[Rating: Minor Rock Fist Down]
Now Streaming on Netflix
Somebody needs to tell Jennifer Lopez to stop. I cannot believe that I, the biggest JLo apologist in the world, finally stopped taking her seriously. I watch most everything she’s in, and support her film career, but lately it’s stunk. She needs to stop making movies simply because Netflix is giving her a big check, and start making movies that matter and elevate her acting abilities. Her latest big budget flick, Atlas (directed by Brad Peyton) has flown so under the radar, not one person I spoke to about it, even knew it existed.
Atlas Shepherd (Lopez) is an A.I. analyst in the not so distant future who hates all things A.I. It is revealed that years ago, a rogue A.I Harlan (Simu Liu) led a rebellion with the machines that killed 3 million humans, before he fled to space. Now, Atlas has made it her life mission to find Harlan and destroy him. She gets a chance by capturing one of his agents who reveals his location. Under the orders of Colonel Elias Banks (Sterling K. Brown) and General Jake Boothe (Mark Strong), Atlas journeys to a distant planet to find Harlan. Her crew and ships are immediately found and destroyed by Harlan’s followers and Atlas is left on a strange planet to find him and complete her mission.
Atlas now has no choice but to take assistance from a Siri-like program known as Smith (Gregory James Cohan) despite her hesitations. Smith informs Atlas that if he taps into her mind, they can work together in order to survive. Now with Smith helping in the mission, Atlas looks to her bigger goal of destroying Harlan.
On paper, Atlas should be a good movie. I thought it was going to be in line with a movie nobody but me really liked, The Tomorrow War. I am here to say that Atlas really isn’t a bad movie, just bogged down by some bad performances! Seriously, JLo is phoning it in and pretending like she knows what is going on. She has that performance that you know usher talking to a blue screen world behind her. The worst offender however is Simu Liu. Phew! He tries so hard to create a scary and heartless villain, however there is zero emotion in it. At least we don’t have to see him too much as the action takes a good majority of the movie.
So unfortunately Netflix has yet another, here today, gone tomorrow movie. Lopez can’t save the movie anymore with whatever star power she still has. I need passion projects that she actually believes in and wants to make. It’s weird that despite me thinking this was just an “okay” movie, I’d take a sequel, or at least a comic book follow up.
Christian Ramos is a classic film fan, having had the dream to host Turner Classic Movies for years now. He also has a large amount of Oscar trivia in his head, remembers dressing as Groucho Marx one Halloween, and cherishes the moment Julianne Moore liked his tweet.
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