So this past Wednesday, I was on my phone, checking the showtimes for the movies coming out this weekend on my Cinemark app.  I saw a film called Collide, and I had no idea what it was.  I had never seen or heard of it before.

I immediately assumed it was one of the foreign language films that Cinemark shows, but I noticed that Nicholas Hoult (Beast from the X-Men movies) was in it, so that blew the “it’s from India” theory.

I investigated further.  This is when I saw that Anthony Hopkins was also listed as a star.  What?  Anthony Hopkins is a huge star.  Why hadn’t I heard of this movie.  With all the movies that I see in a year, I see a ton of trailers before the film and I had never even once seen one for Collide.  The trailer was on the app so I clicked on it, curious.  And then, who did I see?  Sir Ben Kingsley!  By the time I realize that Rogue One star Felicity Jones was also in this film, I was already confused as can be.

The next day, i am watching Collioder Movie Talk and they are doing their “Opening this Week” segment and Collide comes up.  Panelist and director Jon Schnepp joked about how that was the very first time that he had heard about the film and that Collider had done more to promote the film with that very segment than the entire movie company had done.

So I knew it wasn’t just me.  This was a bad sign.  Because usually when a movie company thinks thye have got a great film, they are anxious for people to see it.  Marvel released to critics and special screenings Captain America: Civil War months before the movie was scheduled to be released because they knew word of mouth would be tremendous.

On the flip side, FOX refused to screen Fantastic Four until just before the release date despite a hunger for the film.  It gives a bad message when the studios try to hide the film from critics.  It means they do not have any confidence in the film.Of course, with Fant4stic, I did see plenty of trailers for the movie.  Collide…not a one.

What did that mean?  The film had what should have been a great cast, but there was zero marketing for it.  It made me think that this one would not be any good.

Guess what?  I know now why they did not promote this film.  It was awful.

Collide was meant to be a love story between Casey (Nicholas Hoult) and Juliette (Felicity Jones), who meet in a club. Problem… Casey works for a criminal stealing cars.  The criminal was Ben Kinsley, as over-the-top as he has ever been.  I have no idea what he was going for with this characterization.  Anyway, back to Casey and Juliette, it turned out that Casey left the criminal life behind him for her, but she had some kind of nondescript kidney disease that was going to kill her.  Casey got back into the life of crime in order to pay for an operation for Juliette.  The job?  Hijack a truck from Anthony Hopkins that was filled with cocaine inside golf balls and a lot of money.

From there, the film got stupid.

There were so many problems with this movie.  Casey is shot at so many times, but is never hit with any bullet (maybe grazed once…) that it was Stormtroopers level of incompetence.  Hopkins’ thugs seemed to be able to arrive immediately wherever Casey was no matter how fast he had driven.  Remember the last Fast and the Furious movie where Jason Statham was always arriving no matter where in the world Vin Diesel was?  This is just like that only with less star power.

The chemistry between Casey and Juliette was non-existent and the acting was atrocious.  Felicity Jones is a much better actress than this performance indicates.  She was way better not only in Rogue One, but also A Monster Calls.  What happened here?

And Anthony Hopkins is about as unwatchable as I have ever seen him.  I hope he got a really nice fat paycheck for this role, because this was horrible.

The film was a short 99 minutes, but it felt like an eternity.  It is nothing but shaky car chase scenes or Nicholas Hoult running through gunfire.  It made me wonder if this one was connected to Unbreakable as well.  It is nice though that not one bystander was hurt in all of the hail of bullets or flipping cars.

The dialogue was just laughable at times.  Anthony Hopkins was legitimately rambling several times.

Enough about this stinker.  Word had it that this had been sitting on a shelf somewhere for a couple of years.  The biggest crime is that it did not stay there.  Who wanted this released?  It couldn’t have been the studio, because they did not give even one iota of care for promoting it.  I can’t believe that any of the actors wanted this to see the light of day because they look terrible in it.  And the audiences won’t care about it, as there were three others in the theater I saw it in on Saturday at 2 PM.

0.9 stars

Jordan Peele, from the sketch comedy team of Key and Peele, makes his directorial debut in this horror film, and the debut is an impressive one.  With the exception of Split, horror movies have not had a great start to 2017 after an outstanding 2016, but perhaps this is a film that can reverse that trend.

In Get Out, African-American Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and his Caucasian girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) are on their way to visit her parents, but Chris is nervous because she has not told her parents about Chris being black.  Despite her insistence that her parents would not have a problem with Chris, he is still worried about it.  When they arrive, Chris immediately starts feeling uneasy and uncomfortable with her father Dean (Bradley Whitford) and mother Missy (Catherine Keener) and that did not change when Missy offers to hypnotize Chris to help him stop smoking.

After a weird encounter with Missy one late night, Chris believes that she had, indeed, hypnotized him.  Things only got weirder as the Armitages throw a party with a crew of white people, making Chris even more on edge.  The appearance of another African-American at the party (Lakeith Stanfield) does nothing to assuage his concerns as the man acted extremely off-kilter.

As he starts to put the solution together on what was happening here, Chris begins to discover that there are way more sinister things going on with the Armitages than he ever would have guessed.

This film was extremely creepy and created a tone of suspense that carried throughout the film.  Some of the scenes were cringe-worthy, in a good way, as I found myself squirming in my seat once or twice.  There was one scene in particular that reminded me of a “nightmare juice” scene from Agents of SHIELD that was really difficult to watch.

Despite the uncomfortable moments, Get Out had its share of very funny scenes as well.  Jordan Peele showed his comedic side for years in his partnership with Keegan-Michael Key, and that side shone through several times in Get Out.  Now, some of the humor in the film felt a little forced, as if it did not fit and it was being shoehorned into the movie, however, the scenes with Chris’s friend Rob (“Lil Rel” Howery), a TSA security guard who is house sitting for Chris, were some of the best examples of humor in the film.

There were, as well, several moments of subtle satire in the film, dealing with the racial implications of the story.  The subtlety of these scenes were very solid, and I found myself laughing several times (though others in my theater did not seem to be finding it as funny as I did).  Peele wrapped the satire of the film within the social commentary that is in effect in Get Out.  They fit together seamlessly.

The performances were all excellent.  Daniel Kaluuya was just exceptional as Chris.  We see his entire gamut of emotions, from fear to confusion to anger.  You relate to him immediately, and you cannot help but root for him.  Allison Williams is great as Rose too.  They have a strong chemistry that helped carry the film for much of the early run.  Chris and Rose appeared to be a perfect couple and you wanted them to work out.  Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener were amazingly creepy and kept you off balance for much of the film.  Another standout performance was from Betty Gabriel, who played the “housekeeper” Georgina.  You could never tell what was going on with this woman and she had some of the best facial acting from the film.  Because of these performances, you as an audience member felt that tension, almost a paranoia, about what exactly was going on there.

The ending of the film was surprisingly effective, and I thought it was heading one way when it took a different path.  I appreciated the end of the film, but I might have liked something more.

There were some initial pacing issues, as the first part of the film did move kind of slowly, and not all of the humor fit.  Despite that, there was a ton to enjoy here.  Jordan Peele showed himself a skillful director and certainly told an original and creative story, something that we could use more of in Hollywood today.

4.4 stars

I thought that I would hate The Great Wall, but I did not.  I did not hate sitting in the theater watching this film, but it is not a good movie by any stretch.

William (Matt Damon) and Tovar (Pedro Pascal) are on their way into China looking for “black powder”aka gunpowder but they come across the Great Wall of China and a huge battalion of Chinese soldiers on guard against something.  William and Tovar are captured and imprisoned, but they are freed when some massive group of CGI lizards with funky eyes attack the wall.  William and Tovar jump to the rescue and earn the tentative trust of Commander Lin Mae (Tian Jing).  Lots of exposition is dropped to explain what was happening and the Chinese prepared for the next attack.

If you can go into this movie and not be distracted by little things like thinking, The Great Wall is watchable.  The initial battle scene vs. the CGI creatures was very tense and full of excitement, and it looked wonderful (not the CGI, but the rest of it).  Lin Mae was an interesting character that the film does not spend any time developing.  That would be a recurring theme about The Great Wall.  These characters are so one dimensional that it really takes away from the film.  William is also underdeveloped.  Tovar is remarkably inconsistent bouncing between comedy sidekick to dick.

The dialogue here was terrible… laughable even, in particular with Matt Damon’s character.

The CGI monsters looked like CGI monsters.  There were also too many obvious green screen scenes here, especially during the third act finale.  The CGI and special effects took away from what should have been a beautifully shot film.  The colors of the Chinese army’s outfits and the surrounding land were breathtaking… or at least it could have been if not for the weak special effects.

Honestly, though, I did love the CGI on the fireball projectiles tossed with the catapult.  That was cool.

And the story was all over the place.  I wondered how the Chinese knew some of the exposition that they knew.  For example, they knew that if they could kill the queen of these monsters, all the others would freeze up like the Chitauri from Marvel’s The Avengers.  How did they know this?  How did they know all the specific details that they did?  Too much thinking really messes this plot up completely.  This was a very long wall.  Why is this the only location that these monsters are attacking?  The whole thing with the magnet… why did that work?

Oh, and Willem Dafoe is in this movie too.  There is no reason why Dafoe is in this movie and his character legitimately could have been played by any actor in the world.  He brought zero to this character.  That is not a slight on Willem Dafoe, because I think he is an outstanding actor.  I loved him as Norman Osborn.  The fact is that this character is completely superfluous and unnecessary to the movie.

Brad Pitt is fine.  His dialogue was poor, but he does a good job looking like the awesome archer that he is meant to be.  He is also meant to be a scoundrel, but I did not catch enough of a vibe from him on that. he always felt like a hero.  If there was more of a conflict within Pitt, maybe the ultimate sacrifice he makes to help these people would have meant more or would have given this character another layer, but none of that was here.  I did laugh several times at Pedro Pascal because he felt like Inigo Montoya to me.

The Great Wall was directed by Zhang Yimou, who has an amazing visual style that has been on display in Hero or House of Flying Daggers.  You can see some of that here, but the CGI really gets in the way.  The third act as well was not near as exciting as the earlier fights with the creatures.

This movie is the largest film ever shot completely in China and is Yimou’s first English-Language production.  It tries to be a spanning epic, but it turns out to be more like a B-level monster movie.  It was not completely terrible, but defining it as “watchable” is about all I can go.

2.4 stars

A Cure for Wellness is an uneven horror film that had some interesting ideas, lots of problems with pacing and an ending that completely went off the rails.

There is absolutely a ton of disturbing imagery throughout the run time of A Cure for Wellness and this can be credited to the director Gore Verbinski and his inventiveness.  Unfortunately, it seemed that the film’s other problems really overtook the positives.

A young executive named Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) is sent to the Swiss Alps to a “wellness center” to retrieve the company CEO Pembroke (Harry Groener) because there is a major problem with the company that only Pembroke could solve.  Once there though, Lockhart discovered some problems.  When he tried to leave, the car got into a terrible crash and Lockhart had to stay in the center to heal.

As he was there, he became engulfed in the mystery of what was going on at the center and why these older people seemed to be brainwashed, but waiting for a “cure.”  I never knew what the cure was for, but I don’t think we were meant to know.

Dr. Heinrich Volmer (Jason Isaacs) insisted that Lockhart stay until he his healed and claimed to have called the company and let them know about the accident.  There is a younger woman named Hannah (Mia Goth) who appeared to be “special.”

The film started slowly, with a definite slow burn.  The early pacing of the movie was a drawback and much of the early part could have been edited down to bring the film’s massive run time (146 minutes) under control.  There is no way around it.  A Cure For Wellness was just too long.  I found myself bored and dozing off during the first act of this movie.

Then, it seemed to catch its stride as the film focused on the central mystery of what was going on at this wellness center.  This was where the film recaptured my attention and even piqued my interest on what was going on.

Unfortunately, then the film showed me what was going on.

The third act of A Cure for Wellness is a complete mess, filled with ridiculous situations and laughable B-movie tropes.  Dr. Volmer turned from a mysterious enigma to a mustached-twirling villain whose motives were truly unbelievable.

Dane DeHaan commits to this role fully and shows some chops as the confused and put upon Lockhart, an Energizer Bunny-like character who kept going despite constant pain and anguish.  It was difficult to understand why Lockhart was so determined to find his boss in this hell hole and his motivation was constantly switching.  Still, DeHaan showed skill making me care about this character.

There is a place for a horror film set in this backdrop, but A Cure for Wellness loses its focus and drives off the road too often.  There are certainly some horrifying elements here, but there are so many other failures of the film that it swamps those down among the excesses.

2.1 stars

I have never seen a movie that has such contempt for schools and everything in schools, from teachers to students to administrators.  Fight Fist is almost as insulting to the profession of education as nominating Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education was.  This feels like a Trump world view of teaching.

As a teacher, I found this entire film insulting.  If there had been anything funny about it, I could have dealt with it, but there were only two moments that were even remotely humorous (meaning I chuckled or smiles).  One was when the high school students were spreading stories about Mr. Strickland (Ice Cube) and his past.  Those little vignettes were cute.  And the second time is when Charlie Day does a song at a talent show with his elementary school aged daughter and she breaks into a song filled with profanity.  That is because, you know, little children swearing is funny (not really, but the surprise factor did bring a smile).

That was it.  The rest of the time was filled with ridiculous situations where rotten, asshole children were pulling mean (if not criminal) pranks on stupid and brain dead teachers.  All the while, the principal(Dean Norris) and superintendent  (Dennis Haysbert) are firing teachers because they can.

In the story, after Strickland used an axe to chop up a student’s desk on the last day of school, Mr. Campbell (Charlie Day) “snitches” on him which is bad because, you know, teachers are supposed to have each other’s backs.  So, to get his revenge, Strickland challenged Campbell to a fist fight after school.  The news of this fight spread across the school and the community with the hashtag #teacherfight.

Campbell is a weaselly little coward so he spends the rest of the school day trying to get out of the fight, doing things that are just stupid and moronic.  Even worse, the film tries to spin it so Strickland is seen as a hero fighting for support of the school instead of the bully that he was.

The film’s message is that the nice and friendly teacher gets walked over while the only type of teacher that can control a classroom of rowdy high school students is the one that is mean-spirited and who is willing to swing an axe as a way to prove his point.

The principal was shown as a cruel man who hated his job.  The superintendent only cared about his fishing trip.  The guidance counselor (Jillian Bell) is a drug addict sex fiend, as the film makes fun of a teacher trying to have sex with one of the students.  The coach (Tracey Morgan) is downright stupid, as he cannot tell that a student is mowing the grass in a certain phallic shape.  And why are students mowing the grass in the first place?  Then they chalk the field in a way that any coach would see…except for this one.

Somehow, these characters are able to run around the school (or to the mall, in Campbell’s case) spending almost no time in the actual classroom.  I am not sure how they find the time in the day for this.  I know I do not have time to waste as these teachers apparently do.

The film also makes police officers look like a joke.  As seen in the trailer, Campbell called the police to report another teacher threatening him and the police laugh it off and tell him to “take his ass whooping.”  Then, somehow, that 9-1-1 call ends up on YouTube later that same day.

The fight at the end of the film is so stupid that you cannot even suspend disbelief to enjoy it.  When Campbell and Strickland end up in jail (and get out before the end of the school day, amazingly), we see Strickland take down a huge criminal in just a few seconds, but he spends a lot of time fighting wimpy little Campbell, who was literally a third of the size of the criminal from the jail cell.  Part of the joke was how much of a “pussy” Campbell was and how he had no idea how to fight, but yet when the fight came around, he carried on like he was some kind of super hero.

Of course, everything was going to come to a happy conclusion as Campbell earned Strickland’s respect and Campbell stopped being a nice guy and started yelling and cursing.  By the way, no teacher is going to be swearing like EVERY teacher was in this movie.  It is absolutely unrealistic.

And the “pranks” pulled by the students are not possible either.  There is a horse on meth running around the halls.  They took the principal’s car, vandalized it, and somehow got it into the school.  There is one boy masturbating in the bathroom and he continued even after being caught. Two students opened up a trophy case and set up a video of porn.  They set up trip wires that triggered paint guns.  The kid whose desk was chopped up earlier turned out to be a drug dealer (though he was dealing aspirin).

A school can be the subject of a satire, and there are plenty of realistic problems that could be made fun of by a talented film.  This was so dumb and unrealistic that it pulled me out of the film completely.  This just cannot or would ever happen.  And all of that could be okay if the film was just funny.  And it is not.

I hated this movie.

0.5 stars

It has been awhile since we had a Batman movie as good as this, and it is a Lego movie.

Who would have thought that The Lego Batman Movie would be able to show the character of Batman in a way that the movie franchise has been trying to get right for years now.

The Lego Batman Movie was a bit of a risk considering how taking a side character (Batman) from a huge movie (The Lego Movie) does not always work (ex. Minions).  The concerns about whether the Lego Movie’s version of Batman could extend past its one note character and into a character that could carry its own feature length film were extremely justified.  Fortunately, The Lego Batman Movie succeeds tremendously in just about every possible way.

Batman (Will Arnett) continues to save Gotham from the criminal element of the city while keeping his distance because of the loss of his parents.  When Commissioner Gordon retires and is succeeded by his daughter Barbara (Rosario Dawson), she wants to encourage Batman to work more with the police instead of being the city’s savior.  Batman did not like this idea.

Also, the Joker (Zack Galifianakis) was struggling with the challenge of getting Batman to commit to a relationship as well.  The Joker balks at Batman’s refusal to admit that the Joker is his greatest enemy and the rebuffed clown sets out on a plot to destroy Gotham because of it.

The Lego Batman Movie is remarkably clever.  The script is fantastic and is chocked full of humor.  This movie is one of the funniest films of the year.  The jokes fly fast and furiously throughout the movie that you almost miss some of them.  I would guess that if you were to see The Lego Batman Movie a second or third time, you would uncover material that you missed on a first viewing.  I mean, the list of the real DC Comics Batman rogues gallery of villains alone is worth the price of admissions (Condiment King, Calendar Man, including Batman ’66 villains like Egghead, King Tut etc).

Another aspect that makes The Lego Batman Movie is how much of a satire the film is toward the other Batman movie and television franchises of the past.  There are allusions to every version of Batman that has ever been, from the 1966 camp-fest Batman TV show to Batman vs. Superman in the DCEU.  These references are thrown in across the film and are some of the most brilliant parts of The Lego Batman Movie.  These Easter eggs make watching this film as a Batman fan very rewarding.  I must say that I really did want to see a reference to “Martha” in the film.  Unfortunately, that was not to be (unless I missed it.)

The writing was spot on and I loved how they kept bringing quotes and lines from past movies and blending them into this one.  You had to pay attention or else you might miss something.

The film does seem to have a grasp on what makes this character work.  Unlike some versions of Batman, the Lego version actually is one of the best versions of the character we have seen.  Despite being used for humor, Batman is a fully developed character with understandable motivations and a distinct character arc.  There was a better insight into what makes Batman tick in this movie than in most of the other films involving the Caped Crusader.

The animation of the Lego Batman Movie was awesome and had some beautiful colors creating the imagery of the city.  The use of the Legos in the film was not as creative as it was in The Lego Movie itself.  It just felt like more of Batman’s cool toys.

Will Arnett was great as Batman, leading an extremely talented cast of voice actors.  Ralph Fiennes was a really great Alfred.  Michael Cera voiced an over-the-top excited Robin.  And there were a ton of cameo voices including Billy Dee Williams (Two-Face), Conan O’ Brien (Riddler), Siri (Computer), Zoe Kravitz (Catwoman), Seth Green, Eddie Izzard, Jermaine Clement, Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Doug Benson, Adam Devine, Chris Hardwick, Hector Elizondo and Mariah Carey.  There were just as many awesome cameos among the villains who appear int he film.

The Lego Batman Movie was far from a side joke film.  It was one of the better Batman movies we have gotten recently and shows how you can have fun and still have a character that is honest to its core convictions.  This is a great animated movie.

4.75 stars

One of the biggest surprises of 2014 received its first sequel in John Wick Chapter 2.  There was very little buzz about John Wick from 2014 and Keanu Reeves had not had a big hit for many years, almost becoming a joke.  Those days are now gone because he is spectacular as John Wick.

John Wick cannot stay out of the life.  He tried to retire, but it keeps pulling him back.  And when John Wick is in the life, then people are going to die.

The film is full of amazing action.  The action is also shot extremely well.  There is little to no use of shaky camera and the shots are clean and strong.  There is a creativity with the action that makes the potentially ridiculous action scenes more interesting.  Action fans will certainly love this film.

Yes, there is a danger that John Wick is so indestructible that he comes off as unrelatable and cartoony, and, while there is some of that, the film is able to keep Wick grounded through an understandable reason for his vengeance and the way his body suffers throughout.

One of the best parts of both John Wick movies is the hotel called the Continental.  This setting is one with a rich background that they started to mine for material more here in the sequel.  The idea that this hotel is an assassins’ paradise where “business” does not take place, setting it up as a neutral base, is remarkably fascinating.  There is also more information presented here about this international assassins organization and it gave us glimpses inside the workings of that group and the people who make it work.  These two bits made John Wick all the more intriguing.  Ian McShane and Lance Reddick are members of this cabal and add to the fun.

Keanu Reeves is perfect for the part of John Wick.  Every beat delivered by John Wick fits perfectly with the skill of Reeves.  Sure, this will never be a big award winning type role, but you can tell how comfortable Keanu is as John Wick and that translates into a great performance on the screen.  John Wick does have layers to his character and that is beautifully revealed by Reeves in a manner that does not distract from the main purpose of the movie, which is to murder multitudes of bad guys.

The ending does leave us hanging a bit, but I did not dislike it.  It felt like it was ready to set up for a Chapter 3, which I would be all in favor of.  The Gun-fu action was excellent and Keanu was great for who he was playing.  The supporting cast fit beautifully, tossing a shout out also to Laurence Fishburn’s cameo appearance.  John Wick Chapter 2 is an entertaining time filled with exciting action and violence.  Keep them coming.

4.2 stars

At the end of my viewing of Fifty Shades Darker, I heard some girl behind me say, “That was really good.”

I almost choked.

This is so bad.  This is an epic failure of storytelling.  It is laugh out loud funny at times because it is so silly.  This is something that is believable Twilight fan fiction.

The story is severely lacking.  Honestly, nothing really happened.  In the first five-ten minutes of the movie, Anna (Dakota Johnson) tosses aside the ending of the first movie and takes Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) back.  Right off the bat.  With no consequences from the first film.

That is fine, but there are so many things that happen in this film that have absolutely no consequence for the plot.  Things happen, resolve in the next scene and are completely forgotten later.  None of it means anything.

There are a lot of sex scenes.  There are a lot of nipple shots.  It really is not very sexy.  Most of these sex scenes are dull and shot poorly which is sad when you consider how many sex scenes there were here.  Add in just terrible pop music behind these scenes and you have scenes that might turn on a teenage boy.

The dialogue is horrendous.  I think my middle school students could write better dialogue… well, at least match it.  I found myself laughing at so many of the ridiculous lines spoken by these characters.  None of them sound like a real person.

That’s all I have to say.  This was a terrible movie.  Boring, stupid and laughable.

0.5 star

First you watch it.  Then you snooze through it.

Okay, so maybe that is not the official tagline for the new sequel to The Ring, the pluralized Rings, but it is the most accurate one for me.

Honestly, there were multiple times during the run time of this horror movie that I found myself nearly falling asleep, only to be awoken by a jump scare.  I was bored.

You know that when you watch the video, you have seven days before you die.  However, now the video is on the computer, ready to cause even more trouble.  And Leonard from the Big Bang Theory was there as a professor right in the middle of that trouble.

The storyline of this was a mess and made little sense.  It was, in part, an origin story for the monster, Samara.  Vincent D’Onofrio was here doing his best imitation of the”Don’t Breathe” shtick as well, though not nearly as effective.

Matilda Lutz, who played our main character Julia, was not bad and could have a future in better movies.  She certainly had a presence on the screen and was a lovely lady to look at.  After that, there was little that interested me.

And, as I said, nearly snoozing.

The beginning scene with the airplane and the very ending scene were not good at all.  The ending made absolutely no sense after everything that they had done during the film.  It is never a good thing when a horror movie breaks its own rules.

It’s hard to write much in a review when I wasn’t interested enough to stay awake.  Rings is not a good horror movie and 2017 has started off poorly with this and the Bye Bye Man.

1.5 stars

The Comedian tells the story of an old insult comic who is trying to remain relevant in the new generation while avoiding the sitcom that made him famous.  Robert De Niro played the lead character Jackie Burke, though audiences seemed to remember him only as “Eddie.”

However, the film focuses much of its attention on the relationship between Jackie and Harmony (Leslie Mann).  These characters met at a homeless shelter as they were both serving court appointed community service hours after brushes with the law.  Harmony is considerably younger than Jackie, but the pair seem to work very well with Harmony laughing at every joke Jackie dropped.

The rest of the film was just a series of situations that they tossed Jackie in to see what happened.

Honestly, I hated the relationship between Jackie and Harmony.  When we were introduced to Harmony, she seemed to be a bat-shit crazy woman who I wouldn’t want to be within twenty miles of.  Apparently, that attracted Jackie to her.  Perhaps they were such rotten people that they only could be together.

The character of Jackie is so full of every possible stereotype of a stand up comedian that it is not even a little interesting.  The biggest problem was that the film could have really taken a look at the aging comedian and made a complex story involving the connection between anger issues and comedy, but instead settles for a romcom.

Some of the scenes with the comedians involved in this movie were funny and I liked seeing Bill Crystal, Charles Grodin, Danny DeVito, and Brett Butler (although Jimmie Walker looked very sad).  The best lines were delivered by the stand up comedians appearing at the comedy club that the film used several times as backdrop.

Sadly, De Niro is not a great comedic actor.  His delivery is, at best, okay and his humor was more mean spirited than funny.  There was a lot of crude humor throughout, some hitting and others falling dramatically flat.  The side characters and extras always seemed to be laughing telling us that this was supposed to be funny.  Unfortunately, I did not hear a lot of laughter coming from the theater audience.

There were so many scenes that were brushed through quickly for the sake of the romance.  Jackie spent 30 days in prison in a blink of an eye.  This could have helped the narrative, but it was nothing more than a way to cause De Niro to have community service.

The film appears to be wanting to have a commentary on the YouTube generation, but that message gets lost easily in the mess of a script.  Jackie is an amalgam of stand up comedian stereotypes that does not come together in any kind of three dimensional character; instead we get Robert DeNiro telling dirty jokes.  In what could have been something interesting, The Comedian lacks heart.

2.3 stars

The Space Between Us, as of this writing, has a 15% on Rotten Tomatoes.  There is no reason this film should be that low on the movie metric site.  Of course, I can understand why.  I am not going to recommend this film either, but I did not find it to be a bad movie.  It was just one that had its share of problems and an unreached potential.

Set in the near future, a group of astronauts are on their way to set up East Texas, the first colony on Mars.  Led by Sarah Eliot (Janet Montgomery), the crew successfully left earth’s atmosphere on the way to the red planet.  However, there was a problem.  As it turned out, Sarah was pregnant.  They could not turn the ship around and return so the decision by East Texas backer Nathaniel Shepherd  (Gary Oldman) was to cover up the pregnancy and let Sarah give birth on Mars.

The decision is a tragic one as Sarah dies in childbirth.  Flash forward sixteen years, we meet Gardner Eliot (Asa Butterfield), raised by scientists- especially Kendra Wyndham (Karla Gugino), he has become a capable young teen who wished for nothing more than to go to earth.  His body, which had been affected by the different atmosphere of Mars, would not be able to withstand earth’s gravity.

Meanwhile, Gardner connected with a girl on earth via the computer (some kind of interplanetary Skype) he nicknamed Tulsa (Britt Robertson), a troubled teen in a foster home, and he formed a bond with her.  He told her he had a disease and was confined to a penthouse in New York.

A medical breakthrough gave Gardner a chance to have an operation that might allow him to survive on earth.  Desperate to take the chance to see Tulsa and to find his mysterious father, Gardner agrees to the surgery.

With the surgery a success, Gardner heads off Mars and toward the home world of his mother, a world he had never stepped foot upon.

Asa Butterfield and Britt Robertson was, by far, the best parts of this movie.  They were fun and engaging and had a solid chemistry.  The only reason this film did not devolve into a slushfest was because of these two actors.  Sure the story was cheesy and hard to believe, but the young actors sold it to the best of their abilities.  Unfortunately, their romance seemed to be rushed and was not given the proper time to grow the way it should.

There are several issues with the film, though.  My biggest gripe is that the film is not consistent in the world that they are using for the setting.  At times, the world is shown to be technically ahead of the times (such as a scene where a car is driving automatically while Gary Oldman slept behind the wheel) and other times it feels as if there is not one shred of difference between this world and the one on the screen.  The movie seems to want to have it both ways and that makes it feel unbalanced.

The trip across country by these two kids and their seemingly amazing ability to steal cars and swipe internet service really stretched the reaches of credibility.  There is a silly scene with an airplane that is tough to buy even before they land it and crash it.  The resulting explosion belonged on an old episode of The A-Team.  There is no way that small single engine crop duster would wind up exploding after driving into the barn like it did unless there was a massive meth lab in that barn.  Silliness like this really took away from what the film was trying to do.

The Space Between Us could have been a really great film, but it switched out a potentially interesting science fiction story for a run of the mill Nicholas Sparks love fest.  Gary Oldman’s character was both predictable and wasted in a background story chasing the kids, screaming at Gardner, much like Jack did at Kate on LOST, that he had to go back!

I did not hate this movie, but I should have loved it.  I did not.  It was, at best, okay.  It does not deserve 14% on Rotten Tomatoes, but 40-50% would be reasonable.  It is not a “fresh” movie.  Asa Butterfield was charming, but charming was not enough here.

2.5 stars

Yes, she was Leeloo.

Milla Jovovich was in The Fifth Element and was a fantastic fresh face as the actual Fifth Element who, along with Bruce Willis, saved the world from an ancient evil.

Unfortunately, Milla Jovovich is also Alice, the kick ass female lead of the Resident Evil series, a franchise directed by her husband Paul W.S. Anderson.  I had never seen any of these films before so I came into Resident Evil: The Final Chapter a blank slate.  I had low expectations and I was hoping that the film could exceed them.

It didn’t.

This was a terrible film.  My not having seen any previous Resident Evil movies was not a problem as the film spends about the first ten minutes giving us a refresher course on the back story.  Thanks for not making me go back and watch those.  I appreciate it.

After that, we had a series of action sequences strung together for and hour and a half.  That was basically it.  There was a slight plot which is expressed more in the final twenty minutes (not kidding) than at any point of the film.

Apparently, the big evil group Umbrella, who was responsible for the release of the T-virus, which turned most of humanity into zombie creatures, also created an airborne cure for the virus.  They stored this in the Hive and Alice, when tipped off by the Red Queen (Ever Anderson), the computer generated composite of the young Alice, goes to find the cure.  There is also a contrived time limit that apparently was all the time the remaining humans on the earth had left before they were completely wiped out.

Along the way to the Hive, Alice met some extremely disposable characters, who wind up being disposed, and the decidedly not dead Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen), who tortures Alice by having her run behind a Humvee/tank as the zombie horde followed behind (never quite catching up).

Now, it is possible to turn off your mind and enjoy a film like this for what it should be… a big, stupid, fun action film.  The problem here is that there is nothing fun here.  The action scenes are among the worst action scenes put on film.  They have so much shaky cam work involved here that it is practically impossible to know what is going on.  I did not see this is IMAX 3D and I am forever grateful because I can’t imagine that these action scenes wouldn’t have given me a massive headache.  As they were, they were unwatchable.

The CGI is atrocious.  It felt like it came out of the early nineties instead of 2016.  There is an early scene with a dragon that is particularly bad, but it is far from the only example that could be given.

The acting was bad as well.  Milla Jovovich is fine as Alice, but some of the other characters in the film feel like the cousin of the director.

Plot contrivances.  Bad CGI.  Unwatchable action scenes.  Weak acting among disposable characters that we have no connection to.  Oh, I didn’t mention the MASSIVE overuse of jump scares.  I started playing a game of trying to predict the next jump scare.  It was pretty easy since the music would go quiet and then something would jump out.  I would guess that there were more jump scares here than the last five horror movies I have seen.  All this adds up to a terrible movie that is, Hopefully, the end of the franchise.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is bad.  Just bad.

0.75 stars

Don’t see this garbage.

And January is just about over.  Thank goodness!

Sitting through A Dog’s Purpose, I felt one major thing…manipulated.

I mean…how many times do you have to kill that poor dog?

In what was intended to be a heartfelt and loving connection between human and dog turned out to be not much more than an empty attempt to prey upon the emotions of dog lovers everywhere with little else in the story.

Add to that the fact that the potentially best part of the story was completely spoiled by the trailers that it lost all of its wallop.  The idea that Bailey (the dog) was being reincarnated again and again only to find his original owner Ethan (played in three generations by Bryce Gheisar, K.J. Apa and Dennis Quaid) was revealed in the trailer that has been airing for the last six months (or so it seemed).  We see all of the important scenes with Dennis Quaid in that trailer making everything that happened at the end of this movie…1. boring since we knew it already and 2. spoiled.  The film does take time to build the relationship between Ethan and Bailey and more of a surprise reunion might have been more emotionally enjoyable.

And…how many times did they have to kill that dog?  The reason I keep going back to that is that since we knew that Bailey would wind up back with Ethan from the trailer, these middle stories all felt unimportant and carried little weight for the movie as a whole.  It was just an excuse to try and get the audience to cry over the death of this dog that we knew would be coming back to life anyway.  As I said, manipulative.

There are some entertaining moments in the film, but there is just little substance to any of it.  Josh Gad provided the narration of Bailey’s (and other dog’s) thoughts in the different reincarnations and, apparently, can remember across those timelines.  Gad has some good lines, but delivers most of his dialogue in a flat tone.

Another problem was the rules of what the dog could understand was inconsistent.  Sometimes the dog did not know what the humans were talking about and the other times the dog knew exactly what they were talking about.  The reason??? You know, plot.  This is played several times for just humor but I did notice the inconsistency several times.

There is also a ridiculously sacchariny story involving Ethan and a high school sweetheart (first played by Britt Robinson and later by Twin Peaks’ Norma, Peggy Lipton) that turns out predictably and unrealistically.  Nothing that a reincarnated dog couldn’t pull off, though.

Without taking the controversy of the animal abuse from the set into account, A Dog’s Purpose was a substandard, manipulative tearjerker that probably will hit some emotional chords to dog lovers.  When you add in the reported abuse caught on camera of the German Shepard being forced into the water for a stunt despite clearly being afraid to do it, A Dog’s Life becomes more than manipulative.  Instead, it becomes cruel.  Look at the TMZ footage yourself if you want to see it, but it clearly shows a dog that does not want to be in that water being forced in.  That footage will forever taint this film.

However, I saw the movie before seeing the footage so my review is only of the film.  A Dog’s Purpose, which was adapted from a best selling novel by W. Bruce Cameron, is too manipulative to stand and the story is too wishy-washy to stomach.

2 stars

Michael Keaton has had himself quite a renaissance of a career.  With Birdman, Spotlight and soon to be Spider-man: Homecoming, Keaton is one of Hollywood’s best stars.  Keaton is at it again in this story of the creation and expansion of McDonald’s.

Ray Kroc (Keaton) was a small time salesman with a penchant for pushing junk who came across a small time burger stand in San Bernadino, California that provided quality food service without the lengthy wait.

The stand was made and run by brothers Mac (John Carroll Lynch) and Dick (Nick Offerman) McDonald.  They showed Ray around behind the counter and told him the whole story of how this came about.  The McDonald Brothers did not know what was going to happen.

Ray saw this as a huge opportunity to take McDonald’s nationwide by franchising it.  Mac and Dick were less than enthusiastic about the thought.  Ray had to drag them along.  When they officially agreed to expand, Mac and Dick had Ray sign a contract that they believed would keep the decision making progress in their own hands.

They did not understand how persistent Ray Kroc would be.

Or ruthless.

Ray did what he believed was best for the restaurant and for his own bottom line, whether that meant cutting out the McDonald brothers or dumping his lonely and ignored wife Ethel (Laura Dern).  Ray also claimed many of the ideas from the McDonald brothers as his own, including the concept of the golden arches.

Keaton was great as this character who was really not a very likeable protagonist.  You could understand why Ray did what he did, but the way he treated the McDonald brothers was anything but decent.  John Carroll Lynch and Nick Offerman were extremely fantastic in this film.  They were quirky and likeable and carried the early scenes of this movie.  The story about the creation of their McDonald’s was engaging and entertaining.  Because they were so likeable, the eventual screw job that they suffered was made all the more emotional.

The film might have dragged a little bit in the middle and could have used some more tightening in the editing department, but otherwise, I enjoyed the Founder.  Michael Keaton was wonderful again on his path of making great acting choices.  The film was full of great performances and revealed a story that I was unaware about with the tale of how McDonald’s became an American institution.

3.85 stars

Perhaps M. Night Shyamalan has really found his way back.

The story of M. Night Shyamalan is almost as interesting as any of his movies.  He started out with some of the greatest films made such as The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs.  People were calling him the next Spielberg.  Then, he seemingly lost it as he started to make pretentious films, banking on his penchant for having “twists” at the end.  Films such as The Village and Lady of the Lake dropped his stock.  Then, he made some of the most truly awful films ever made such as The Last Airbender, Devil, The Happening, After Earth (a film where they did not even put his name on it).  He went from the next big thing to the punchline of a joke in just a few years.

After Split, Shyamalan has had his second straight film that was pretty good (following The Visit) and perhaps he has righted the ship after all.

Split tells the story of three girls who get abducted by a man (James McAvoy) who has D.I.D. (dissociative identity disorder).  We discover through his interactions with his therapist Dr. Fletcher (Betty Buckley) that “Kevin” has 23 distinct personalities.  More than that, Dr. Fletcher is convinced that the D.I.D. patient might have special abilities specific only to that personality.  She talks about the people who have D.I.D. might be the next evolution of the human race.  That was a fascinating concept and it does pay off in the movie.

However, she has no idea that personality Dennis has abducted the girls and has been having discussions with personality Patricia (including rapid fire clothing changes).  Among the girls, Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) is our main protagonist.  She is a loner and a depressed teenager, but she handles the situation of the abduction so much better than the other two girls that you knew something was up.  We see some flashbacks to her childhood with her father (Sebastion Arcelus) and her uncle (Brad William Henke) and we understand why Casey is the way that she is and why she reacts to this situation in such a different way than the other two girls.   Anya Taylor-Joy was another highlight of the film for me.

Casey is able to connect with another personality, Hedwig, who is like a nine year old boy. Hedwig is able to take control of the body (they call it “coming into the light”) any time he wanted.  Casey tries to get Hedwig to let her go, but he is afraid of what Dennis and Patricia will do.  They have brought these girls here as a sacrifice for “The Beast,” which we know little about but we believe may be a 24th personality.

James McAvoy is utterly brilliant as this character.  He plays each personality distinctly differently and you can see how different they are.  He shows you the innocence of Hedwig and the manipulative nature of Patricia.  But McAvoy does not just play this guy as a villain as you can see in the almost sweet relationship that he has with Dr. Fletcher.  There is a kindness when talking with her and he really believes that she can help him.  Unfortunately, Dennis and Patricia seem to have become the stronger alters.

There is a lot of tension in the story, but I have to admit that without the unexpected “reveal/twist” at the end of the movie, Split would have only been an okay film for me.  This ending made it a much better film and it did catch me off guard.  I won’t spoil it here. but I can practically guarantee that you will never see it coming.  The ending really changed the way you perceive at the rest of the film and it helps make things that had come prior make sense.

Split is one of those movies that you may need to revisit after seeing it once to actually see what things you may have missed upon first viewing.  I have to say that I appreciate when a director and a film can catch me unexpected, especially in this world of social media and internet spoilers.

Perhaps M. Night Shyamalan has actually turned a corner and returned to form.  Hopefully, he learned a lesson and he can continue to give us compelling films that challenge us and keep us guessing.

4.1 stars