Sinbad The Fifth Voyage 2014 Director Shahin Sean Solimon co-wrote the screenplay with Evelyn Gabai. He also stars as the lead character Sinbad. I hadn't heard of him but I do recall seeing a trailer for his first film, a 2008 fantasy adventure film called Djinn, that I've still not seen. This film is a fantasy adventure too. I didn't know any of the other actors, except Patrick Stewart, he provides the narration as an older Sinbad. He's doesn't even have that many lines.
In the story Sinbad returns to his homeland only to find the Sultan and his court frozen in the palace. They free the Sultan and learn the princess was kidnapped by a villain called The Deev. Sinbad takes his crew and they set off to rescue the princess from the sorcerer. There's plenty of fighting, much of it with creatures. There's a fair bit of CGI with some stop motion animation to honor Ray Harryhausen. Quality of the production varies from scene to scene.
It's a pretty straightforward plot but one that doesn't have that good a script to support it. The actors aren't all equal, sometimes they just cant do much other than push their way through the dialog. The main baddy is painful to watch at times. Sometimes it was fast forward time. Over all it's below average and not something I would need to see again. All three films today came from Amazon Prime's free film selection.
Notzilla 2020 Written and directed by Mitch Teemley. Here's a parody of Godzilla that's made and set in Cincinnati. It's a bit of a mixed bag and probably more for the Godzilla fan. Some of the jokes are fairly funny but many are poor. I didn't like the scientist jokes much at all but I did like it that Notzilla had a visible zipper running up the front of the suit. It's a pretty low budget film and the CGI is appropriate for the budget. I got a few laughs out of it and might watch it again someday but I wouldn't buy the DVD unless it's under a fiver.
Shangri-La Near Extinction 2018 Written and directed by Nick Wauters. It's another post-apocalyptic film. Scientists create a biological weapon that got out of it's cage, it's a creature that takes over the minds and bodies of humans. At first they tried to kill the creature with a vaccine but that didn't work, in 2045 they created a man-made ice age to kill it. In the 500 years since that happened most people have died, little pockets of people have survived, there's a fair bit of working technology around. A guy is leading a small group in search of the legendary Shangri-La, a supposed safe haven. They have to keep an eye out for human's infected with creatures, mutated beasts and human paramilitary groups. Even the infected human's have broken up into different factions. There's plenty of flashbacks as the backstory gets filled in. I thought it was below average and sort of like a bunch of other films. The CGI was used fairly well but they didn't have a big budget so it looks better in some scenes than others. I'd probably never watch this one again. I didn't like spending time with the people in the group much. There isn't enough other good stuff to make me want to see it again.
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