Continuing on the streaming services for new movies, I watched the new release Lost Girls on Netflix this morning and it was very compelling.

Based on a true story, Lost Girls tells about the disappearance of 24-year old Shannon Gilbert, and her mother’s desperate struggle to find her, to get any help from the local police and to deal with feelings of guilt.

Mari (Amy Ryan) was not a perfect mother, by any stretch of imagination, but when her daughter disappeared, she became an unapologetic tenacious warrior, butting heads with everyone involved in the situation.  Many of the police involved did not take the situation as seriously as they may have since Shannon was working as a sex worker at the time.

Gabriel Byrne played the police detective Richard Dormer, who was in charge of the case.  While searching for the missing girl, police accidentally uncovered the remains of several other girls.  These girls ultimately were shown as victims of the Long Island serial killer.

The film is painfully compelling and paints a picture of Mari, warts and all.  She is the most fascinating of characters here and her anger carried through the entire film.  Much of the anger she displayed came from a place of self-guilt.  She had plenty of struggles with Shannon over the years and she could not help but know that she had contributed to this moment in time for her daughter.  Amy Ryan does a wonderful job of bringing this woman to life.

Though the film does not have a satisfactory conclusion, the filmmakers did an admirable job of providing the viewers with as much closure as they could.  I understand that they were working with an unsolved case, as the film states at the very beginning, and a certain amount of disappointment was going to come with that.

There does feel as if there are several ways this could have been taken that would have made this movie even more compelling, yet the film has some solid performances and is worth the watch.  Just be aware that there will not be a happy ending with the story wrapped into a tight little bow.  Plus, there is text to read at the end that really could have sent this movie into a different direction.

4 stars

The latest family friendly film arriving on Disney + is based on the YA novel of the same name by Jerry Spinelli, called Stargirl and it was sweet.

Teenager Leo Borlock (Graham Verchere) was an average student at Mica High School until he meets a charismatic, free-willed new student named Stargirl (Grace VanderWaal), and his life was never the same.  Her ukulele playing at the football game made her into a good luck charm as the school embraced her quirkiness.  Popularity can be fleeting in high school so when things went wrong, Stargirl found herself shunned and Leo found himself confused and desperate to figure things out.

This is the type of film you would expect to find as an original on Disney +.  It featured a healthy dose of magic and goodness, just the type of fare that Disney has thrived on over the years.

Grace VanderWaal is an absolute star.  She had an amazing aura about her that made her someone who you had to keep your eyes on every second she was on the screen.  She had an undeniably special feel about her.

But she was not on screen alone and her co-star, Graham Verchere was solid as well.  He was a perfect foil to Stargirl’s magic.  Verchere’s Leo came alive when he was with Stargirl and Verchere played this beautifully.  His vulnerability filled his performance opposite Stargirl’s confidence.  There was a magic between them.

The story was fairly simple and did not go into a great deal of specifics, but there are some solid moments.  I especially liked how Stargirl did not make the right decisions every time and, unwittingly, does something that hurts a fellow student.  Stargirl was not perfect.  She was flawed as anyone.

The music of the movie was weaved into the story in a wonderful manner.  The music at the football game and then, eventually, at the dance really helped capture the imagination of the audience and created a dream-like state.

Stargirl is a coming of age movie with a lot of Disney magic involved and some great musical numbers.  Some characters are shorted in their development, but the pairing of Stargirl and Leo is what the film is about.

3.75 stars

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

The Hunt was originally intended to come out in September 2019, but wound up being delayed until this weekend.  The controversy surrounding this movie was clear and the battle lines were drawn.  Lots of controversy and complaining from people who had never seen the movie.

After seeing The Hunt, I can understand why there are people who are polarized about it because it is very clearly a movie that is divisive.  However, I do not understand the anger directed at it since it is obviously a satire and both sides of the political world is lambasted equally.

A group of people from the “deplorables” are kidnapped by some “lefty elitists” and taken to a mysterious location.  They are drugged, gagged and scattered around.  Once they come to, they start being picked off, one by one.  Scattering, the group attempts to avoid the people hunting them.

The first act of this movie was extremely unexpected because as you meet a character that feels as if this was the main protagonist that you are meant to follow, something would happen that makes it clear that this was not the person we were meant to follow.  It’s shocking and it is funny.

Betty Gilpin from GLOW eventually is revealed as the main protagonist of the film and she is just amazing.  This is a star-making performance for her and she is unbelievably likable here.  This is even more impressive since there really is very little effort made to develop characters.  Most of the characters do not get past their surface structure. Betty Gilpin is no exception.  Her development is minimal, but that does not prevent her from being an awesome, kick-ass character.  The end shows that there may have been a reason for the lack of character here, and it may even be worth it.

The violence is vicious and gory.  Some of the kills are well designed and entertaining while others felt as if they were simply there for shock purposes.  I have seen more violent movies so this is not a disqualifying feature for me.

The movie does have a message, in particular, about social media and the nature of it, but the message is not pounded into your heads, although it is not necessarily subtle either.

This was a funny satire with some cool action involved.  Betty Gilpin is an early season leader for Kick Ass Female of the Year in what should be a competitive year in that category.  You may be offended by The Hunt, but, if, like me, you are not, then you will probably laugh and have some good time with an over-the-top movie.

4 stars

This one is better than the last one.

All the Bright Places is a coming-of-age/teen drama movie featuring Elle Fanning and Justice Smith and it is based on an international bestselling novel by Jennifer Niven.

Theodore Finch (Justice Smith) is out running one day when he comes across Violet Markey (Elle Fanning) on the edge of a bridge.  Stopping, he brings her back from the edge and they eventually begin a relationship.  However, there are problems because Finch has his own baggage from a childhood of trauma.  There are some serious mental health issues on both sides of this relationship and yet they seem to find the best in each other.

The story itself is only average.  The two of these characters are quite inconsistent through much of the film and, while that could be a trait of the age, it does not help us connect with them.

However, both Elle Fanning and Justice Smith are charismatic and charming.  They share a great chemistry and fill the screen with the power of their personalities.  You connect with them considerably more because of the actors playing them than the story they are playing out.

There was a bit too much melodrama in the movie for my tastes.  They bounced back and forth between the two of them for much of the run time.  Maybe that is the point, but it feels as if they left too much out from the story of these people.

I have not read the book, but I wonder if it provided more of a opportunity to understand who these characters were and why they acted the way they did.

Still, this was a fine film, if for nothing more than the performances of the two lead actors.

3.4 stars

I have begun my “Not Going to Theater While Coughing” streaming service watch today on Netflix with a film called Twin Murders: The Silence of the White City.  The summary on Netflix made me believe that this would be an interesting film.

Nope.

A criminal profiler (Javier Ray) returns to Vitoria-Gasteiz  at the same time that a serial killer, thought to be in jail and being prepared to be released, has begun leaving corpses killed using bees.

I lost interest in this fairly quickly.  The story was not intriguing as I had hoped it would be and was predictable and uninteresting.

The biggest problem with the movie is that it is actually a Spanish language film, but this version is dubbed in English.  Because of that, the actors on screen do not match with the words they are saying and the voice over acting is hardly as emotional or human as it should be.  The voices lack the impact of the real voices.  I would rather had heard the real voices in Spanish and read the subtitles than hearing this half-hearted English translation.  It is nearly impossible to grasp the real performances these actors give because of it.

I hope the next one is a better film.

2.1 stars

One has to admire the bravery of the performance in this movie from Ben Affleck.  He has recently suffered from alcoholism and had checked himself into a treatment center and this could not have been easy to play this role.  Yet he did it and he was tremendous in it.

The Way Back is a sports movie with more.  Jack Cunningham (Ben Affleck) was a former star high school player at the Catholic High School.  The basketball world was at his feet, but he chose to leave it behind.  A troubled life followed which included a separation with his wife (Janina Gavankar) and an alcohol problem.

When his old high school’s coach had a heart attack, Jack is offered the position of head coach, working alongside assistant coach Dan (Al Madrigal) of a team with a group of problematic players who have not been successful.

The basic basketball scenes in this movie are nothing new.  In fact, it would be fair to say that most of the basketball scenes here are extremely formulaic.  Not to say they were not well done, but there was absolutely nothing new about any of them.  Everything that happened was something that we had seen before.

However, the scenes with Jack and his troubles were very well done and brought an uncertainty to the story.  The final act of the film was just strong and really took the film into an area where you were not sure what was going to happen.  That was a refreshing switch from what had been a predictable tale.

Ben Affleck was magnificent here.  He brought a depth and an anguish to Jack Cunningham that was relatable and understandable.  You wanted to see this guy overcome his demons, but the film does not take that easy route.  Just because his basketball team was having success, it did not mean that the problems that had haunted him and had driven him to hide in a bottle were gone.  In fact, it may have made those issues all the worse.

I do think the film felt a little long, but I am not sure where you would have cut.  The film was more about Affleck than it was the game of basketball.  Because of that, some of the characters on the basketball team were shorted in development.  The movie was Affleck’s story and it gave him the minutes to show it.

Directed by Gavin O’Connor, who also directed feel good sports movies Miracle and Warrior, found a way to subvert the expectations of the genre with this movie.  It seemed that this was going to be just another formulaic sports movie, until it wasn’t.

Powerful and difficult to watch at times, The Way Back is a good movie with a strong lead performance.

3.8 stars

Back in the 1980s, there was a TV program on ABC called Spenser for Hire and starred Robert Urich and Avery Brooks.  I never loved this series, but I watched it a few times.  So you can forgive me that I did not figure out that the new film on Netflix, Spenser Confidential is a return to that character, this time starring Mark Wahlberg and Winston Duke.

Based on the novel “Wonderland” by Robert B Parker and directed by Peter Berg, Spenser (Mark Wahlberg) was a cop convicted of assaulting his police chief.  After serving his time, Spenser returned to his life with the intent of leaving his home in Boston and heading out west to drive truck.  However, a group of crooked cops and drug runners throw problems in his path.  Spenser has to team up with Hawk (Winston Duke), a MMA fighter who was living with Spenser’s mentor, Henry (Alan Arkin), to try to solve the murders of a couple of Spenser’s previous colleagues.

I had some problems with this movie.  First and foremost, it felt as if the film did not know what kind of film it wanted to be.  At first it felt flashy and dumb, like a Michael Bay movie.  Then it seemed like it wanted to be a buddy cop movie.  Then, it tried to be a slapstick comedy.  Then there was serious drama with the crime story.  All of these different styles did not fit together in this case and really clashed.  By trying to be it all, this movie was never able to be itself.  It failed in all of the different tones.

Wahlberg and Duke were fine.  Duke will always be M’Baku from Marvel’s Black Panther, and, unfortunately, this version of Hawk was nothing like the Avery Brooks version.  I understand the attempt to take the character in a different direction, but this was a real tangent.  Arkin was the same basic character that Arkin is in every movie these days.  There is a character named Cissy (Iliza Shlesinger), Spenser’s former girlfriend, but the less mentioned about her the better.  This character is easily the most annoying and least engaging character on the screen.

And Marc Maron is here too, but he is wasted.  His character is so disposable that I am not even sure what his role here was.

The story is totally messy.  It was convoluted and confusing.  It wanted to be a mystery as well, but that played like every low-level buddy cop film you’ve ever seen.  The bad guys are woefully underdeveloped and are basically one-dimensional crooks from your typical crime movie.  Nothing special about any of them.  They kept referring to Boylan (Michael Gaston), the police chief Spenser assaulted, but we knew so little about him that their use of him felt like lazy writing.

The comedy in the movie was just such a flop. There is one scene with Spenser and a dog that is as dumb as it can be.  I am not sure I can recall any of the humor actually hitting.

This was just a bad movie and a failed attempt to bring the character of Spenser back to relevance.  Wahlberg and Duke worked okay together and would be the best part of this movie.  They are absolutely not enough to save this silly reboot.   I do not think fans of the Spenser for Hire series or the Robert B. Parker novels featuring the character of Spenser will enjoy this movie much.

2.3 stars 

I was able to see an early showing of Pixar’s latest animated movie, Onward, and I was extremely pleased that I had the chance.

This is another fantastic film from Pixar Studios.

Ian (Tom Holland) is an elf living in a fantasy world that has lost its magic and become very much like today’s real world.  His brother Barley (Chris Pratt) is a gamer who treats his Dungeon and Dragons-like game as history of the world.  They live with their mother Laurel (Julia Louis Dreyfus), who had been widowed for years.

In fact, Ian had never met his father and that loss had always challenged the character.  So, on his 16th birthday, Ian’s mother gave him a gift from his father.  It was a magic staff and a spell that could resurrect the father for one day only.

The big problem was that the magic caused some trouble and, when they attempted to bring the father back, they were only able to resurrect half of the man, from the waist down.

Having a day left to try and find another magic gem that could finish the job, Ian and Barley headed out on an adventure of self-discovery and brotherly bonding.

Honestly, the first part of Onward was a bit slow and it was fine.  However, when you are watching a Pixar film, fine does not cut it.  As the film progressed though, the emotional bond between Ian and Barley started to carry the movie and it was not too long until Onward was firing on all cylinders.  Honestly, the third act of this movie was just tremendous and took Onward to a different level.

Pixar certainly knows how to create emotions among the viewers.  They tugged on the feelings throughout the movie and I am not ashamed to admit that the final act saw me with tears running down my face.  It reminded me, in good ways, of both Coco and Inside Out.  It also absolutely had a ton of homages to Indiana Jones movies in fairly obvious ways.

The voice cast was outstanding.  I have already mentioned Holland, Pratt and Louis Dreyfus, but I have not yet mentioned Octavia Spencer, who voices the Manticore, an amalgam of several animals (like a griffin) that had a legendary history in the fantasy world.  Spencer was great and had some of the funniest lines in the film.

Of course, the animation in the movie was continually great.  Pixar films are always above the line for CGI and character creation.  It is a beautiful film to look at through the entire run.

In the end, the movie truly dives into the brotherly connection between Ian and Barley, providing a relationship that is undeniably relatable and powerful.  The sentiments of loss that are interspersed in the script is done deftly and in a way that expertly draws out the emotions in the viewers, both young and old.  The third act of this movie is as good as it gets and really takes what was being set up as a decent Pixar movie and makes it an excellent Pixar movie.

When this opens nationwide next weekend, make sure you take your family to see it.  Or go on your own.  It is worth your time.

4.5 stars

This is how the Dark Universe should have gone.

The brand new version of the classic Universal Monsters movie, The Invisible Man, came out this weekend with Blumhouse’s Jason Blum as a producer and he showed, once again, that you can make a movie with a small budget and make it compelling and intriguing.

Cecilia Kass (Elizabeth Moss) was in an abusive relationship with tech magnet Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and she tried to escape.  With the help of her sister (Harriet Dyer) and friend James (Aldis Hodge), Cecilia was able to escape from Adrian’s controlling clutch.

When news of Adrian’s suicide reached Cecilia, she was not as relieved as she should have been because she began to suspect that Adrian was still alive and stalking her by somehow turning himself invisible.  She found herself becoming more paranoid with each passing moment and the people in her life believed that she was falling into madness.

I really enjoyed a lot of The Invisible Man and my first watch of it was very enjoyable.  I must say, upon reflection, there are more moments in the film that I found pressed the level of plausibility and might make this one of those films that I like less over time.  As of right now though, I thought it was fun.

Elizabeth Moss was great in the lead, really showing the tension and the potential descent into madness for her character.  I wish the film had not revealed so quickly that this was what was happening because, although they hinted at the fact that this might just be Cecilia’s paranoia and mental state, this was never in question.  Part of that went with the promotional material for the film as the trailer certainly gave much of the film away.  It would have given the film another level that would have helped the story.

The performances were all great and the use of the invisibility was very well done.  There were moments in the film that were very tense because you were never quite sure if Adrian was actually there.  I know I always assumed he was there.

Some of the things that I would quibble with are spoilers so I won’t be specific, but there were several moments when it felt as if the characters responded in ways only because the film needed them to do so.  There were a bunch of horror tropes here too that took away from the overall quality of the film.  These are minor points though as they did not bother me too much during the movie.  I found myself several times wondering why she did or did not make certain choices.

Directed by Leigh Whannell, The Invisible Man creates a world of suspense and terror that comes from the unknown.  We have all walked into a room in our house with that creepy feeling that someone is watching us, even though we know for certain that is not the case.  Whannell successfully mines that naturally unnerving feeling and takes it to its nth degree.

Sure there were some ticky-tack things that could have been tighter or could have been scripted better, but that is nitpicking.  In the end, The Invisible Man is a solid horror/thriller film in a year where horror/thriller needed a good one.  Elizabeth Moss is a star and her performance steals the show.

4.2 stars

I love the Movie Trivia Schmoedown, an online trivia show with some WWE and UFC tendencies.  It is remarkably enjoyable and has only grown and improved every year.  The reason why I watched this movie was because of the Movie Trivia Schmoedown.

One of the top competitors in the Movie Trivia Schmoedown is named “The Kid” Brendan Meyer.  He is a young and popular competitor that has an encyclopedia knowledge of movie trivia.  I also knew that Meyer was an actor and that he had been in the OA.  When I heard his Schmoedown team partner, critic William Bibbiani talking about Meyer’s new movie, Color Out of Space, and how he would not be reviewing it to avoid any cries of potential bias, I wanted to see it.

So I found the film on Vudu and waited until it became available for rental (which was today).  Who knew that this was a film that was starring Nicolas Cage?

Color Out of Space was a science fiction/horror mash-up where a meteorite crashed on the farm of the Gardners in rural New England.  After the meteorite crashed, the whole family found themselves acting differently than they had before while some kind of mutant organism infected them.

Brendan Meyer was the oldest son to Nicolas Cage.  Joely Richardson played the wife of Cage and mother to Meyer.  There was a sister, played by Madeleine Arthur and a younger son played by Julian Hilliard.  Elliot Knight appeared as Ward, an investigator there to try and help the family.  Finally, playing stoned hippie Ezra was the one and only Tommy Chong.

Nicolas Cage was at his very best, over-the-top craziness in this movie.  It is an area within that he has absolute carved out a place for himself.  Brendan Meyer was quite impressive in the role of Benny as well.  Watching the kid work here, one believes that he has quite an impressive future ahead of him.

I felt the first part of the film was a little slow, but it built nicely as the tension continued to grow.  By the third act, the film had grabbed hold of me and created a wild and crazy conclusion.

This is based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft and it is directed by Richard Stanley.  This is a weird and bizarre film that is energetic and entertaining.  I am glad that I watched it.  Thanks The Kid.

3.7 stars

I discovered this on Netflix this weekend and saw a cast of very impressive actors. I mean… Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, Willem Dafoe, Rosie Perez, and Toby Jones are all some of the greatest actors working today.  It makes one wonder how this film, which should have been truly successful as a political thriller,  went so off track with such a top flight cast.

But The Last Thing He Wanted, based on the novel of the same name by Joan Didion, was convoluted and confusing.  The story kept having events happen that make little sense and made the narrative difficult to follow.

Journalist Elena McMahon (Anne Hathaway) walked off the presidential coverage she had been assigned to follow in order to help complete her sick father’s (Willem Dafoe) business deal, which was dealing arms to Central American countries.  She suddenly found herself over her head, involved in the very story that she had been trying to reveal prior.

Set during the heart of the Iran-Contra Affair, Elena’s motives were not always clear.  Was she doing this for her father?  Her daughter?  The story?  Her country?  None of it is clear.

Anne Hathaway is solid in the role.  Ben Affleck, who played Treat Morrison, a government official who becomes involved with Elena.  Willem Dafoe is probably the most interesting character in the film, but the end results of his character arc is disappointing and occurs off-screen.

The end of the film is messy and sloppy.  It hardly is worth the time that you have to put into the story to understand what is going down.

I find it difficult to believe that Elena is any sort of international journalist.  She seemed fairly lacking in skills.  I would think a journalist of this caliber would have a few more tricks up her sleeve.

This was a pretty disappointing film.   I certainly expected more when I saw who was involved.

2 stars

I really am more of a cat person.

I do love Harrison Ford, and he is great in this movie.  Unfortunately, I had checked out way before Ford ever showed up in this adaptation of the classic Jack London novel.

The Call of the Wild is the story of a dog named Buck who gets abducted from his domestic bliss and winds up in the Yukon as a sled dog under the control of a variety of masters.

I was out of this movie immediately because of the fact that Buck (and all of the other dogs as well) were CGI in this movie and it was CGI that was simply not very well done.  Buck felt more like a cartoon character you might see in a Scooby Doo movie than a real dog involved in an iconic story.  I just could not get past the manner in which Buck was portrayed in this movie and, despite the fact that I enjoyed the Harrison Ford component of the story and that the look of the scenery was lovely, this animated dog just was so poorly done I could not forgive it.

Sure, the film is heart-warming and a pretty solid film for the family.  If you can get past the way that Buck looks and the fact that the dog is more human than many of the other characters in the film, then you probably will love this movie.

However, I could not get past it.  Besides Buck, there was a villain involved here named Hal (which I had no idea and had to look up on IMDb to get his character name).  Hal (Dan Stevens) is the total mustache-twirling villain with zero motivation outside of “gold” and… “evil.”  Hal has to be an early year leading candidate for Worst Villain.

There needed to be considerably more Harrison Ford here than what we got.  He does not come into serious use until late in the movie.  The first forty-five minutes to an hour had only a few slight uses of Ford.  His character had an interesting background and a real reason to be the way he was, and I could have used more of that.

Yes, I know that the movie was following Jack London’s book more and there is a chunk of time spent with Buck as a sled dog with French mail delivery man Perrault (Omar Sy), but I needed more of Ford and there was no reason they could not have set this up as two characters who were destined to meet and then we spend time with both.

Dog lovers may love this movie.  I found the CGI terribly distracting and unnecessary.  There were some laugh out loud moments of unintentional comedy that distracted from the deadly serious survival tale of the original novel.  The film could be worse, but it could also be much better too.

2.5 stars 

2020 horror movies have been pretty terrible so far and this sequel that feels as if it were completely unnecessary, is no exception.

Brahms” The Boy II came out this weekend and it takes its place among the bad horror movies of 2020.

In a sequel to the 2016 film The Boy, Brahms: The Boy II actually takes the premise from the previous movie and totally changes it up.  It is one of the stranger facts involving this movie, which makes little sense.  Honestly, The Boy was okay, but I do not remember much about it outside of the fact that it starred The Walking Dead’s Lauren Cohan.

There was no Lauren Cohan to be found here though, replaced as lead by Katie Holmes.  She played Liza, who, along with her son Jude (Christopher Covery), were the victims of a random home invasion that really messed them up, mentally.  In an attempt for a fresh start, they, along with Liza’s husband and Jude’s father Sean (Owain Yeoman), moved to the country and wound up in the guest house of the Heelshire Estate from the original movie.

Soon after arriving, Jude finds the doll Brahms buried in the woods by the house and the doll begins to communicate with the kid, controlling him and leading to some terrible events to happen.  Liza, still dealing with her own PTSD from the home invasion incident, is extremely uneasy with the doll, going as far as to wonder if the doll is alive.  However Jude, who has been mute since the attack, has begun talking to the doll and she was so happy with this occurrence that some of the other behavior is ignored.

Soon, Liza can no longer ignore the behavior as bad things keep happening and everything points to Jude, or Brahms, being the culprit.

This is a terrible movie.

Yes, the acting is poor.  Katie Holmes is adequate, but she does so many stupid things and makes so many bed choices that you just cannot take her seriously as a mother.  There is a scene where she finds Jude’s notepad that contained sketches of a dead dog, of Jude standing over his parents’ dead bodies with a shotgun among others.  When she got caught looking at these drawing by Jude, she puts them down and kind of slinks away as if she was ashamed of looking.  It is not until later that she mentioned the drawings to Sean (which have been conveniently removed).   Why would a mother do that?  Wasn’t this a HUGE red light flashing in your face that your son is having some issues?  I don’t care at that point that I have invaded my son’s privacy.  That ship has sailed already.  I would be taking that kid immediately to get help and confronting him about the art.  That stupidity completely took me out of this movie.

Not that I was in the movie that much anyway.

Then there was a strange twist (if you want to call it that) in the third act that came out of nowhere and completely flipped everything that we had seen up until that point onto its head, and not in a good way.  The third act of this movie was totally ridiculous and filled with stupendously poor choices.

Even worse, the film is relentlessly dull.  So little happens that even the jump scares were not that effective.  Unless, of course, you are in a group of middle school kids, who happened to be in my theater and seemed to be scared by every inane thing that appeared unexpectedly (to them) on the screen.

There is a version of this movie (I believe) that makes this film more interesting.  Maybe if they were actually looking at PTSD or mental illness in some kind of actual way, using this creepy doll as a figure that is being imagined by either Liza or Jude and how they are manifesting that illness in physical ways.  But that is not here.  Brahms is a supernatural creature and totally ignores the original film, The boy, in the process.

Horror movies have really been skidding along in 2020 so far.  Here’s to hoping that the genre improves as the year progresses.

1.4 stars 

I have never liked Will Farrell movies very much, but when I saw the trailers for the film Downhill, I thought this might be an exception.  Downhill is a remake of a Swedish film called FORCE MAJEURE, which I had never seen.  Apparently, it can be found on Hulu so I may dive into the original after I finish here.  Reportedly, those who have seen both say that the original is considerably better than the remake.

Of course, without that coloring my opinion, I was torn on this film.  There were parts that I thought were decent, but there were too many pieces that did not work.

Billie (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Pete (Will Farrell) Stanton are a married couple who have been having some marriage problems, mainly stemming from Pete’s father’s death.  So they decide to try and work on their marriage by heading on a ski trip to the Alps with their two sons.

Problem comes when, during a lunch at an outdoor restaurant, there was a controlled avalanche that sent snow roaring down the mountain toward the family. While Billie gripped her two sons, thinking that they were about to die, Pete grabbed his phone and ran away, leaving his family in the avalanche’s wake.  When the avalanche turned out to be way better than it appeared, Pete returned to his family, who now looked at him in a different light.

The remainder of the movie dealt with (kind of) the anger and resentment directed toward Pete and with Pete’s guilt and grief over the choices that he made.

As I said before, I do not like Will Farrell’s movies very much.  However, I will say that I think he did a really good job in this movie.  Farrell was considerably more restrained than he has been in a movie for quite awhile.  He showed the hidden feelings of Pete throughout the entire film, trying to find a reason to believe he had done the right thing.  Julia Louis-Dreyfus was excellent as Billie the wife who had her eyes opened to the man she had married and who had to struggle with the anguish of his decision.

However, there was not much chemistry between the two actors and I had a hard time buying that they were together.  The two kids (Ammon Jacob Ford & Julian Grey) were really underdeveloped and had little to do in the film outside of watching videos in their room.

The film makes you think it is a comedy because of the two lead actors involved, but there was little funny about this.  Apparently, the original film was a dark comedy, but to call this a dark comedy would not be apropos.

While the movie was only 86 minutes long, it felt considerably longer than that.  The film was awkward and uncomfortable, and not in the good way.  There is no real resolution of the story and many of the situations were left unsettled.  Though there were some good individual moments, the sum does not add up properly.

I am going to avoid making any puns using the title of the movie in this review.  Where as there were some positives here and there, Downhill was … well, you get the point.

2.6 stars

There was a massive controversy online over this movie last year.  The producers of the film released an image of the character design of the beloved video game character Sonic the Hedgehog and the fans of the product lost their minds on the internet.  It looked horrible and there was a backlash against it.  The producers of the film heard the audience and their outcry and decided to do something about it, redesigning the character to make it closer to the Sega video game.  It was a shocking happening from the studio to spend that extra money to make the fans happier.

Thank goodness they did it, because that character design would have dive-bombed this movie and it would not have been able to overcome.  Because of the extra loving care, what we wound up getting was a movie that was a lot of fun and an enjoyable film to watch.

Sonic the Hedgehog (voiced by Ben Schwartz) escaped his own planet to earth after being pursued for his power.  He had golden rings that allowed him to open a portal anywhere.  Sonic made a life on earth, hidden from the view of the people.  However, an accidental release of power caused a major black out, bringing the attention of the government.  The government sent part-human, part robot Dr. Ivo Robotnik (Jim Carrey) to the small town to try and find what caused the power outage.  Sonic had to take shelter with local sheriff Tom Wachowski (James Marsden). When Robotnik and his machines arrived at Tom’s front door, Sonic and Tom had to take off to find Sonic’s lost rings in San Francisco.

Jim Carrey is just having a ball as the evil villain Dr. Robotnik.  We have not see Carrey in this type of role since the 1990s and it is downright glorious.  Carrey is over-the-top in all the best ways and commands the screen as the lead villain.

The voice work of Ben Schwartz as Sonic is note perfect.  The voice fits beautifully with the new character design.  It is a good thing that the studio redesigned Sonic because the voice used by Schwartz would not have fit with the design they originally had planned.

This is probably the most charismatic and enjoyable I have ever seen James Marsden.  As Tom, Marsden was funny, charming and totally believable.  He and Sonic shared an easy chemistry which is vitally important since it was basically a buddy road movie.  I was immediately engaged with Tom and I found him extremely easy to root for during the struggles the film dropped them in.

The story was simple and predictable, but, in this case, I do not think that is a negative.  Instead of becoming too convoluted and trying to shove too much in, Sonic the Hedgehog had one basic plot and then depended on the interactions between its main characters, Sonic and Tom, as well as Dr. Robotnik.

Sure there are plot holes here and you could pick it apart if you want to, but the story is really secondary here to the interactions of the characters.

Sonic the Hedgehog is truly a film targeted for the young viewers. and, with that in mind, it succeeds tremendously.   As a family film, Sonic is a solid watch and should not cause parents to wish they had just dropped the kids off at the theater.  I would also say that if you are a fan of Sonic from the video games or animated series, this version will be to your liking.  I know there are some Easter eggs here from the series/video game that I missed, but longtime fans should find it awesome.  This includes a post credit scene involving a character that I did not know about, but others in my theater did (as I heard them speaking the character’s name in excitement).  Reminds me of the old days when Thanos appeared in the post credit scene of the first Avengers movie and not that many viewers knew who he was.

I hope this movie makes all the money this weekend and becomes a huge hit, if only for the reason of rewarding the studio for taking the time and spending the money to make the effects right.  It was important for the film to look right and they should be rewarded for that.  As a movie, it was a good time and I had a lot of fun.

3.75 stars