The next new film on Netflix that I got around to tonight was the new animated film from Richard Linklater, Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood.

This told the fictionalized story of a fourth grade boy imagining himself as the first person to step on the moon during the time frame of the actual Apollo 11 crew’s historic moonwalk.

The film, with a voice over by Jack Black as the adult Stanley, reminded me very much of the Wonder Years television comedy from ABC. It was narrated by the older version of one of the kids in the story, Stan, and detailed the combustible decade of the 1960s. There is a large section of the film dedicated to all things 1960s, from the TV programs to the movies to the music to he Vietnam War. Again, much like the Wonder Years, it provided the point of view of a man looking back over his life.

The animation was fun. It felt like it was nearly live action, but the animation style was apparently based on that of Saturday morning cartoons. However it was decided, the animation was excellent and carried a definite nostalgic tone to it, much like the entire screenplay, also written by Linklater.

Along with Jack Black, the voice cast included Milo Coy, Zachary Levi, Glen Powell, Josh Wiggins, Lee Eddy, Bill Wise, Natalie L’Amoreaux, Jessica Brynn Cohen, Sam Chipman and Danielle Guilbot.

Stanley was in a family of six kids, whose father worked at NASA in one of the more undistinguished jobs. Stanley’s father still brought an excitement and energy to the landing of the Apollo mission.

It was kind of odd since the film started with a couple of NASA agents arriving and recruiting Stan to be an astronaut and land on the moon in the Apollo 10 1/2 mission because the capsule had been made too small and would only fit a young person and Stan’s ability at kickball helped cement his recruitment. This fantasy was interwoven through the storyline and we saw Stan begin his training and eventually launch into space, despite still being at home. The two distinct POVs made this a touch confusing at times, but certainly an original manner in which to tell the tale.

Filled to the brim with nostalgia, Apollo 10 1/2 does not have much of a narrative structure. However, it is a intriguing and memorable record of what the 1960s was like and how historic the time period would become. This was a lot of fun and quite thoroughly enjoyable.

4.25 stars

While I was watching this movie, all I could think about was how Asa Butterfield could have been hired to play Spider-Man instead of Tom Holland. Maybe this is a mean comment, but Marvel sure dodged one there.

Choose or Die is a British horror thriller movie featuring a retro video game called “CURS>R” (pronounced cursor). College student Kayla (Iola Evans) finds the CURS>R game in Isaac’s (Asa Butterfield) apartment and a phone number offering a large prize money. When she begins playing the game, she discovered that the game could interfere in reality, causing a poor waitress to eat broken glass. Kayla has to try and complete the game to stop it.

Boy, this one was horrible.

I’ll try not to spoil it, but there is a scene with Asa Butterfield’s character and video tape that is simply laugh out loud funny. It is so ridiculous that any credibility the film may have had up to that point is utterly destroyed.

Not that there was much before anyway. This was nothing more than cheap video game graphics and jump scares. The characters are weakly developed and we find out some basic facts about them. Kayla has a lot of troubles in her life, but we only hear about most of them. They do not go into any details that are worthwhile.

And then the “Boss Level” of the game is as bad of a sequence as you are going to find. This is prime material for RiffTrax Live because because the entire movie is simply dumb and laughable.

Do not waste your time on this rubbish. It is a remarkably poor film.

1 star

The Fallout has been on HBO Max for a month or so and I have been meaning to watch it during that time, but I just never got around to it. As I started trying to catch up with some of the new streaming films, I found The Fallout still on the list and so I decided to watch it this morning.

I did not expect it to be as powerful as it was.

Vada (Jenna Ortega) was a high school girl who found herself hiding in the girls bathroom with another classmate, Mia (Maddie Ziegler) as their school was under attack by an active shooter. Those few moments of terror and uncertainty in the restroom truly re-contextualized these two girls’ lives.

After surviving the day, Vada began to make choices that she would not have made before.

This movie is not about the school shooting that happened. It is a study on the survivors of the shooting and the pain of guilt and fear that comes with the situation. It takes time to look at, not only, how it affects the kids who were there, including one of Vada’s closest friends Nick (Will Ropp) who becomes the activist, and Quinton (Niles Fitch), whose brother is killed in the shooting, but also those people who are adjacent to Vada, such as her mother (Julie Bowen), her father (John Ortiz) and her little sister (Lumi Pollack).

The world has become too accepting of this traumatic event the more it happens, and this movie showed how different each person could react to the violence.

Jenna Ortega absolutely fills the screen. She is a star in the making and she does stellar work portraying the conflicted and frightened young girl. She conveys how the wound is very much open and still causing her problems with a massive final scene. Ortega is so realistic with this character that you cannot take your eyes off of her.

First time director Megan Park also penned this screenplay and does an amazing job of showing how such a horrible event can taint a person’s life moving forward and how much of a difficult task it may be to put it behind you. Despite the glowering tone, the film does have moments of hope sprinkled in with the sadness. The scene with Vada and her father is beautiful and life-affirming.

The Fallout is a powerful film that could be a difficult watch for many. It is vital that we understand the fallout of the situation that has sadly become oh so normal in our lives.

3.8 stars

One of the sub-genres of horror movies is scary old people and it is mushed together with the slasher genre in the new A24 horror flick, X from writer/director Ti West.

Set in 1979, a group of filmmakers and actors rented an old farmhouse out in the country to film what they called “best dirty movie.” At the farmhouse, they found an elderly couple and the old man greeted them with a shotgun. Eventually, they reminded him that they had rented the farmhouse and settled the situation down.

As they were filming, the old lady began wandering around and peeking through the window at the porn scenes being filmed.

The first part of the film was spent setting things up and showing us the characters involved in the porn movie. Mia Goth and Brittany Snow were the adult actresses and Kid Cudi was the male porn star. Jenna Ortega is the boom mic operator. Martin Henderson is the executive producer.

The cast is great. Then, the slasher aspect in the final act gets extremely violent and gory. There were a couple of times that I had to grimace about what I was watching.

I really do not have much more to say about X. I enjoyed it, but I do not see much more than that.

3.3 stars

While I have enjoyed most of the Harry Potter movies, my experience with the Fantastic Beast trilogy is a different beast. The original movie was okay, but I did not love it much. The second film, The Crimes of Grindelwald, was horrendous. The third in the trilogy now takes it place squarely better than the second one, but not a film that I ever want to see again.

The second movie was so odd because it seemed to take the few parts of the first film that I really liked and got rid of them in the sequel to make it less about a new story and more about a prequel for Harry Potter. This one has more to it, but it lacks some of the real magic for this world.

Dumbledore is being played by Jude Law and Grindelwald is now Mads Mikkelsen, the third different actor to take the role because so much behind the scenes drama. Mikkelsen is a great choice though and makes Grindelwald much more sinister.

There is not much way of Dumbledore secrets here either. There is a controversial secret that is mentioned quickly and not returned to, but there is little more that falls into the camp of secrets, making the title of the movie not quite accurate.

The first hour and a half to hour and forty-five of this movie was deadly dull to me. I had no idea what was going on and I was not entertained. The only parts that I found at all engaging was Newt (Eddie Redmayne) and his interaction with the beasts in his suitcases. There was a scene where Newt was trying to rescue his brother (Callum Turner) from a prison and he had to do his weird movements to betwixt a group of crab-like things. Redmayne was funny in that scene and he was more charming as Newt than in the other two films.

However, the finale was actually quite engaging, dealing with a political election of sort and a manner of a three-card Monty style caper which I found fun. This last part was much more simple and did a good job of getting me to care about what was happening. The rest of the film I just could not give a bigger crap about and I was wishing it was over for most of the time.

There is no reason this movie needed to be 2 hours and 22 minutes long. That is just excessive for the story that they were telling. This needed to be a more personal film than what we got. There were also way too many characters that meant nothing to me. Outside of Newt and Jacob (Dan Fogler), none of the rest of Team Dumbledore seemed to be worth my time.

Trouble child Ezra Miller was here too as a nephew to Dumbledore, mastering the emo trope. This character was so unremarkable that I did not realize that it was Ezra Miller until the credits.

Perhaps I would have cared more for these characters if the second film was better or if the first film was more memorable, but neither happened and so this third film was muddled and meh.

As I said, the final act was more interesting and elevated the star rating I planned on giving it, but there was just not enough in The Secrets of Dumbledore to recommend the movie. If you loved the first two movies, this would be right up your alley. For me, this is quite the step down from the Harry Potter franchise.

2.75 stars

Last week’s #1 movie in the US did not fit into my schedule, but with spring break starting today, I was able to get caught up with Sonic the Hedgehog 2. I found myself surprisingly enjoying the first film which came out just prior to most theaters closing down because of the pandemic. Would the sequel match up to the original?

That answer is no.

There were parts of the new film that were interesting. I loved Idris Elba as Knuckles and Jim Carrey continues to be a standout as the villainous Dr. Robotnik.

The weakest part of the film is the middle bit that I found boring, the entire wedding storyline that I found stupid, and the human cast (outside of Jim Carrey) who felt shoved in to the narrative for no real purpose.

However, I did enjoy the conclusion of the film, with the big battle between Sonic and his friends vs. Robotnik. Is it predictable? Yep. Still, I think there are parts here that are decent enough. It should be a very effective film for the younger viewers too.

Sonic looks great, as does any of the other animated/CGI characters involved in the story.

I do not think that I am going to really remember this movie later in the year, outside of the great Jim Carrey, who has been talking about retiring from acting. Carrey looks like he is having a blast out there and makes a wonderful antagonist for Sonic.

It’s ok. It is definitely watchable, but I do not consider it the same level as the first one.

3 stars

Amazon Prime has a new film that opened this weekend starring Chris Pine and Thandiwe Newton called All the Old Knives. This was a thriller directed by Janus Metz Pedersen.

CIA agent Henry Pelham (Chris Pine) is sent to investigate the potential leak that led to a disastrous terrorist attack on an airplane 8 years before. Henry interviews Celia Harrison (Thandiwe Newton), and they were lovers during the event of Turkish Airlines 127.

The story of the film tells this story with flashbacks to 2012 showing what happened with the agents and the airplane, and 2020 when Henry is interviewing Celia at a restaurant. They also have flashbacks within 2020 when Henry was interviewing Celia’s old boss Bill Compton (Jonathan Pryce).

I’m not going to lie. This movie confused me multiple times because of the way the flashbacks were written. There were times where I wasn’t sure which year they were in so I had a hard time following it.

The performances are solid. Lawrence Fishburne was in the film, but was not used as much as I would have expected. Chris Pine was good and Thandiwe Newton was excellent. They had great chemistry in their scenes.

The resolution of the thriller was a tad convoluted, but not terrible. There are much better spy thrillers than this movie, but it is a reasonable film.

2.8 stars

This documentary debuted at Cannes Film Festival in 2021, but was released in theaters on a limited release in April. It is from Academy Award winning documentarian Andrea Arnold.

It is a fascinating look at the lives of two cows, a mother and her calf. The mother, a dairy cow, was named Luma and lived at Park Farm, in Kent, England.

The documentary, which is shot without any sort of voice over and only includes some background talking from the farmers, started with Luma giving birth to her calf. Not too long after this (in the film), they were separated as the calf was removed. The calls of the mother were some that I can remember growing up on a farm when the mother cow did not know where her calf was.

The film may feel a touch long because of the repetitive nature, but some of the shots are amazing, especially with the cows in the meadow with fireworks going off in the distance. The film does not skip any of the challenges that a dairy cow faces in a day, from simple things like flies to having their horns removed (in what looked like a terribly painful process).

It does seem that the idea of keeping the cow pregnant to maximize the amount of milk produced is a bit barbaric sounding. They bottle fed the calf to keep it from nursing on the mother.

The imagery of this film certainly tries to get the audience to connect with the cow and to create an emotional stake in the film (forgive the pun). It is tough to watch at times and it made me wonder what was going through the mind of these animals. All the close ups of Luma seem to indicate that the filmmakers wondered that as well.

And the final moments of the film will stick with you for awhile.

Cow is a fascinating look at the dairy cow process and how the cows play such a large role.

3 stars

Multiverses are the in thing right now. With the Multiverse of Madness coming up from Marvel Studios soon off the heels of Spider-Man: No Way Home, and the Flash film due this year, multiverses are everything and everywhere.

I certainly hope that the superhero ones are as good as the multiverse in the Daniels’ newest film, Everything Everywhere All at Once. The Daniels are directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who have worked together on several great films, including a personal favorite of mine, Swiss Army Man.

This film starred Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn who, along with her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), own a failing laundromat and are having troubles with their taxes. Their daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) was coming to see them with her girlfriend Becky (Tallie Medel). Evelyn had plenty of issues with the choices that Joy had made in her life.

However, just prior to their tax appointment, Waymond gave Evelyn a bizarre message and acted like a completely different person. Turned out he was from a different universe and performing a “verse jump” maneuver that allowed him to inhabit the body of a different universe version of himself and access their skills and memories. He was looking for the perfect foil to counter the great evil of the multiverse, out to destroy all.

The Russo Brothers are among the producers on this project, bringing their own knowledge and skills at presenting timelines from the MCU.

This movie was way funnier than I ever thought it would be. There were moments where it was downright hilarious. The humor reminded me quite a bit of Swiss Army Man, just without the flatulence. The humor did not feel out of place. It felt perfectly in sync with the characters and the situations that we found them in.

Ke Huy Quan, who is best known for his classic roles of Data from the Goonies and Short Round from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, was excellent in this film, providing multiple versions of the same character and doing it believably. Ke Huy Quan had retired from acting a few years ago because of the lack of roles for Asian actors, but he came back for this and just was outstanding.

Also outstanding was James Hong as Gong Gong, Evelyn’s father. James Hong has been one of the most active and prevalent Asian actors in films and TV. He brings a definite gravitas to this film.

Then, Jamie Lee Curtis is in the movie too as an IRS agent Deirdre Beaubeirdra. Curtis is spectacular in the role, also being involved in playing several versions of the character. Curtis and Yeoh have great chemistry and work extremely well together, whether they be fighting or bonding.

The creativity on display here is unmatched. I won’t spoil some of the universes we see, but there are some mind-bending examples that give not only great laughs but also examples that we have never seen before. The Daniels create a complicated story that was not that difficult to follow. They do an exceptional of keeping the audience in the loop and keeping them confused only when it served the story.

At the heart of this chaotic traverse through the multiverse is a film about family and heart. That story of love and acceptance is what grounds this film, allowing it to give us such a bizarre group of worlds without totally losing the viewers. Everything Everywhere All at Once is an early leader for one of the best films of 2022.

5 stars

It has been a long while since Morbius was supposed to come out. Sony has been working this for years and it has been delayed for several reasons. However, this film, the Living Vampire from Marvel Comics finally came out, and, sadly, it is a huge step down.

Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) had a lifetime debilitating disease that would eventually kill him, but, the genius doctor, was determined to find a cure for himself and his childhood friend Loxias “Milo” Crown (Matt Smith). His idea was to match up his human DNA with DNA from bats.

His plan had an unexpected twist, giving him vampiric powers and a desperate thirst for human blood. Realizing the sad fact that, as a doctor experimenting on himself, it ALWAYS goes badly, Morbius tries to hide himself away until he could reverse the curse.

Little does Morbius know that his best friend Milo has other thoughts on the situation.

This movie, for a super hero-vampire story, was really quite boring through most of it and devolved into a unsatisfying slugfest at the third act. Morbius certainly learned his powers quickly, and he developed interesting uses of them without much effort.

Jared Leto was fine, but not very interesting. Matt Smith seemed to be hamming it up all over the place, which did not feel like the same character we saw during the childhood flashbacks. Good old Milo became certain ways depending on what the plot required of him, which is a drawback to the character.

Tyrese Gibson and Al Madrigal play FBI agents called in on the case and are there for… reasons. They brought little to the story. Morbius’s lady friend was played by Adria Arjona and she was about as uninspiring as you are going to find. She was attractive, but lacked in the character department.

The special effects were pretty bad. There was a ton of shaky camera that led into frozen shots that looked just terrible, like weaker video game quality. Though the character design of Morbius looked pretty decent most of the time, any sort of action was terribly filmed and was not engaging for the audience.

The film also seemingly had edited out any references to the Spider-Man universe from the main film, despite there being a heavy push in trailers to link Morbius to Spidey. There were several scenes from trailers involving Michael Keaton as the MCU’s Vulture, Adrian Toomes and he is nowhere to be seen in the main film. They tossed him into two of the worst mid-credit scenes you are ever going to see. The mid-credit scenes are so desperate that they were clearly taped recently and tossed into the film in hopes of connecting to No Way Home. They were sloppy and rushed.

Morbius is a terrible disappointment as I have always enjoyed the character in the pages of Marvel Comics and he would have fit well in with several of the new characters being introduced in the MCU (such as Moon Knight or Blade), but I do not want any part of this Morbius in the MCU. Keep him in the Sony Spider-Man-verse. This does not inspire confidence in all of the other projects that Sony has been preparing that does not have Marvel Studios there to help with creative. Morbius is a mess.

1.5 stars

This weekend saw the debut of a new comedy adventure film called The Lost City featuring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. Honestly, the trailers of this film did not fill me with an excitement for this movie, but some positive word of mouth made me hopeful that this would be an enjoying film.

Loretta (Sandra Bullock) is a reclusive romance novelist whose husband died a few years before, causing her to be even further outside of the public. Her new book feels like the last to her. On the book tour, Loretta had to be matched up with her popular cover model, Alan (Channing Tatum).

However, Loretta, after a particularly failed presentation, is kidnapped by wealthy businessman Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe) because he needed her to help him find the real Lost City and the rich stuff. Alan decided to head after her and try a rescue mission along with Jack Trainer (Brad Pitt), a bad ass mercenary he knew through meditation.

This is a movie that is 100% dependent on the fantastic chemistry and exceptional banter between Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. You may not remember how great the comedic timing these two actors exhibit, but it is off the charts. Not only with the banter and dialogue, but also with the physical comedy. Bullock and Tatum carry this movie and elevates it to a level I did not expect.

Daniel Radcliffe is exceptional as well, albeit with a lesser developed character, in Fairfax, the film’s antagonist. His motivations are easy to understand, but feels a little underwritten. Still Radcliffe takes what he has been given and absolutely goes to town with it.

There is actually a ton of practical effects, as the film shot in the actual jungle. It helps give this film a realistic look and stand out against a lot of the other films that are mostly CGI these days.

There is not a lot new in the story area of The Lost City. It is a bunch of plot points that we have seen before, but they all feel fresh because of the excellent relationship between Loretta and Alan. Every review I have seen has made a Romancing the Stone allusion and you can see why that is.

Da’Vine Joy Randolph has a smaller role as the friend and agent for Loretta and she has a few good moments, but her character felt added on.

Oh, and Brad Pitt is absolutely transcendent in his short time in the film. He is fabulous.

The tone of the film is great, the humor is excellent, and the performances are wonderful. It is a big action comedy and a fun time at the theater.

4.1 stars

I saw this film mentioned on Twitter and it was a good thing that I did because I never would have watched it because I have never heard of it before, and it was a wild ride.

This movie started off as if we were going to have a rom-com, with Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) trying, unsuccessfully, to have a date. She meets Steve (Sebastian Stan) at the grocery store and hits it off with him. He gets her number and they hook up. After a night of passion, Steve asked Noa to go away for the weekend. Trying to be more adventurous, she accepts. Noa tells her best friend Mollie (Jonica T. Gibbs) that she was going away and it was a surprise, which makes Mollie uneasy.

Steve took Noa to a nice place, gave her a glass of wine, drugged her and chained her up.

This was where we had the opening credits, which happened about a half hour into the film.

I’m not going to spoil the reveal of what Steve (which is an alias) has planned for Noa, or what he does at this nice place where he took her, because the surprise and utter shock is part of the fun of the film. Let’s just say that I never expected this film to be about this topic.

Sebastian Stan, who I am used to as our heroic Bucky Barnes in the MCU, takes a turn for the sinister in Fresh and he is really believable as the sudden antagonist. Daisy Edgar-Jones was a fresh face (ha, a pun!) who I had never see before. She has several TV credits according to IMDB in a bunch of series that I do not watch. She had a nice presence about her and I bought her totally in this role. She played things really smartly too, as a character, so I enjoyed her work. Jonica T. Gibbs brought some good work too while Dayo Okeniyi may have had the best line in the whole movie.

This was a lot of fun. I loved the sudden shift in the film, along with the opening credits midway through the movie. The performances were solid and the pay off was well worth it. Fresh was a great find.

4.2 stars

This was one of those movies that I was sick of seeing the trailer for. I was not anxious to see it in at the theater, but when it came up on Vudu for rental, I thought it was a good opportunity to see it.

Little did I know that I would like Dog as much as I did.

Channing Tatum played former Army Ranger Briggs whose friend and fellow Ranger died in a car crash. Briggs’ friend had a canine partner, who was wild and out of control. Briggs was struggling with his own mental issues, PTSD and was currently out of the Army. The army assigned Briggs to escort the canine partner, a dog named Lulu, to the funeral of her partner in exchange for consideration of reinstatement.

However, as mentioned, Lulu was wild, requiring a muzzle and carrying cage. The trip to California would take several days and so the two veterans undertook their road trip with a chance to understand one another better than when they started.

Is the story predictable. Of course, it is. You know exactly how things were going to resolve themselves in the third act. But I have to say, I was right there hoping for the predictable outcome to occur. Though the film was predictable, it still was able to grab my attention and my emotions.

The big reason was that they gave Channing Tatum a much deeper character than I was expecting. The challenges that he was struggling with were real and could be related with. The relationship with Lulu, a Belgian Malinois, was sweet and developed gradually and realistically. The dog who played Lulu did a great job of being expressive (or the CGI team did a great job with the dog). It was as if I knew what the dog was thinking at all times.

As a wrestling fan, it was nice to see Kevin Nash back in a film.

I do have to say that this was a film that I felt showed too much in the trailers. There were clips from almost all of the key moments in the film and I would have liked some of these moments to be surprises for the film. That is, of course, not a criticism of the movie as much as it is a criticism of the promotional company.

There were moments that were funny, moments that were poignant, and moments filled with emotion. Predictable, yes. But that is not necessarily a bad thing. This is a great film for dog lovers and for all families.

4 stars

Ryan Reynolds has arrived on Netflix once again, this time, in my opinion, with considerably better results. Last year, Reynolds starred alongside Dwayne Johnson in Red Notice, which was nowhere near as entertaining as it should have been. This year, he is the star of The Adam Project, a film that had been in development for almost a decade.

Reynolds was a time-travelling pilot that departed from 2050 with the intent of returning to 2018 to stop the invention of time travel and help fix the future. However, pursued by Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener), Reynolds was shot and landed in 2022 instead where he met his own self as a 13-year old (Walker Scobell) and attempted to avoid the forces chasing him from 2050.

Ryan Reynolds is fantastic here, with his typical attitude and quips dialed back. Adam from the future still had the Ryan Reynolds jokes, but they were tempered with a sadness from a lifetime of loss and anger. Reynolds had great chemistry with Walker Scobell, who picked up a lot of the quips and one-liners that Reynolds did not use. Scobell had nice comedic timing and he delivered the lines in perfect fashion, like he was actually Reynolds as a youth.

There are some exciting sci-fi action, although honestly, most of the effects are things that we have seen in other sci-fi projects. Young Adam makes a joke about older Adam’s weapon being a light saber as an example of items we have seen before. Of course the line, “Dude, that is a light saber” is very funny and wonderfully delivered.

The strength of this movie is the relationship between old and young Adam and how they can’t really get anything past each other because they are the same person. There is a lot of analysis between the two of them and their truth is obvious. These scenes with Reynolds and Scobell light up the screen more than the sci-fi weaponry does.

There are other great actors in supporting roles in The Adam Project. Zoe Saldana appears as a woman that Older Adam knew from the future. She made a real impact in her short time on the scree. Mark Ruffalo also does a incredible job in the film as Adam’s father, Louis Reed. He is involved heavily in the end of the film and the emotional moments that come along with it. Unfortunately, Adam’s mom Ellie, played by Jennifer Garner, does not get enough to do, but there is a sweet scene between her and Ryan Reynolds in a bar.

The third act big set piece action scene was a bit of a letdown as the credibility of what happened had to be stretched too far to believe. There are still some interesting moments inside of the third act, especially the ones that deal with their interpersonal relationships, but the action itself is fairly weak.

However, the resolution of the story is satisfying, if not predictable, and the film leaves the viewers with a positive feeling and a great rock song.

This had the feel of a solid sci-fi adventure and Ryan Reynolds is as charming as he ever was. Young Walker Scobell is very good as a young Adam and carried much of the first two acts of the film. It is a time travel movie so the process of time travel is important and I am not sure that the film knows exactly how it worked. Bonus points though to Walker Scobell for mentioning a multiverse. It is all the rage right now.

The Adam Project was a solid film that I enjoyed watching despite a few flaws that are apparent in the film.

4 stars

Disney made the questionable decision to release the newest Pixar film, Turning Red, on their streaming service, Disney +, instead of giving it a widespread theatrical release. Why they made that decision is up in the air, but it gave me the opportunity to watch it at home early this morning and I loved it.

Turning Red was a story about 13-year old Meilin Lee (Rosalie Chiang), a rebellious, confident girl who still wanted to please her overbearing and obsessive mother Ming (Sandra Oh). Meilin discovered one morning that she has a family curse: when she gets too excited, she turned into a giant red panda.

However, it does not seem like a curse to Meilin, who after an initial period of adjustment, learned how to control the transformations and embraced the furry side to her personality.

She does this through the power of friendship, picturing the great love she has for her besties, Miriam (Ava Morse), Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and the total scene-stealing Abby (Hyein Park), when she needed to calm down.

The four girls were totally obsessed with the hottest boy band, 4*Town and they were desperate to attend a concert at the Skydome in Toronto, but when their parents all rejected the idea, this triggered shenanigans from the quartet.

Turning Red is a beautifully animated, tightly scripted, funny film. It may not be the highest level of Pixar films, but how many films can actually reach that level? This was so entertaining and I felt quite emotional as the story of the mother-daughter relationship dominated the story. Yes, there are story beats that sound like Teen Wolf, but this goes deeper into the characters than that film did.

This coming of age story is a clear metaphor for puberty and the development of young girls’ bodies, and it does an incredible job of using the topic of changing into a red panda to represent a young girl having her period. In fact, the film does an admirable job of broaching that subject with humor and the prerequisite amount of uncomfortableness for the characters while showing the audience that it is a normal moment in all girls lives.

The second half of this movie really picked up and spent time with a group of girls just being a group of girls, where one of them has a major event. I loved the group of girls and found them to be remarkably engaging and refreshing in the picturing of a deep friendship.

This feels like an intelligently written and executed film for the whole family. It makes me wonder why there are so many films that talk down to children when films like Turning Red show that you can entertain while also lifting up the youth. There is a ton of diversity and the film does a great job of showing the culture of people with different backgrounds than what we are used to and that is a great thing.

While I was happy to watch this at home, it feels as if it deserved a theatrical release so it could be seen on a big screen. My guess is that Meilin would be even more impressive, as would the excellent finale, with a bigger screen. Still, please go out of your way to see Turning Red. It is a beautiful story of friendship and parent-child relationships.

4.85 stars