Movies Worth Seeing
Movies Worth Seeing is a comedy podcast that explores all the best trending films and blockbuster releases. A big movie buff, Michael is an unconventional reviewer of all things movies. This podcast is for anyone sick of watching crappy movies and wants only to watch the best
Movies Worth Seeing
Beautiful Violence: Is "Ballerina" Worth Your Time?
We review "Ballerina" from the John Wick universe, analyzing whether this Ana de Armas-led action film delivers as a worthy addition to the franchise or if it falls short of expectations.
• An entertaining but not particularly deep addition to the John Wick franchise
• Gabriel Byrne delivers a compelling performance as the villain
• Ana de Armas brings emotional range to her character Eve
• Inconsistency in Eve's fighting abilities when sharing scenes with John Wick
• Film sets up unique fighting styles for Eve but doesn't follow through
• Unrealistic action sequences push beyond even John Wick's established boundaries
• Excellent CGI throughout with only minor noticeable flaws
• Rated 2.5-3 out of 5 stars by our reviewers
• Recommended for John Wick fans but probably best viewed on streaming services
Comment below to let us know what you thought of Ballerina. Did you think it was a worthy addition to the John Wick franchise, or should John Wick stay retired forever? If you enjoyed this video, please like, share and subscribe for more videos like this.
Hey everyone and welcome to another movie review. Today we are reviewing Ballerina from the world of John Wick. When I told my wife I was going to see Ballerina, she was like, oh, that seems so like sweet and innocent. It's so nice that you're going to see like more softer movies. And I was like, no, it's from the world of John Wick. And she was like, oh, ok, and this was a fantastic addition to the John Wick franchise. But we're going to break down whether this was really worth adding to the franchise or if john wick could have stayed retired first.
Speaker 2:off, addy your thoughts entertaining, and that is about it all. The john wick movies are pure entertainment. There's no deeper story, there's. John wick is not a movie you're going to see for the death, true so you're going to see for the death. True, you're going to see for the action.
Speaker 1:Kind of like Novocaine Novocaine, yeah, true, very similar in like very similar style of like that over the top, killing people in creative ways and stuff like that was that we were getting introduced to a completely new character and watching her grow up in the world of training to become an assassin to take revenge on the villain of this film, which was played by Gabriel Byrne. I f***ing love me some Gabriel Byrne man. He just steals the show every time he's on camera.
Speaker 2:He just brought a presence with him and he's just like that's a bad guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good, good bad guy, a bad guy you kind of empathize with. I felt that, unlike the other john wick movies, like this had more mystery going in, because I had no idea what the story was going to be about. It does essentially become just a simple revenge story, but there was certain aspects of it I really liked. Eve played by anna de armas, look, she's good, she's got. You know, she gives some emotional gravitas to certain scenes.
Speaker 2:She's got the the whole one t thing going on, yeah, the single t thing nothing against keanu reeves like emotional strength is not his strength yeah, emotional range isn't his strength action is you. Are him the one they call the baba yaga? How do I start doing what you do?
Speaker 1:looks like you already have and as soon as he comes on screen, I I felt it in my body Like okay, now things are picking up.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. But again when he got back to the action scenes with him, when he fights, he's not more dangerous than what's her name Eve Eve. Eve is set up to be an amazing fighter, but there's always going to be one person stronger than she is Right. So she beats living shit out of everyone***ing everyone, and you only have to look away once you look back, and she basically floored everyone and killed everyone. But then the Baba Yaga, john Wick, is reintroduced and then when they're fighting, suddenly she lost all the quality in her fights. He just like overtook her so easily, while his moves were slower than her moves in previous fight scenes and it just felt staged because she suddenly was a worse fighter when she was fighting with him.
Speaker 1:It was a different fight because they're not going in to kill each other. She's got a certain respect for John Wick Absolutely and Wick didn't want to kill her because they, you know there's more of a connection there where they can understand what they're fighting for. My thing was, if you're going to have John Wick and Eve fighting, I want to see Eve fight differently. This is the thing that pisses me off with these types of films. Fact, fact, fact.
Speaker 1:You've done four films where we've seen John Wick beat the shit out of people. I know the way John Wick fights, I know how he's going to handle an action sequence, but when you're doing a completely different character now and it's a woman who's much smaller than John Wick, can you just have her adjust her fighting style, because that would have made this way more interesting? One of the characters even says to her fight like a girl, don't try and match the strength. And I was like great, awesome, we'll see more creative stuff Like similar to Novocaine. He doesn't fight the same way John Wick fights because he doesn't have fighting experience. Exactly, he uses what his strength is. But when you put Eve next to John Wick, they fight the exact same style and it doesn't it looks stupid.
Speaker 2:Her trainer says to her don't fight on his terms, fight like a girl make your own terms yeah, great setup we're gonna get created. Creativity yeah, like you said, I don't know why they set it up if she never did it again afterwards you will always be small.
Speaker 1:You want to win. Improvise, adapt cheat. The only time I I I kind of understood was like her using grenades more. I feel like john wick doesn't use grenades as much as she did, so that was the only time where I was like that makes sense, her being more resourceful absolutely you're asking.
Speaker 2:What threw me off is when she put a grenade in a guy's mouth, closed the door stood up against the door. The guy blew, the door didn't move like in real life. That door would have f***ing shut as she went off flying if she didn't get crushed in between the door frame and the door because it was a big mess of f***ing metal door. This isn't done done.
Speaker 1:They're dead. I thought you were gonna say it was the moment when a grenade was right next to her and blew up with her sister and the sister was dead, but she was fine, yeah, no, no, yeah, you turned to me.
Speaker 2:It was like that.
Speaker 1:That was too much that that was where I was like, yeah, even for a John Wick movie, that was too stupid and it was just one grade. It was like five or six of them, yeah, and they just threw them in the house.
Speaker 2:And I was like why? And the whole house is like boom explosions and fire everywhere.
Speaker 1:If you're going to do that, why can't you just write something to happen that she does differently, where she can move to a different spot, hide under something, do something, but to just stay in the main room while this grenades are all right next to her? Yeah, I'm like. Why do you set it?
Speaker 2:up, let me. Let me grab a classic film. That's is action. I don't think you've seen it. We talked about it, but what is? It. I was mentioning the American version, but there's a Korean version with a lot more action. Oh boy.
Speaker 1:I knew you were going to say, oh boy.
Speaker 2:There is action and it's out there, but it's realistic, it's clean, it's great, it's, like I said, realistic and they take it far, but not unrealistically far, whereas John Wick is like it's awesome, bit too much, bit, a bit surreal, and how far they're taking a bit too grand. But then they take it too far. It's like, yeah, this is the future, with, like, body armor built inside the skin or something like this just doesn't make no sense. Yeah, it's like that little little bit.
Speaker 1:They needed someone to just be like yeah, just just knock it back a little bit, just a little bit. Man, we had it. We had the right level there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, then we had the the flamethrower section, the flame, I mean, look, I love the creative I love the creative side of it, but also there was something really f***ed up about watching her burn a bunch of guys that like we have no connection with. They're just basic henchmen, so to see them like being burnt to a crisp it was kind of like. I don't know how much I can sympathize with this character, michael.
Speaker 2:Between a one and a five. How many bullets would you give this, oh?
Speaker 1:I feel like Ballerina is a three out of five. It's very safe and typical John Wick style action movie. If you like John Wick, you could wait for it to come on streaming and you'd be happy. Does it do enough with the intellectual property to really justify getting a prequel to John Wick? No, it doesn't do anything to stray from the formulas. I had no emotional connection to anything happening. There were some really funny kills like I was laughing my head off at some of the shit. But I was also laughing at just the visual of seeing this small, tiny girl taking on seven foot tall guys and being able to completely murder them. It just didn't work. It reminded me of when I watched Jurassic World and the girl runs away from the velociraptors wearing heels.
Speaker 1:I was like why wouldn't you take the heels off? If you're going to have a female as this John Wick type character, you're going to have to change some things for me to believe it, because it just doesn't look right.
Speaker 2:I would give the movie two and a half out of five stars Oof. Okay, look, it's entertaining, it's fun. I enjoyed it. One moment I almost fell asleep during the flamethrower section. Towards the end of it, it did drag on a bit. It dragged on. Yeah, it did drag on a bit. It dragged on the thing that really threw me off how many bullets in a f***ing chamber. Yeah, she never reloaded.
Speaker 1:That's a good point, and that's something John Wick always did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but that's because it's his. That's Keanu Reeves' specialty reloading. You can watch his videos of when he reloads. He created a new technique of reload, but I would say so many times Anna or Eve was left with no weapon, but she killed a bunch of people who all had machine guns. Grab a gun and move on. Stop stabbing people. It makes no sense if you have like 17 guns around you on the floor. I reckon to really summarize this movie into one point is a lot of setup, very little payoff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say, if you love john wick, you'll be like yeah, okay, yeah, it was all right. If you don't like john John Wick, then this is definitely not your type of film and you need to stay away.
Speaker 2:That's how I'd look at it and the CGI was great. Cgi was phenomenal. There was one point in the fires that I was like whoa, that's fake.
Speaker 1:For the rest of everything, I didn't notice any CGI anywhere alright, that's us guys, but let us know, what did you think of Ballerina? Did you think that this was a worthy addition to the John Wick franchise, or should John Wick stay retired forever? Comment below and let us know. And if you enjoyed this video, please like, share and subscribe for more videos like this.