Jurassic Park (1993) | Steven Spielberg

February 7, 2022February 7, 2022 ~ Vince Leo

Vince goes in-depth on all of the history, trivia, and behind-the-scenes action of 1993’s JURASSIC PARK, directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the best-selling book by Michael Crichton. Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Richard Attenborough star in this thrilling adventure of an eccentric billionaire who builds a theme park attraction full of cloned dinosaurs that doesn’t go according to plan.

Super Mario Bros. (1993) | Rocky Morton & Annabel Jankel

November 4, 2021 ~ Vince Leo

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Super Mario Bros. features the emergence of an alternate dimension caused by (what is now known as) Brooklyn being struck by a meteorite millions of years ago. In this alternate dimension, humans evolved from lizards, rather than monkeys, as believed in our own realm. There is also only one city, Dinohattan, surrounded by endless desert, and currently presided over by the evil Koopa (Hopper, Red Rock West). President Koopa (Dennis Hopper) is out to get a powerful rock crystal, a fragment of the original meteorite, that he needs to merge the two dimensions, giving him more realms to conquer. Here is where we meet our heroes, a couple of plumbers named Mario Mario (Bob Hoskins) and Luigi Mario (John Leguizamo), who, in pursuit of a kidnapped new friend in a paleontology student named Daisy (Samantha Mathis), who happens to have the rock in the form of a necklace, find a portal into the Dinohattan dimension. Dangers lurk all around, as the brave brothers must battle the mighty Koopa and his lizard horde to rescue Daisy and thwart Koopa’s evil plans to destroy their world.

Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie (1994)

September 5, 2021 ~ Vince Leo

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In this animated adventure expanded from the video game, M. Bison is a megalomaniacal warlord from Thailand with dreams of world domination. Bison runs a super-secret organization of drug smugglers, weapons runners, and an international terror and crime syndicate called “Shadowlaw”. Fueling Shadowlaw is a massive drug-running operation and a diabolical plan to become the most military force in the world through the use of ultra-powerful street fighters. Bison has his tech team devise a squad of cyborgs to do reconnaissance to find the best fighters in the world to recruit into his organization as part of a super army better than any individual nation’s.

Because the Japanese Shotokan karate master named Ryu has bested Sagat in the Street Fighter Tournament, it marks him as perhaps the world’s best, and someone from which Bison can build an army of super-street fighters. Ryu’s best friend from San Francisco, Ken Masters, another street fighter who studied the same master (making him the closest fighter to being Ryu’s equal) is kidnapped by Bison for brainwashing experiments to convert street fighters to his political assassins, starting with his effort to try to take down the world-wandering Ryu. Vengeful Chun Li and her colleagues at Interpol are trying to take down the operation, as does US Air Force Captain Guile, who is out to take down Bison for killing a friend.

Street Fighter (1994) | Steven E. de Souza

August 13, 2021 ~ Vince Leo

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In the Southeast Asian country of Shadaloo, where General M. Bison (Raul Julia) has been waging a war with the A.N. (the Allied Nations — a U.N.-like military force) after he has taken several dozen A.N. hostages, putting them up for a ransom of $20 billion dollars. Leading the A.N. counterattack is United States Colonel William F. Guile (Jean-Claude Van Damme), a headstrong and gifted fighter that Bison can’t wait to challenge in hand-to-hand combat. Many others would converge at Bison’s stronghold, including television reporter Chun-Li Zang (Ming-Na), arms dealer Victor Sagat (Wes Studi), and a couple of roguish martial artists named Ken (Damian Chapa) and Ryu (Byron Mann).

Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)

March 22, 2021 ~ Vince Leo

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The much-demanded and long-awaited release of Zack Snyder’s vision for what was meant to be his 2017 film Justice League. As with the 2017 version, the story follows the events of Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Superman is dead, leaving a vacuum as Earth’s protector. A hulking alien from the planet Apokolips named Steppenwolf comes to Earth to retrieve the three hidden Motherboxes, cubelike artifacts with mysterious, powerful energy, enough to destroy planets when combined. Batman can’t take on such a force alone, rounding up a team of superpowered beings from Earth to stop impending doom -the goddess-like Amazon Wonder Woman, the god-like Atlantean king Aquaman, the turbo-speed demon Flash, and the cybernetic wizard Cyborg. And yet, they will still need the power of Superman somehow.

Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) | Dean Parisot

September 7, 2020September 7, 2020 ~ Vince Leo

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The story involves the Bill (Alex Winter) & Ted (Keanu Reeves), now married with one child each, suffering a mid-life crisis, realizing that they never united humankind through their music as foretold. In fact, contrary to the end montage of Bogus Journey depicting their success, Face the Music shows the duo jaded after a career where they are more laughing-stock than the most popular band on Earth. The pressure to fulfill their destiny finds their marriage on the rocks, seeking couples therapy, but one where both couples are involved simultaneously; the duo’s inability to separate their codependency is one of the issues. Someone from the future tells them they need to write the song within the next 77 minutes to achieve global peace and harmony, or the universe will come apart in a cataclysmic event called the Unraveling. Their plan: use the phone booth time machine to travel forward in time to steal the song from their future selves. Dean Parisot directs this third entry in the Bill & Ted series.

Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) | Jeff Fowler

February 15, 2020 ~ Vince Leo

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Sonic the Hedgehog (voiced by Ben Schwartz) flees homeworld due to possessing powers that make him a fugitive carrying a bad full of rings that are portals to new dimensions, is typical road-movie adventure comedy we’ve seen many times in a variety of forms. Sonic ends up teleporting to Earth, specifically the flyspeck town of Green Hills, Montana, where he encounters a sheriff so bored with the town’s lack of crims that he’s taken to having conversations with his donuts, Tom Wachowski (James Marsden), who is hoping to not make another day a waste by waiting patiently to nail someone speeding. He gets it in Sonic, who clocks in at a speed that makes Tom question his radar gun. Tom dreams of doing some real crime-fighting, with a goal to move him and Maddie (Tika Sumpter), his ever-supportive veterinarian wife, to San Francisco to join their more active police department. It turns out when Sonic loses all of his other rings through an open portal atop the city’s Transamerica Pyramid, he’ll have to tag along as well.

However, when Sonic’s energy burst ends up causing a massive power outage to the entire Pacific Northwest region of the United States, the government sends in a secret weapon, Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey), a mad, megalomaniacal genius with an army of sophisticated flying drones who tenaciously will find a way to exterminate the blue alien thing once and for all. Robotnik chases Tom and his new companion Sonic as they make their way to California.

Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

December 24, 2019December 24, 2019 ~ Vince Leo

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The Rise of Skywalker takes place sometime after the events of The Last Jedi. Rey (Daisy Ridley) has been in training with General Leia (Carrie Fisher) on how to be an elite Jedi. She ends up abruptly leaving so that she and her merry gang of Resistance fighters can hop around the galaxy. They’re looking for a Wayfinder crystal that is the key to finding the planet called Exogol, where the Siths reside, led by the return of Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), who is somehow still alive. Obstacles abound, including First Order leader Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). Ren is ostensibly seeking to help Palpatine return to power, trying to get his hands on the Wayfinder for himself, possibly to join forces with Palpatine to enact the Final Order to bring the galaxy to its knees. J.J. Abrams directs. John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Anthony Daniels, Joonas Suotamo, Billy Dee Williams, Naomi Ackie, Keri Russell, Domhnall Gleeson, Richard E. Grant, Lupita Nyong’o, Kelly Marie Tran also appear

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) | Tim Miller

October 29, 2019 ~ Vince Leo

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As with the other Terminator films, a protagonist and antagonist are sent back to the modern-day from a dark future using a time-travel device. The protagonist (Mackenzie Davis) is a technologically augmented human super-soldier named Grace, who lands in Mexico City in order to try to act as a savior for humanity in the future (Natalia Reyes). The antagonist (Gabriel Luna) is an ultra-powerful Terminator model called a Rev-9, whose mission it is to terminate a young female autoworker living in Mexico named Dani Ramos. Lending assistance to the resistance is the return of Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), who sees kinship in Dani because she has been thrust into the same position as key to humans surviving the A.I. onslaught of the future. Arnold Schwarzenegger makes an appearance in the second half of the film as a T-800 model Terminator named “Carl” who has assimilated into human society after completing his mission of taking out John Connor. Tim Miller directs.

The Gemini Man (2019) | Ang Lee

October 18, 2019 ~ Vince Leo

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Will Smith stars as Henry Brogan, a top-notch sniper and skilled combat fighter working for a black ops government agency named Gemini, performing one last kill before retiring from the assassin business at the ripe age of 50. He’s the best at what he does but hates the man he’s become, unable to even look at himself in the mirror without observing disappointment and pain. But just when he thinks he’s pulling out, they pull him back in, discovering that he’s been misled by his superior at Gemini, Clay (Clive Owen), in the nature of his latest assassination, making him feel betrayed. Along with fellow agent and his new ally, Danny (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and his trusty pal Baron (Benedict Wong), Henry soon discovers they are trying to take him out as well, but with a younger, more agile, less angsty version of himself named Junior. Ang Lee directs this futuristic action-thriller.