Category: Arts & Entertainment (Page 1 of 4)

You can tell what kind of movie The Beekeeper is before you watch it.  If its star Jason Statham isn’t a dead giveaway, then the movie trailers surely reveal this as a “lone-killer-out-for-vengeance” film.  You may have seen one or two of these already: John Wick, The Equalizer, Nobody.  Kingsman, Taken, Hardcore Henry.  The Professional, Collateral, The Accountant.  The Beekeeper follows the trope well, and will deliver gratuitous, creative and merciless violence for 105 minutes.

If that sounds like your cup of tea, then I recommend you check out this movie!  I don’t want to label (most) movies as good or bad, and, despite my opening, I think this is an enjoyable film.  Plus, it brings an important issue to the big screen: tech scams.

The Beekeeper’s story begins with a common technology scam, much like those that I write about so often on my blog: A pop-up appears on someone’s computer. They believe the scammy message and dial the on-screen telephone number. Cybercriminals answer the call and trick the person into allowing remote-access of their computer and bank accounts. All of the money is quickly stolen and the victim is shook to their core.

In true Hollywood-fashion, the movie plays fast and loose with the truth and details. But here I didn’t mind it so much. The core of the scam is accurate enough, and I am so very satisfied to see this crime shown in a mainstream film. Representation is important! I appreciate director David Ayer for this, because his film could help “ring a bell” and save someone from falling for a real-life computer scam.

For the rest of the movie, I recommend you relax and don’t think too much. The Beekeeper is meant to be entertaining and not cerebral. The score tells you when a bad guy has entered the frame. All of the actors, even the scammers, are good-looking. Villains shoot up some beehives and escape unscathed. (My beekeeper wife would surely roll her eyes at such silliness, but we’d have a much shorter movie if all the bad guys perished in the first act to a swarm of angry bees.)

I did notice that The Beekeeper missed the opportunity of using an uncapping knife in battle. Those things are dreadfully sharp, and would’ve fit the bee-motif in a clever way.

Overall, though, I appreciated the moral core that surfaced from behind all of the coarse language and brutality. I thought The Beekeeper had great camerawork and set-pieces. It’s no perfect film, by any means, but I’m sure to rewatch it someday. I’ll give it a Bee-Plus.

If you like to buy and collect digital copies of movies, then you need to know about Vudu and their Disc to Digital offering. Using this program, you can add a digital movie to your library for $2 or $5. This is typically far cheaper than buying a digital movie from other vendors.

How this works is based on the movies you already physically own. You are buying a digital license for a DVD or Blu-ray that you have in hand. The process goes like this:

1. On your smartphone or tablet, go to www.vudu.com/disc
2. Scroll down to the Convert Disc button and tap it.
3. Tap the next Convert Disc button and take a picture of a barcode from a DVD or Blu-ray case that you have on hand.

If Vudu can offer that movie to you as a digital copy, you will then have the chance to pay $2 or $5 for it. If the movie is not available for this program, Vudu will let you know.

Other Details & Thoughts

Not all movies are eligible for Vudu Disc to Digital, and I can’t find any “master list” of films, showing what’s accepted or not. But Vudu Support says that if you see the Movies Anywhere logo on the case, it should work. For older movies, you can only check by scanning, to find out if it can purchased.

While this is intended for you to expand your digital library based on your physical library, I don’t see much security or restriction to how this process works. So, thinking outside the box, this program would also work for you if you checked a movie out of the public library and scanned its barcode. Or borrowed a movie from a friend, and decided you wanted to add it to your digital library before returning it. All that is necessary is that you scan the official barcode from the movie clamshell case and pay the nominal fee.

And I have to say, I was astounded by one success I had personally with this program. I have a particular movie on Blu-ray that is out-of-print. At this point, it is not available for streaming, and can only be bought through collectors & shylocks on eBay. But somehow, Vudu’s D2D program allowed me to buy a digital copy for $2. Now I can stream and download a movie that I thought only existed on disc.