Pitch Black (Netflix): I'm not a Vin Diesel fan, and never had any interest to see this movie or the other Riddick movies, but when I actually read the description I thought I'd give it a shot while folding laundry. It was better than I expected! They did an interesting thing by showing us most of the special effects through Vin's POV, and he has some crazy see-in-the-dark eyes, which allowed them to make some scenes that were interesting to look at while masking some special effects that might not have worked as well in full view. It's basically a Jurassic Park movie, with a bunch of pterodactyls chasing people around while they try to get parts to leave. Vin was awful, but I just don't care for his style of speech or how he tries to be such a badass with every single line in every movie. The rest of the cast was below average as well, but the movie had an interesting look and the monsters were fairly cool. There were some things that didn't work well (a weird gender switch that didn't add anything, a couple of strange looking deaths from the monsters), but overall it was decent enough that I decided to watch the second Riddick movie. I didn't know this was part of that series until I finally made the connection about 20 minutes from the end that his name was Riddick and there are Vin Diesel Riddick movies.
Chronicles of Riddick (Netflix): Again, I didn't like Vin Diesel... but the rest of the movie was good! Good special effects, nice variety of alien worlds, a good concept for the bad guys. This kind of felt like it was an inspiration for some of the Marvel movies in a way - the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie particularly felt like it had a lot of visual and storyline parallels. Karl Urban sneaks into another Scifi/fantasy series... Marvel, Riddick, Star Trek, Doom, Dredd, LOTR, The Boys - seems like he's due for a Mandalorian part soon to complete the set. Anyway, this movie really surprised me. The costume designs alone were worth watching it. Something I really liked was that they didn't overexplain things - they just showed it and let the audience want more, like original Star Wars. What's up with the zombies looking through green scope masks? Whatever you what. What happens when they poke you in the neck? Maybe something brainwashy, maybe not. What's in the sacks that try to reprogram his brain? Things. How does the big bad teleport/move his soul out of his body and what does that really mean? Dunno. It had almost nothing to do with the first movie (apparently there's an animated movie that ties the two together more), but that's fine with me.