by that is that he looked like a guy in maybe his 40's with the CGI who fought like an 80 year old man with bad hips. Once you can get passed that then it's an excellent film and one of the other things I liked is when they introduced a character that was minor or major, there was always stats that told you when they bit the bullet. I thought that was a little different, but the film is very much a 21ST century version of Goodfellas with the narration and so on. I have to say that I think Al Pacino was on top of his game as he played Jimmy Hoffa with conviction. He sort of made Jimmy a loveable and hateable character in the idea that you can see why the mob wanted to get rid of him, but you could also see why people loved him as well. I definitely am taking into consideration that how they explained his death in this film is probably what really happened. How else could he have disappeared for this long? I definitely think it's worth at least one watch which is why I am giving the film an B+ and I just wanted to say that I loved Stephen Graham in this film.