No Time to Die
In the 25th James Bond film, No Time To Die, the retired spy’s tranquil retirement in Jamaica is interrupted by his old friend from the CIA, Felix Leiter, who asks for his help in rescuing a kidnapped scientist. This mission leads Bond on the trail of a mysterious villain armed with new technology. Directed by Cary Fukunaga, the film stars Daniel Craig, Rami Malek, Ralph Fiennes, Lea Seydoux, Ana de Armas, and Naomie Harris. The New Yorker’s Richard Brody writes, “No Time to Die wants it both ways: it makes watching violent shoot-outs and colossal catastrophes pleasurable while depicting them merely functionally, a coy fusion of the sumptuous and the abstemious. Similarly, the story is built upon an emotional foundation of melancholy and regret, of the sins of the fathers and the pain of their redemption. But these aspects of the drama get neither discussed nor developed, merely signified in the sweep of the action.” Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer gives the film a score of 84%; while its audience score is 88%.
MTRCB Rating: PG
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City
The Resident Evil franchise returns, unfolding in Raccoon City, the once booming home of pharmaceutical giant Umbrella Corp. The company’s exodus left the city dead but with great evil brewing. When that evil is unleashed, a group of survivors work together to uncover the truth behind Umbrella Corp. Directed by Johannes Roberts, the film stars Kaya Scodelario, Hannah John-Kamen, Robbie Amell, Tom Hopper, Avan Jogia, with Donal Logue and Neal McDonough. The Verge’s Adi Robertson writes, “Welcome to Raccoon City gets a lot of moment-to-moment elements right. It’s a film that’s straight-faced without being pretentious, full of over-the-top genre tropes without falling into grating, campy self-awareness. But it’s sunk so deep in a decades-old fictional world that it can’t look beyond its boundaries. The film delivers a checklist to remind viewers why they like Resident Evil — but it sometimes seems to forget what’s actually on it.” Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer gives the film a score of 29%; while its audience score is 66%.
MTRCB Rating: R-13
