Here is another indie gem from iTunes.

I have to say, I like iTunes and other type of streaming services that have allowed me the chance to see movies like this one that do not find their way to the theaters near me, and I can enjoy them in the comforts of my own home.  Not that I would want to forego the movie going experience, but this gives me a chance to see a great performance by a great actor instead of missing it.

Sam Elliott gives a great performance in the role of Lee Hayden, an aging actor who once was a Western star, but who now is just hoping for one last role.  Problem is that the diagnosis has come back.  Cancer.  So now, can the one time Western hero with the great voice straighten his life out?

He also has started a quirky relationship with stand up comedienne Charlotte (Laura Prepon), a woman over thirty years younger.  I really liked the relationship between Lee and Charlotte because it was such an original concept and it felt very real.  Laura Prepon from Orange is the New Black is really good playing opposite Elliott and they make me believe that this May-December relationship was totally realistic.

Sam Elliott is just fantastic here.  The story itself might feel a little thin, but the fact is that Elliott can make even thin scripts better.

The film leaves us off where we begin, uncertain of what resolution the story will have.  This feels like a solid indie and it is an easy watch.

Krysten Ritter has a role in The Hero as well, appearing as Lee’s daughter Lucy.  The star of Jessica Jones does not have a lot to do here, but she is always a welcome sight to me.  Nick Offerman plays the drug dealer, a former co-star with Lee, and they spend most of their time together now a days smoking weed.  Offerman is very good here too.

The film was entertaining and well worth the rental.  If you are a Sam Elliott fan, you should certainly check this one out.

3.7 stars

I went into this sequel really holding my breath because I really enjoyed the original film, Kingsman: The Secret Service, a lot.  It was original and unexpected with a couple of scenes that will always be remembered (church and exploding heads). However, the trailers for the follow up had me concerned because they had not grabbed by interest.  Because of this, I intentionally avoided reviews and Rotten Tomato scores until I saw the film myself.

And it was fine.

It is nowhere near as great at the first Kingsmen film was, but there are entertaining moments with some good characters, engaging actors and decent action to make the trip to the theater passable.  It will not be remembered as fondly as the first one was, but it did not have to be.

We returned to the world of the Kingsmen with Eggsy (Taron Egerton) being attacked and pursued by former Kingsmen-wannabe Charlie (Edward Holcroft).  The action immediately ramps up and we see some exciting action from Eggsy before he shakes Charlie off.  However, Charlie is able to track Eggsy to the Kingsman headquarters and this led to a missile attack taking out almost the entire Kingsman force.

The missiles were launched by super-villainess Poppy (Julianne Moore), who is trying to get illegal drugs legalized so she can become an even bigger-than-life business person than she already is.  She lives in a compound in the jungles of South America where she has set up a nostalgic little world of the fifties with diners and theaters.  SPOILER: She has also kidnapped Elton John, in the film’s big cameo (which is probably my favorite part of the whole thing).   END OF SPOILER

Her plan is to taint the illegal drugs she sells with a poison that gives everyone who uses them a terrible disease that will eventually kill them, and she will only release the antidote if the world bows down to her demands.

Meanwhile, Eggsy and Merlin (Mark Strong) followed a lead to Kentucky where they find the American cousins of the Kingsmen, The Statesmen.  The Statesmen are agents using a whiskey company to hide their activities, much like the Kingsman organization runs from out of a suit shop.

The Statesmen we meet include Tequila (Channing Tatum), Whiskey (Pedro Pascal), Champ (Jeff Bridges) and Ginger (Halle Berry).  I enjoyed what little we got of the Statesmen in this movie and I would have liked more.  With the exception of Pascal, we only get a little bit of the others, which, considering the film really promoted the fact that the film featured Channing Tatum, could be considered a bait and switch.  Tatum is in about 10 minutes of the film with Bridges appearing even less.  When they are there though, they are solid additions to the cast.

Taron Egerton is once again very excellent here as the more out-there James Bond.  There are some good scenes with Eggsy and his girlfriend, Princess Tilde (Hanna Alström) and, of course, there are great scenes with Egerton and Colin Firth.

So lets address that.  Colin Firth is in this movie despite being killed off in dramatic and seemingly final fashion in the original.  We saw this in the trailers that he would be back as Harry Hart and how the film brought him back to the land of the living would be important.  Without spoiling it, I have to say the way the film did it was pretty disappointing and not up to the level I expected.  Some might even go as far as to say that the return of Harry Hart cheapens the original movie because it took a lot of the film’s emotional beats away by not having the character remain dead.  I am not sure it was necessary to have Harry brought back.  In fact, I think his return from the dead kept me from having an emotional response later near the end of the film when something else happened that should have had a greater impact than it did.

Not only was the actual way of saving his life pretty eye-rolling, but why Harry had not returned to the Kingsman was also addressed and it is very soap opera-like.  In the end, this part of the film was a definite weak point.

Julianne Moore as your over-the-top villain was also a hit and miss.  While she was great as the crazy villain, many of the things she did felt very cartoony.  Though I liked her as an actress, her character was lacking in many ways.

And the movie itself really seemed as if it was trying to outdo itself from the ending of the first film.  The violence was too implausible, almost being too comic book like for the film.  Sure the film owes its inspiration from a comic book, but it was always more of a spy film than a super hero one, but some of the fights make you wonder.  Trying to top the original was something that it should have thought twice about.

There are still many moments of good humor and solid performances from the actors here.  I liked what I got of the Statesmen and much of the action was fast paced and good.  While no where near as great as the first one, this film was okay.

3.3 stars

Okay, so the Lego Movie phase for me ended with this one.

I loved The Lego Movie and I may have loved The Lego Batman Movie even more.  However, I was bored almost immediately with The Lego Ninjago Movie and found myself waiting very impatiently for it to end.

Perhaps this is one that kids will love.  I, unfortunately, did not.

Apparently Lego Ninjago is one of Lego’s biggest sets that do not include a licenses that they have received from another I.P. such as Star Wars, Batman etc.  There apparently is some kind of show and movie already in existence with this, including a large mythology.  I have no idea about any of that so I will not be using that as a comparison or a positive/negative.

Jackie Chan shows up to narrate a tale about Lego character Lloyd (Dave Franco), the son of the infamous super villain Garmadon (Justin Theroux).  Garmadon deserted his son when he was just a baby and it has ruined Lloyd’s life.  In response, Lloyd is the leader of the town’s super hero Ninja squad that keeps preventing Garmadon from taking over Ninjago.  Despite his heroic nature as the Green Ninja, Lloyd is hated and despised by the real world because of his connection to his father.

Lloyd still desires a relationship with his father and this is one of the reasons why he struggled to finally stop the villain, despite the Ninjas continued success in preventing him from taking over the city.  Lloyd’s uncle, Master Wu (Jackie Chan) is your stereotypical ancient wise man who is trying to help the Ninjas find their true path.

To say that these Ninjas are a rip off of the Power Rangers would not be a stretch.  They each have a different color armor, with powers provided by different elements.  They even pilot giant robots, though they avoid calling them Zords.  However, none of the other members of the Ninja team is even slightly developed as characters.  Lloyd, who is the Green Ranger Ninja, is the only one of them that has any significance at all.

So, in the film, an even worse force is unleashed, causing terrible damage to Ninjago and Lloyd and his father are forced to team up to try and find an even greater weapon to overcome the first one.  And, of course you know what happens next.  Father and son find moments to bond and work through their issues.

I was so bored by this.

There was nothing truly original (outside of an appearance of a cat) and the story was nothing that we haven’t seen before in Lego movies and done better.  The father-son dynamic was done better in both previous Lego movies than it was here.  In The Lego Ninjago Movie, the father-son story was cliched and typical.

The Lego blocks themselves were poorly used as well, as we had very few effective scenes of anyone building anything worthwhile.  The humor was lacking through much of the story, which is sad considering that Lego Batman is still one of the funniest movies of the year.

Being such a big fan of the first two Lego movies really made the failure of this one disappointing.  Your young children may enjoy this because there is very little that requires anything more than the basic attention.

2.3 stars

The lesson I learned from this film couldn’t be more clear— if you are the popular hot girl, never, ever try and make friends with the loner loser girl with no friends because she will turn evil and stalk you on social media, even after she dies.

We’ve had some great horror movies this year.

This isn’t one of them.

Attractive and popular girl Laura (Alycia Debnam-Carey) is in a loving relationship with a doctor-in-training Tyler (William Moseley), had lots of friends (including like over 800 on Facebook), and seems to have a great life in progress.  However, she started seeing Marina (Liesl Ahlers) around campus and the girl is sad and lonely.  So much so, when looking at her Facebook page, Laura sees that Marina has no friends.  Some of the dark imagery on the page intrigued Laura, so she became the sole friend.

Unfortunately and predictably, Marina becomes obsessed with Laura, stalking her, sending her message after message, and creeping the heck out of Laura and her friends.  When Laura lies to Marina about a birthday party, everything starts to unravel.  Finally, Laura unfriends Marina.  Then, Marina commits suicide and posts the video on Facebook for the world to see.

Suddenly, more posts start popping up on Laura’s feed that she did not post, showing some horrific situations.  And when Laura’s friends start becoming victims, these videos continue to show up somehow, under Laura’s name.

No one seems to be able to delete the videos and Laura seems unable to delete her account, which apparently does not trip the curiosity of the two stupid local cops involved in the investigation of these deaths and who think Laura has something that she is hiding.  These two brainiacs are just one of the things wrong with this movie.

So many characters here wind up doing stupid things that I find myself rolling my eyes constantly.  Very few of them make reasonable and normal choices about what to do.  It just makes no sense.

Because there is an opportunity here to tell a story about cyberbullying or about the cruelty of casting aside a girl just because of popularity or the trouble of social media and what it can bring or even a real consideration about mental illness and what can come from that.  Instead, the girl is an evil witch and can somehow cause pain and death via Facebook.

The only attempts at a scare in this movie is by jump scare.  The music wells up and blasts really loudly and there is a horrific image.  Jump scare.  There is nothing else scary or creepy here, and there is potentially so much to mine here.

In fact, at first, I thought we might get something different than I was expecting because the first video we see on Marina’s page is a cool, black and white animated image that filled the screen and made me sit up and take notice… for all of about 45 seconds.  And then the film retreated right back to the dull and idiotic horror tropes that every other bad horror movies uses.

The acting is average to poor.  The characters take actions that went against what the film had led us to believe they wanted in the first place.  These were not real life characters.  They were poorly developed cardboard cut outs doing what was needed for the plot to advance.

If you want a good horror movie this weekend, go back and watch It again.  Do not accept this friend request.

1.5 stars

I found this one boring.

Tragic events led to a horrible loss for Mitch Rapp (Dylan O’ Brien) sending the young man into a quest for revenge.  With plans on finding the terrorists responsible, Mitch catches the eye of the CIA.  The CIA sent the talented man to their special camp for assassins led by top agent Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton), who did not, at first, see what the other agents saw in Mitch. A major international danger sent the two into a mission whether they were ready or not.

I truly found myself bored by this movie.  There were so many typical plot steps here that I could almost call out what was the next thing to happen.  The idea of the old agent training the young up and coming agent is over used and here, it continues just as you would expect.

Now, I think Dylan O’Brien was quite good as Mitch Rapp.  I actually thought to myself as I was watching this that he would make a great Nightwing in the DCEU.  And Michael Keaton is always good.  There are a few moments here of really over the top scene chewing that is just glorious Michael Keaton.  The problems of this movie are not with their two main stars.

The story was generic.  The set up almost made you think of the Punisher, but at least Frank Castle had a background in the military to fall back on.  Maybe I missed it, but I thought that Mitch Rapp was just a child who had been a troubled youth, whose parents died in a car crash when he was 14.  Where did he get these amazing assassin skills that he developed rather quickly?  Was there a reason he picked them up so well?  Is he a prodigy?

There are some fine action here too.  Sure there are many moments where the credibility is stretched beyond the limit of belief, but you get that in most action movies.

Taylor Kitsch as the film’s villain, Ghost, a character that had his ties to Stan Hurley, was at best okay.  While I am not a Kitsch hater, this role is not a memorable one.  This could have been any number of actors taking the Ghost character.  The relationship between former mentor Keaton and Kitsch was just lackluster.

American Assassin was definitely a dull and cliched film that wasted a couple of strong performances from its lead actors in a story right out of the typical spy action movie.  Nothing special here.

2.4 stars

I had to reflect on this one for awhile.

The film mother! is the new film by Darren Aronofsky, who previously gave us Requiem for a Dream, Noah, The Wrestler and Black Swan, and it is absolutely an artsy film that requires you to think about what it is saying.  Nothing is what it seems and everything, and I do mean everything, is a metaphor for something.

Jennifer Lawrence is a woman married to Javier Bardem, a poet, and they are livingin a house in the middle of nowhere that we find out was Berdem’s home that had previously been damaged in a fire.  Lawrence is repairing it while the poet Bardem is trying to resume his writing.  Soon, a man arrives, played by Ed Harris, followed by his wife, Michelle Pfeiffer, who bring chaos into the serene utopia that is the home of the couple.

I knew almost nothing about this film going in.  I did see the trailers, but they did not stick with me, so I was uncertain of what the film was meant to be.  I had heard that it was a horror/thriller type of film.  After seeing it….

It is not a horror/thriller.

In fact, the film is a full out allegory.

At this point it is difficult to talk about the film without spoiling it, so…

SPOILERS

One of the main metaphor running through the film is that Javier Bardem is God and Jennifer Lawrence is Gaia, Mother Earth.  These characters do not have actual names in the film which, oddly enough, I did not even realize until the end credits.  The religious metaphor is very heavy handed, including the arrival of Harris and Pfeiffer, aka Adam and Eve, into the idyllic home (aka Eden) to cause trouble.  We even get a Cain and Abel pair as their sons show up (real life brothers Brian and Domhnall Gleeson play them).

Later still we get a whole Baby Jesus metaphor that is about as disturbing as it can possibly be.  Let’s just say that you’ll never look at Communion the same way again.

However, the God-Earth metaphor was not the only one that was showing its head in mother! because there were many others as well.  To say that metaphors were being mixed would not be too broad of a statement.

Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky reportedly gave out a statement prior to critic screenings of the film trying to lay the groundwork for the film.  He spoke about how the film is dark and is a response to the horrible things going on in the world and how he wrote this in five days.  I expect fully that there will be a lot of people who absolutely hate this movie.  I think there are those who will really appreciate the artistic nature of the work Aronofsky pulled off here.  I don’t think I am going out on a limb stating that this film will be divisive.  Aronofsky knew it would be divisive, because he specifically commented on it.

Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem are really good in the film, especially Lawrence, who has so much put upon her throughout the film.  If you do not catch the Biblical reference, it will seem as if Lawrence is caught in an abusive relationship.

Which brings up another point.  I believe that it is absolutely possible that someone else could watch mother! and read something completely different into the allegory than the Biblical one.  You could look on this as a commentary on famous people and the lives that they live.  Or it could be how some people are trapped and cannot escape from certain situations.  The subjective nature of the symbolic storytelling is another reason why this film required serious reflection for me before I wrote this review.

(By the way, as an English teacher, I am having a heck of a hard time typing the title of this movie without a capital letter— mother!.  )

There is no doubt that this movie will spurn a series of debates and discussions about exactly what it is.  It is an amazingly well made film with great performances.  The story itself may stick with you, upset you, or anger you.  I’m not even sure how I can grade this because the film is challenging.  I respect the use of allegory in this film, but I feel as if they overused the metaphors too much.  There are many disturbing images and the film does feel too long.

It might be one to have to see a second time to really see what the film is saying, but it feels as if there are too many messages here.

2.8 stars

Well, this one was pretty harmless.

Home Again, starring Reese Witherspoon, is kind of a rom-com about a recently separated woman and her two daughters and they invite three young men who are trying to write a script for their movie to stay at their house.  Witherspoon’s character, Alice Kinney, is the daughter of a late Hollywood legend and Candice Bergen.

Yeah, there are a lot of strangeness involved here and it is not the most realistic movie ever filmed.  However, there is a strong cast and it is fairly okay.

Maybe that is not a rave review, but I did not hate this.  There are plenty of issues with the film.  The dialogue is very poorly written.  The characters are thin.  The story is not anything special.

Still, I did not hate this.  I think the strength of Home Again was a fairly engaging cast of young actors playing off the typically solid Reese Witherspoon performance.  Nat Wolff, Pico Alexander and Jon Rudnitsky play the three males in the meta-storyline of the writers/actors trying to get their movie funded.  These guys are fine, albeit, unimpressive.

I did enjoy seeing Candice Bergen again, despite the fact that she is not given much to do in the film.  It is her idea for the guys to move into the guest house, but that is about all she gets to do- besides babysit the girls.

In the end, there was not much to this movie.  You have seen most of it before and the overall production was average to below average.  And yet, I did not hate it.  The strong cast make up for a lot of the problems of the film.  However, not quite enough for me to recommend this one.

2.6 stars

I had really high expectations heading into the new adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, It.  I have enjoyed all the material leading up to the release of the film, I was a fan of the 80’s mini series (especially the iconic turn of Tim Curry as Pennywise the Dancing Clown) and the images of the new version of the clown were impressive.  I probably have not been as excited to see a film since Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Unfortunately, many times expectations are not met, when they are this high.

After seeing the film, I can say that It exceeded my expectations dramatically.  This movie knocked it so far out of the park that it is in consideration for my favorite movie of 2017.

The little town of Derry, Maine is a horrible place.  Kids are disappearing at an alarming rate while the adults turn a blind eye.  A group of kids who call themselves the Loser’s Club come together to confront an ancient evil responsible for those disappearances.

This movie was not just a horror film.  It was a tremendous coming of age story (much like Stephen King’s film based on a short story, Stand By Me) and it was also a thriller.  It did not just scare you (and, boy howdy, did it scare you) but it also created some much tension and suspense that you could practically feel it creeping under your skin and pounding your heart.

The film needed to have a successful Pennywise, because Tim Curry is such an icon, if it was not a great new version, the film would fail.  Thankfully, Bill Skarsgård is up to the task.  His portrayal as Pennywise was amazing.  Not only was he tremendously frightening, he was compelling as could be.  This was not just your typical horror movie villain.  He had layers.  He tormented you.  He was brutally vicious.  Skarsgård, who some criticized early because of the look of the clown, is masterful at taking the classic character and making it his own.

But, on the other side of the ledger was the Loser’s Club.  This group of kids could have been a troupe of one-note, disposable characters, but they were anything but.  In fact, the reason this film succeeded as hugely as it did was because of the skills of these young actors and the chemistry between them all. They spoke like real kids.  They had major problems in their lives.  Each one had a home life that was simply painful, and yet they were able to find one another and give the strength to their friendship.

These young actors were led by Jaeden Lieberher (St. Vincent, Book of Henry, Midnight Special) as Bill, whose brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) disappears at the beginning of the movie.  Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things) is the smart-mouthed Richie.  Wolfhard is one of the standouts among the kids and is consistently the funniest of them as well.  Sophia Lillis plays the bullied and harassed Beverly, who befriends this group of boys despite her reputation.  Jack Dylan Grazer is Eddie, the boy whose mother is so overprotective that she drove him to be constantly worried about his health.  Grazer is another extremely entertaining young actor here.  Chosen Jacobs plays Mike, the boy whose parents died in a fire, and who is struggling to find his own way in life.  Wyatt Oleff (young Peter Quill in Guardians of the Galaxy) is Stanley, the son of the local rabbi who finds his Jewish faith to be a challenge.  And Jeremy Ray Taylor who plays Ben, the new kid in town who has been investigating the strangeness of Derry.

Hell, even when you see the group of bullies who were tormenting the Loser’s Club, you think that they were nothing more than the bully stereotype, and then you see the leader of the group, Henry (Nicholas Hamilton), being humiliated and emasculated by his policeman father.  He went from being an out of control figure you hate, to a villain that you can almost connect with.

I wanted to make sure that all of these kids got their due in this review because they were so magnificent here that they truly were the reason this is elevated above the typical  horror films.  The script wisely takes its time and lets us get to know these kids and develop deep and rich characters who everybody can relate with.

Many of the typical horror ideas and concepts are flipped on its side here as well.  The story is so well told and so beautifully executed that you must give credit to the director Andy Muschietti.  The look and the feel of the film was stronger than you expect for  a horror movie.

The film is rated R and it certainly earns that R rating.  It has some extremely violent scenes and It does some things to the young cast that you just would not think that the film would do.  The rating also allowed these kids to talk like real kids talk.  When they are away from adults and with their friends, kids can have the foulest mouths of all.  This film showed this aspect of the kids perfectly.

I was emotionally tied to most of the young characters as they were being tormented by what they feared the most.  I was astonished at how downright awful the adults in these kids’ lives were.  I have not read the book, but I have heard that the awfulness of the adults of Derry was a theme.  If that is the case, then this film nailed it, because every adult that gets any lines at all are at best creepy and at worst unbelievably violent and cruel.  I am not sure how many times I actually shivered from the underlying “ick” factor many of the adults had here.

The film is 135 minutes, but I never found myself bored.  Just the opposite, I was riveted the entire time and it felt as if the time just flew by.  On the other had, I have been in 90 minute films this year that seem to take an eternity.

This is easily the best horror movie of the year so far, but it transcends horror.  After several weeks of ho-hum films at the theater, It is poised to have a monster weekend at the box office and very few films this year deserve it more than It.  This movie is completely engaging, an entertaining thrill ride from start (poor Georgie) to finish.  Whereas the It mini series from the 1980s had a brilliant performance by Tim Curry and was pretty campy otherwise, this version of It feels like the vintage version the material deserves.  I was worried that the film would not be able to live up to the high expectations that I had for It, but I found that It actually shattered them.

Of course, if you have a fear of clowns, you may want to question whether you want to see It.  It certainly won’t change that fear for the better.

5 stars