If it did not say right there on the movie poster that this is based on a true story, then there would be no way that I would believe that the ridiculous situations portrayed in American Made could be something that actually happened.  Truthfully, I still have my doubts.

However, there is no doubt that American Made, the new movie from the teaming of Tom Cruise and Doug Limon (the last being Edge of Tomorrow) is an entertaining romp delivering a healthy dose of late 70’s-early 80’s world fun and questionable choices.

Tom Cruise plays Barry Seal, a skilled pilot who is going through the motions in TWA until he is recruited by ‘Schafer’ (Domhnall Gleeson) to fly reconnaissance missions for the CIA, photographing high end targets in Central America.  From there, Seal winds up transporting everything from cocaine for Pablo Escobar (Mauricio Mejía), guns for the US Government and Contra soldiers into the US.  Along the way, Seal was making enough money that he was literally not sure what to do with it all.

Tom Cruise is entertaining here, despite there not being too much depth to Barry Seal.  He is an amazing pilot, but he never comes off as too bright and certainly comes off as morally bankrupt.  Any time someone offered him a job for a bag full of cash, he would do it, without concern for what he was doing.  Calling Seal an anti-hero is quite a stretch.  He is a criminal.

The film does show Seal as a loving husband and father, which is meant to show the redeeming side to him and it does partially work, especially with the star caliber of Tom Cruise behind it.  However, you have to wonder why Seal was such a danger junkie or why he was so money obsessed and the film does not truly give us any insight into the character.

The film does play for laughs many times and it works much more than it doesn’t.  Unfortunately, the tone set by the film does detract from some of the more serious scenes and the scene at the very end does not feel as if it fit with this movie at all.

Bigger questions here are exactly how corrupt is the governments of the world and what do they do just because they can.  This film takes place in the build up to the Iran-Contra Affair that causes all kinds of controversy in the later years of the 20th Century.

I enjoyed the style and format the film presented itself in, with Barry Seal providing the voice of the narrator on old tapes of him speaking.  Some of the exposition is shown in creative imagery with animation or almost 4th wall breaking style.  These moments worked well for the most part, though a couple of them were distracting.

The pace of the film felt off as when the film progressed from one year to another.  It seemed as if the timeline was too off.  It did feel like a long film, but there were times that it felt like no time had passed, but it was actually a year or two.

I found several problems with the film, but yet it was entertaining enough and downright absurd enough to recommend.  Cruise is good here and the way the different government agencies worked here was a fascinating look at a time in our history when even the good people were doing downright crooked things.  The film does feel a little fluff for the situation (and the ending was way out of left field), but I enjoyed it none the less.

3.3 stars

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

I came away with one unmistakable thought when I saw the movie, Birth of a Dragon.

I didn’t know that Bruce Lee, EYG Hall of Famer, was such a dick.

Now, this movie is clearly a fictionalized rendition of a real life fight between Lee and Shaolin monk master Wolf Jack Man which has become stuff of Urban Legend.  Since very few witnesses to the actual fight are still alive, this allows the filmmakers to give this “true story” a bit of a “historical fiction” aspect to it.

Wolf Jack Man (Xia Yu) was a legendary Kung Fu master who had come to San Francisco after a fight had gone wrong in China.  Wolf Jack Man was in search of a way to cleanse his soul and he found it in washing dishes.   Young and brash Bruce Lee (Philip Ng) was teaching others Kung Fu, and believed that Wolf Jack had been sent to spy on him.  Lee had been training non-Chinese people Kung Fu, and this was frowned upon.

However, the film takes a bit of a turn here.  One of Lee’s students, Steve McKee (Billy Magnussen) meets a girl who was beholden to a local crime boss for money to repay bringing her in the country and he falls in love with her.  She is not allowed to speak English or to interact with other people, but they still come together in the star-crossed lovers story that we have seen a million times.

This story becomes the driving force behind the movie.  In fact, the movie makes it that the fight between Lee and Wolf Jack has to do with freeing the girl instead of personal issues between them.

I’m not sure the reasoning here, but Steve truly does become the main protagonist in this movie that features what was a major— legendary fight between two masters.

I am not sure the reasoning here.  Were they just trying to make it so neither Lee or Wolf Jack had to look bad?  If so, they failed, as I mentioned earlier, Lee is portrayed as quite the jerk in much of this movie.  It is not as if the character of Steve is the most engaging and enthralling personality on screen.  He is basically milquetoast and one-dimensional.  The relationship with him and the girl Xiulan (Jingjing Qu) is shallow and unimaginative.  There is no reason that the character of Bruce Lee has to be reduced to a supporting character in his own movie.

Both of the actors playing our two main martial artists are pretty good.  The Bruce Lee portrayal is even exceptional.  The action scenes, including the fight between them, are really well done and visually enjoying.  There could have been an epic movie here dealing with two characters on different ends of the Kung Fu spectrum with differing thoughts and styles facing off.  If you are going to fictionalize it anyway, why are you adding this boring love story that makes no sense and dumping this dull Steve character in the middle of the film?

The pessimist in me says it is because Steve is white and the studio believed that they needed a white guy for the audience to connect to.  I sure hope that is not the reason, though I will admit that I thought it might be.

This movie was not a bad watch, but it could have been so much better.  There was no reason why Steve and his girlfriend should have taken one minute of screen time away from Bruce Lee or Wolf Jack Man, but that is what the ton of studios involved (there were about six studios identified at the beginning of the film) has gone with.  Too bad.  Because Bruce Lee and Wolf Jack Man could have been more than enough to make this an exciting film.

2.5 stars

Listed as a drama, Good Time, the new film directed by the Safdie Brothers, feels more like a dark comedy at times within the context of real world New York as told by Scorsese.  Does that sound like an odd mash up?  Well, that would be Good Time.

Connie Nikas (Robert Pattinson) is a low level con man whose brother Nick (Benny Safdie) is mentally challenged.  So of course, Connie takes Nick to be his back up on a bank heist.  To no one’s surprise, the heist goes wrong, and Nick winds up caught and sent to Ryker’s Island.  Nick goes about trying to get the money to post his brother’s bond before anything else can happen to him.

Robert Pattinson is great as Connie.  He is extremely unlikable of a character that I spent the whole film hoping would be caught, but still wishing the police would not catch him.  He created such an uncomfortable feeling within me, never sure just what he might do.  The sole redeeming quality in this character was his feelings for his brother Nick, which feels as if it is the only sincere feelings he has.

Connie is shown to be a somewhat intelligent person, but he consistently does remarkably stupid things.  It is as if he was a terrible storm that would blow through other character’s lives leaving them worse off than before.  And yet you don’t hate the guy.  Part of it is the desperation with which he is trying to do the one good thing he can, and that is to help Nick.  The Safdie brothers constantly use close ups to help create that manic feeling in Connie and portraying it to the audience.  Despite how much of a jerk Connie is, you can’t help but follow him, and, despite your best intentions, even feel for him.

There were some other interesting performances in the film.  Co-director Benny Safdie is really good as Nick, despite lacking a ton of screen time.  We do get a slight mention of why Nick is in therapy (as shown in the movie’s first scene), but it is not expanded upon.  Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Corey, Connie’s girlfriend/next mark.  Barkhad Abdi has a cameo as a security guard whose life gets flipped over by Connie.  Buddy Duress is Ray, the acid-taking, ex-con trying to avoid being sent back to jail.

It is kind of fun watching these crooks do so many stupid things.  Connie is already in trouble, but he then digs himself deeper and deeper with each passing minute as he tries to help his brother out.  There are no characters here to like.  All of them are rotten people.  Even Nick is anything but a likeable character.  Seeing these unlikable characters placed into these awkward positions is one of the best parts of this movie.

The film is very grimy. You see the worst of life in New York, with so many dirty and lowlife people and locales.  The use of neon light helps to create that mood during the film, which included a very enjoyable section in an amusement park.

I had no idea what Good Time was before I went into it, and I was happy that I didn’t know. Robert Pattinson has certainly come a long way since Edward in Twilight. He knocks this role totally out of the park and he deserves credit for overcoming the type casting of the twinkling vampire.  Good Time was a surprisingly good time.

3.9 stars

Death Note is an original film from Netflix of a property of a popular manga/anime from Japan.  It was not something that I was aware of before, so I do not have any pre-existing expectations of the story.  From what I have heard, this film really takes the source material and makes a lot of changes.  I do not have any judgments on that.

Light (Nat Wolff) is a high school student who winds up in possession of a magical book called the Death Note, given to him by a death god Ryuk (Willem Dafoe).  Light discovers that when he writes a person’s name in the Death Note, the person would die.  Light begins to, along with his girlfriend Mia (Margaret Qualley), write names of horribly evil people in an attempt to fool the world into believing that there is a god watching over the world.  Light named this “god” Kira and the people began to believe in him.

However, the police began an investigation into the mysterious deaths.  Light’s father James (Shea Whigham) was to head the investigation.  The mysterious L (Lakeith Stanfield) came to join in and his incredible detective skills led him back to Light.

I am split with this film.  For the most part, I had a decent time watching it, but there were some glaring issues that I did not like.  First, the film felt rushed.  The film did not seem as if it had the time to really go into depth on any of the themes involved because it then had to move along to the next point.  I wonder if the anime series was longer and they tried to cram in too much, much like the movie the Dark Tower did.  As I said, I am unfamiliar with the anime so I can not judge this.  From my perspective, it felt too busy and so became too surface.

Second, I really liked the concept of L, and I enjoyed part of the presentation of the character, but he seemed to go way off the rails in the latter part of the film, making what appeared to be a quirky and intriguing character into a wildly inconsistent one.  Lakeith Stanfield, who was great in Get Out, is solid despite what was given to him.

Third, and probably the worst of all, the ending is so terrible that, even if I had loved everything heading up to it, this would have ruined it.  It felt like it was leading to a really great end and suddenly it was tossed to the side in favor of a shock value end.

Finally, the look of Ryuk was less than I would have expected.  The voice of Willem Dafoe is great, but the character itself looked like a bad Halloween costume.

However, I did like much of what was here as well.   The concept of the story was very original and could be mined for some really deep and fascinating story telling.  The idea that a kid could be trying to make himself into a god by killing evil people is a interesting idea.  Secondly, Mia becomes unbalanced as the movie continues and that could have been a great look at how power can corrupt even the sweetest people.  I thought most of the performances were well done, although Nat Wolff was a bit over the top.  And I truly enjoyed how the climax of the story came to be, with the scene at the Ferris wheel  and the direct aftermath being cool and showing how clever Light could be.

So I am split by the film.  I have a feeling that if you are a big fan of the source material, you are not going to enjoy this movie.  If you come into it blind as I did, it will not offend you as much.  As a late night Netflix watch, Death Note is acceptable, but I would not feel the need to run to my Netflix account and watch this immediately.

2.75 stars

The writer of Hell or High Water and Sicario, Taylor Sheridan took his turn in the director’s chair in his first big screen film, Wind River, and Sheridan showed that he is one of the hottest creative talents in movies today.

Local hunter/tracker Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner), who spends his time searching the woods of Wind River, a Native American reservation in Wyoming, for animals that are killing livestock of the natives.  During one of his hunts, he stumbles across something unexpected.  A body of a local Native American girl, raped, beaten and frozen to death.  FBI agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olson) was sent into the reservation to investigate the crime and the pair team up to try and solve the mystery.

Wind River is a mystery story, but it also is not a mystery story.  What do I mean by that?  Well, the mystery is here, but it is not the center of this movie.  The main driving force of the film is the elements and how Wind River is a perilous place to live.  It is also very much a comment on the lives of the Native American who live in the area.  The mystery is there too, but honestly it is peripheral to the rest of the film.

Jeremy Renner is tremendous in this role, perhaps the best I have seen him.  He was subtle and nuanced as this hunter who is dealing with his own tragic past while trying help solve the case.  Elizabeth Olson is also wonderful in the role as the “fish out of water FBI agent, ” providing layers to her role, despite there not being as much development for her as there was for Renner.  To both of their credits, I never thought of them as Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olson during the film, and, even more impressive, I never thought of them as Hawkeye and Scarlett Witch, either.

However, perhaps the most standout performances were by a couple of Native American actors.  The wonderful Graham Greene played the local sheriff Ben, who was entertaining and funny as he pessimistically quipped about the dower lifestyle with which the people had to deal.  He reminded me very much of Gil Birmingham’s role in Hell or High Water.  And the second top performance was by the aforementioned Gil Birmingham, who played the father of the murdered girl, Martin.  He was amazingly heartbreaking and you could not help but feel the pain that he was dealing with.  He also portrayed the anger perfectly of how society’s actions led to the loss of his daughter.

I was fully engaged and engulfed by the movie for the first two acts of the film.  I have heard some criticism that the early part of the film has pacing issues, but that was not my experience.  I was all in on the film immediately.  However, at the beginning of the third act, there is a flashback scene chronicling what exactly happened to the girl that felt so out of place in the narrative that we had had so far that it was very jarring.  Though well done and traumatic, the flashback took me out of the film.

Yet, immediately after the flashback, we get sucked right back in with one of the most real to life gunfights you will ever see.  It is tense and dramatic and seriously painful to watch, and then the ultimate finale of the film is remarkably satisfying so the beginning of the third act only slightly derailed the film for me and I was right back on board after that.

The scenes between Renner and Birmingham are some of the best scenes of the film, as these two men are able to connect over their common losses and it shines a light of humanity on the horrible situation life has placed them in.

Wind River is a fantastic thriller with top of the line characters that has a voice to say about the treatment of Native Americans.  It does so without being preachy.  It just is.  Renner and Olson are wonderful and Gil Birmingham could be Oscar worthy.  The scenic backdrop of Wind River is a stark reminder of not only the beauty found in nature, but also how unforgiving and deadly nature can be.  Even with the slight hiccup near the beginning of the third act, Wind River delivers big time.

4.85 stars

This one is a tough one.

Please do not go into A Ghost Story expecting a typical horror movie… or a normal haunted house movie.  This is more than that.  It is a challenging, infuriating, frustrating film that you may not understand.  It is also very well done.

A young married couple (Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara) are preparing to move from their house, but fate has another idea.  Affleck is killed in a car wreck and he returned as an invisible ghost, covered by a white bed sheet, and he has to watch as his wife continues her life without him.  However, there is more than just that as time starts going all over the place and he starts seeing the history of this house, both from the past and in the future.

David Lowery is the writer/director of A Ghost Story, but I got a distinct feel of David Lynch here.  The long, extended scenes sitting on one subject, the beautiful yet confounding imagery, the use of time as a manner of storytelling all speak of the similarity to Lynch.  We get a good five minute scene of Rooney Mara sitting on the floor and eating a pie.  This is just like a scene that you might get in Twin Peaks.

There is a definite feeling of loss and longing here.  We do not have much dialogue during the film, but the actors do a tremendous job of revealing feeling without speaking.  In fact, the ghost beneath the sheet does more with just some body movements than a lot of actors can do with their entire face and voice.

However, since the scenes can be long and drawn out, I can understand why some people may find A Ghost Story boring.  It is certainly unlike any film of the year.  It asks a lot of the audience, insisting on patience and not necessarily paying off everything, and it was a sad movie, pushing the level of depression hard.

It is beautifully shot despite some of the imagery being extremely troublesome.  It asks the audience to pay attention to the images and to do it without very much dialogue.

It does ask a lot from the audience, but I did feel that the film was worth it by the end of it.  It is a challenge to watch, but it is very emotional and beautiful.  It is not for everyone.

4 stars

The Hitman’s Bodyguard was one of the films that I was looking forward to as I really enjoyed the trailers that they showed for it.  Unfortunately, the film itself was more of a let down than anything else.

In order to free his wife, notable assassin Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson) agreed to testify against General Dukhovich (Gary Oldman).  In order to get him to The Hague, Interpol agent Amelia Roussel (Elodie Yung) contacted her old flame, bodyguard extraordinaire Michael Bryce, whose reputation had slipped after one of his clients had died, to help get Kincaid to the trial.

The film is basically your typical buddy movie with two characters who hated one another and who begrudgingly learn to respect each other as the movie progresses.  The problem with this is that the movie is painfully predictable.  In fact, five minutes into the movie, you can see what was going to happen.  There were at least two distinct moments in the film where I said to myself, “oh, so this will happen at the end” and both times I called it exactly.

Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds are both remarkably charismatic here but neither of them are actually playing a character.  Truthfully, both are playing the versions of themselves that they show the public.  We’ve seen these versions in multiple movies over the years.  We have also seen both of them better.  Here Jackson and Reynolds and their banter is one of the strongest parts of this movie.  It could still be so much better.

The strongest part of the film, however, was absolutely the scene stealing performance of Salma Hayek, playing Kincaid’s wife, Sonia.  She was a hoot, playing completely against type and bringing to life the most fascinating character in the film.  Now, I don’t think that I would want more from her, because I can see Sonia becoming too annoying if we had more of her, but the part that we got was tremendous.

The action was fine, well shot, but it was also hard to believe.  There were a lot of bullets flying around without there being too many consequences.  That can be some dumb fun if you are willing to suspend the disbelief.

The story is told through flashback, but the scenes given to us in flashback seem to be told from different movies and completely different tones.  In fact, the inconsistent tone was a major issue with The Hitman’s Bodyguard.  It felt like a comedy at times, but the flashbacks felt like it was a satire.  There was the use of the romantic music to highlight the couples on the canvas, but there was also a villain in Gary Oldman who is shown killing a kid (albeit off screen).  The tone varied so badly that you were never quite sure how you were supposed to react.

The dialogue on the whole was pretty lame and there was a lot of it used as expository.   There were some good moments of laughter, but most of the humor was hit-or-miss.  Since Jackson and Reynolds are naturally funny people, you are going to get a lot of humor from them just being themselves.

In the end, The Hitman’s Bodyguard was not a good movie, but it is one that is watchable.  It is a forgettable film that could be considered disposable.  It might not be the worst film to watch but there is little reason to want to do it.  Reynolds and Jackson are fun at times, but you could make a case that they both are better than what we get here.  The tone is all over the place and the humor is off.  I was really excited for this one, but unfortunately, that was too much to hope for.

2.5 stars