Hollywood loves a sequel. Doesn’t matter if they’re good, bad, unrelated, dumb, off the wall crazy, make no sense, or all of the above. Make it. That being said, sometimes they get it right. They did make Terminator 2 and Aliens, after all, arguably the greatest movie sequels of all time. These aren’t those, but for the most part, they hold their own. Check out Stoski’s Ultimate Movie Ratings Guide for more of the best, worst, and all points in between.

Return of the Living Dead (1995)

I was originally planning to write a “special” miniview only for this series. There were five of them, after all. A 20 year history from 1985 until the amazing year of 2005. Then I realised that every single movie in the series blows, like, big time. Aside from the first one that is. One of them got so close to being almost passable, but I forget which one, and I don’t recommend you try for yourself to find out. Only disappointment and wasted time lie down that road, friend. You might think “Stoski said they’re bad so I don’t expect greatness, but they might be alright”. Well, they aren’t. Hope springs eternal, but in this case that fountain is a liar. Don’t listen to it. I don’t like movie critics’ opinions, as it’s up to you and you alone to decide what you like, but this time, these bad reviews are 100% earned.

Shitting on movies is great and Return of the Living Dead 2-5 deserve it, but boy is the first movie a whole different piece of work. The aesthetic alone conveys the entire premise: plain, depressing hopelessness and dread. The film is mostly set within the walls of a medical supply warehouse, and a crematorium, with a few outdoor shots. One scene takes place in a cemetery, to give you an idea of the movie’s idea of a ‘vacation’ from the mental decay of medical supply storage distribution. These are all decidedly unpleasant places to spend any amount of time in, and Return of the Living Dead knows it.

The story starts innocently enough; a pair of working class stiffs doing medical supply storage and distribution-related activities, until the older one decides to show his young protege a few barrels of a strange and potentially dangerous goo. In the process, the idiot manages to bust it open! The pair are sprayed with a chemical that reanimates dead tissue, and unleashing a zombie in the process. Things go from bad to worse in a hopeless, unwinnable situation that was over the second it began. It’s a desperate situation that ends with a thousand zombies, a police barricade, and an atomic bomb, and yet that still isn’t enough. To stop the zombies that is. It’s well enough to make this movie an absolute classic. Too bad about the sequels.

4/5

The Gray Man (2022)

I don’t like writing about boring and bland action movies with good trailers and a famous cast, but, I gotta ask, what’s with the recent spate of boring and bland action movies with good trailers and a famous cast? Central Intelligence had a famous cast. The trailer looked great. Bland as shit. Red Notice had an even more famous cast. An even more exciting trailer. Boring and terrible. Day Shift… The Gray Man comes out just this year. The trailer looks great. It’s got Ryan Gosling, who I wouldn’t exactly call famous, so it should be fine, right? Nope. Boring dogshit.

I should have expected the blandest movie of the year from the blandest actor in recent memory. What is this guy even? I struggle to find the words to describe him other than “an actor”. Just a fill-in name while they find an actual star. Except they forgot to find one and now it’s day 1 of filming so he’ll have to do I suppose. Man, fuck Ryan Gosling. Worst actor. I’m reading the film’s Wikipedia page to see whether it was a Netflix original so I can shit on Netflix for wasting millions on the theatrical equivalent of soggy cereal, and it reminds me that Chris Evans was in this movie. But you know what? Fuck him too. Everyone was forgettable here. Not one solid performance.

Turns out that it, despite being made by Netflix, The Gray Man had a limited theatrical release in July of 2022. I’m also reading that it cost $200 million to make (yikes), and that there will be a sequel and a spin-off at some point in the future. I guess this time they’re making curdled porridge left out in the sun, with a side of mouldy orange juice. Swish!

2/5

Independence Day: Resurgence (2016) and The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

Not all remake-sequels suck, and two of this month’s movies are proof of that. Many requels are just a rehash of the original movie, or just plain terrible. Zoolander 2 had about 15 minutes of actual new movie in there, stretched out, and filled in with about a hundred callbacks - and that was one of the better requels out there. So you can imagine my pleasant surprise upon watching both new Independence Day and The Matrix movies. Maybe terrible requels are more likely in the comedy space because these were honestly both pretty great.

Both movies take place in the original movies’ future, with the same in-universe time passing as real-world time. In other words, they’re set in the same year they were released, and they both do a great job of working this into their stories. The worlds in both movies have advanced in a believable way in the time since we saw them last. Things have genuinely changed and it’s to the movies’ credit. The last thing anyone would want to see is just another rehash of the last movie with no real changes to the basic movie. As much as I love the Terminator franchise, they’re quite guilty of this. Great movies, but nonetheless.

Yes, I understand that Independence Day has the same structure as the first movie, but the world that the movie creates, the advancement of technology by reverse engineering what the aliens from the first movie left behind, is what makes the difference. The Matrix, on the other hand, does it’s own separate thing that I won’t spoil, but it definitely has the soul of the first movie with an interesting re-imagining.

Get a Job (2016)

Get a Job was released in 2016, but it doesn’t exactly feel like a 2016 comedy. You’ll notice something sort of… off about it, when compared to contemporary comedies of that time. It feels more like a late 2000s comedy. There is just something jovial and carefree about comedy films from this era, which doesn’t really make sense, since comedy is jovial and carefree by it’s nature. It’s more of an abstract feeling of being different. I don’t know how to describe it, but I know it when I see it, and I suspect that you will too.

The Do-over, Central Intelligence, The Brothers Grimsby, Zoolander 2, Dirty Grandpa; look at these 2016 comedies. Compare them to the defining comedy of the late 2000s; Superbad. Maybe it’s Superbad’s low-stakes and genre-purity that differentiates it from later movies in the comedy field. I don’t know. People smarter than me have discussed what makes Superbad so great.

Superbad is the quintessential late 2000s comedy, and Get a Job has more in common with it than movies released in the same year. This is because it essentially is a late 2000s comedy. You’ll see on the film’s Wikipedia page that a director for Get a Job was announced in January of 2012, which means the screenplay was actually likely written in 2011, within the threshold of the influence of the late-2000s comedy.

It was sat on for two years after it was finished in 2014 and released in 2016, explaining why the main cast, Miles Teller, Anna Kendrick, and Bryan Cranston, show up in a movie like this, despite the fact that they shouldn’t be here. Miles Teller alone starred in Whiplash and Divergent, releasing in 2014, two more Divergent movies in 2015, and then War Dogs in 2016. Big movies like that, and then coming back down to a comedy about unemployment and finding your way? I don’t buy it.

If you’re a fan of late-2000s comedies like I am (can you tell?) then you’ll have a great time with Get a Job. There isn’t some grand plot, no-one’s trying to address some social issue, just you, Miles Teller, and the laughs. Ah bliss.