Last year, I sat in the theater and watched the travesty that was called Transformers: Last Knight.  It became my worst film of the year and in the top 5 worst of all time.  I so hated that movie.  The other Transformers films were bad, but that thing was just horrendous.  So, to say that I was excited about seeing another Transformers movie, this time focused on the single Transformer, Bumblebee would be a gross exaggeration.

However, with director Travis Knight at the helm instead of Michael Bay, there was a glimmer of hope that they could find the missing ingredient to make the movie worth seeing.  I wasn’t holding my breath.

Then, positive word of mouth started coming from critics, and I was cautiously optimistic.  Not hopeful, just optimistic.

Today I saw Bumblebee.  It is easily the best Transformers live action movie that there ever was and I would argue that it would give the classic animated movie a run for its money.

This gives us the origin story of Bumblebee, starting on a war torn Cybertron.  Optimus Prime sent his dedicated soldier Bumblebee to earth to scout out if the planet would work as a base for the remaining Autobots. Bumblebee was to protect the earth from the Decepticons and keep it secret.

Bumblebee landed on earth in the middle of some war games from military man Agent Burns (John Cena) who immediately tries to destroy the robot.  Bumblebee winds up in a junkyard for an uncertain amount of time.

When teenage girl Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld) discovers the yellow Volkswagon-looking Bumblebee, she takes it home and then discovers that the Volkswagon bug was more than met the eye.

The relationship between Charlie and Bumblebee is the crux of the film.  They are remarkably sweet together and this film creates a real and human person to interact with the Autobot, unlike any of the Michael Bay movies.  Hailee Steinfeld shines in every scene as the outcast teen who had suffered a terrible loss that has shaken her life to the core.  Bumblebee helped fill that gap.

Meanwhile, two Decepticons (voiced by Justin Theroux and Angela Bassett) discover a signal from Bumblebee and trace it to earth.  They team up with Agent Burns to try and capture the renegade Transformer.

I have heard some negative comments about John Cena’s work in this movie, but I thought he was great.  He was actually very funny and had some of the best lines of the movie.  I will admit that he does feel like someone who fit more in the old Bay movies than this one, but I think he has a place here.

The battles are exciting and considerably easier to follow. One of the biggest problems in the other films was you never knew who was fighting who because it just seemed like big robots fighting.  These fights were well shot and directed beautifully so I cared about watching them.

Charlie had a good dynamic with her family as she was doing her best to keep them at arms length.  The screen time that these characters received were all well done and furthered the story.

This movie was sort of a prequel to the other films and was set in the 1980s (specifically in 1987) and the film did not hide the fact that it was the 80s.  Songs were constantly blaring in the film of the greatest hits of the decade and we got allusions to the Breakfast Club.  They were anything but subtle with their references.  I enjoyed the music, even though there were a few stretches where it felt more like a music video than anything else.  I love 80s music so this was fun for me.

There were allusions to the Bay series of movies as well as the Transformers: The Movie.  Although it was challenging at times because the movie Bumblebee played fast and loose with the continuity during this movie.  This is completely fine with me.  I would be all for pretending like those other movies did not happen and building a new continuity starting with Bumblebee.

This is the best Transformers movie ever and it owes a great deal of thanks to director Travis Knight.  The film is extremely engaging with Steinfeld and Bumblebee and has a pretty basic, yet successful story.  Optimus Prime was perfectly used here.  This is what Transformers fans have been wishing for since the beginning.

4 stars

There were parts of Vox Lux that were downright haunting.

Then there were parts of Vox Lux that were just there.

After surviving a devastating school shooting, Celeste (first played by Raffey Cassidy and then by Natalie Portman) is discovered when she sings at the funeral.  The Manager (Jude Law) pushes her in the direction to become a huge pop star.  We then see how this woman devolves from the innocent youth to an embittered middle aged pop star.

This film was all over the place.  I was extremely compelled by the opening scenes involving young Celeste.  To say that the scenes of the school shooting was not frightening would be a lie.  However, I do not think the film brought together the extremely powerful scenes into a common narrative.

Unless that narrative is that Celeste is a bad person who has been affected by her past.  As she gets older, we see this young girl lose her innocence (which I supposed one could argue happened at the school shooting) and slip into bad behavior,both with drugs and with sex, and destructive tendencies in relationship with her sister (Stacy Martin) and her daughter (also played by Raffey Cassidy).

The end of the film, without spoiling it, felt like it came out of nowhere.  The people in my theater sat and waited for the credits to finish because it seemed like something was missing.  There was certainly no wrap up of the film.

There were parts of the movie where I thought we were going to get a deep psychological study of the results of survivor’s guilt or how trauma affects the life of young people, but that all felt unimportant in the overall story.

Natalie Portman was good in the role, but I thought Raffey Cassidy was much better as Celeste.

This felt like two completely different movies.  The first part was haunting, but the second half felt like most party-hardy musician story you’ve ever seen. That is until the ending just jumps up at you.

3 stars

Did not like this one much at all.

To be fair, Mortal Engines, which I had dubbed the “London-on-wheels” movie, looks tremendous.  The visuals and the CGI of this film is top notch.

That is where the positives end.

Mortal Engines is the story that sees cities on wheels rolling around the countryside “consuming” other smaller towns and a group of heroes look to help stop a conspiracy led by the one note villain Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving).

Our main heroine is Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar) whose mother was killed by Valentine when Hester was a young girl.  She tries to gain revenge on Valentine but fails and she then escapes with Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan).

I was unbelievably bored through most of this movie.  The beginning 10 minutes or so had some promise, but the remaining time of the film was just so dull and lifeless that there was not reason for it.  I had zero care about any of the characters so I anything that might have happened to them did not effect me in even a little bit.

Oh, and, despite what the trailers may want you to believe, Peter Jackson is only one of several writers and one of several producers on the project.  The promo material makes it sound as if it was straight from the mind of Peter Jackson and that is stretching the truth considerably.

Mortal Engines was boring and I did not like much about it.  It did look great though.  I have nothing more to say.

1.5 stars

I was really rooting for Aquaman to be a good movie. I got a chance to see it early as part of Amazon Prime’s special offer of an early screening a week prior to the official release.  That was great.  As for the movie….

It’s okay.

I found Aquaman, the latest DC Comics movie, to be a mixed bag.  In the places where I thought the film was good, I thought the film was REALLY good.  When I thought the movie was bad, I thought it was cringeable.

The under sea kingdom of Atlantis is beginning to make waves about launching an assault on the surface world.  Orm (Patrick Wilson) is pushing for the title of Oceanmaster over the Atlanteans but Mera (Amber Heard) has other thoughts.  She goes and recruits Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and tries to get him to come and claim his birthright as the King of Atlantis.  Aquaman does not believe himself worthy.

So, mixed bag, right?  So let’s do a point-counterpoint type review.  The visuals of the undersea nation and animals was beautifully rendered.  A DC movie with bright colors?  I watched several scenes in the film where it was like a beautiful artistic design.  Most of the underwater scenes worked very well visually.

However, there were also several moments in the film where the CGI was terrible.  The Nicole Kidman fight scene at the very beginning of the movie is one example.  The people looked very rubbery, as if they were not real people being thrown around.  I hated the designs of the white armored Atlantean flunkies.  They made me think too much about Stormtroopers.

Jason Momoa was great as Arthur Curry, aka Aquaman.  I liked him here considerably more than I did with him in Justice League.  Amber Heard was good as Mera too and there was a strong cast including Willem Defoe, Dolph Lundgren, Nicole Kidman and Temuera Morrison.

Unfortunately, I was less impressed with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who played Black Manta.  I found him to be overacting big time in the early scenes on board the submarine.  His performance took me out of the movie during that time.  I am not sure I felt the overall chemistry between Momoa and Heard.  Separately, they were very good, but together it was iffy.

There were some great action scenes. My personal favorite was the scene in Italy with Black Manta chasing Arthur and Mera.  I thought that was well developed and intensely carried out.

The problem was there was too much action.  Because there were too many action scenes, the film felt too long.  A friend of mine said that maybe they should have cut out the Black Manta stuff and saved it for the sequel, and, in retrospect, even though I loved those scenes, that might have helped the film out.

The film has some fun moments and it is very silly at times. You see this with Aquaman himself as he embraces his role of big blockhead.

Unfortunately, there are too many tones in the film and they shift, sometimes, within the scenes.  Much of the humor did not land in Aquaman.

I do not know why DC movies insist on third act CGI fights with red backgrounds.  I swear that they are in every DC movie since Man of Steel.  I was hoping that we would not have the red since we were under water here, but the lava showed up just in time for a big fight between Aquaman and the monstrous creatures.

However, at least the red backdrop was kept at a minimum in the third act and did not show itself in the final battle with Oceanmaster.

Another major gripe is about the trailers.  Why did we need to see Aquaman in his orange outfit in the trailers and the promotional materials prior to this movie?  When he gains the outfit and the trident is a huge part of the movie and, if I did not already know that he was coming out dressed in his orange outfit, that moment might have been a classic moment, maybe even a cheer out loud moment, but the movie itself spoiled that for me.  Did seeing Aquaman in the orange outfit put anybody extra in the seats?  If not, then they wasted what could have been a brilliant moment.

Amber Heard’s red wig distracted me all the way through the movie.  I don’t have a counterpoint for that one.  The wig just was bad.  Nitpicky? sure.

As I said, Aquaman was a mixed bag for me, but I do think that what they did well out weighed what was done poorly.  This is a step in the right direction for DC movies because they allowed the audience to have some fun and to look at the movie with a marvel.  Aquaman does spectacular well, but the small scenes were lacking… or were punctuated with an explosion (and there were a ton of explosions).

3.35 stars

The newest Clint Eastwood directed movie features Eastwood as the lead character, and there are some strangely uncomfortable moments in a 2018 movie.

First off, the trailers made this look like something more violent in tone and more like Eastwood’s character is trapped in a life that he did not want to do and was uncertain how he was getting out of it.  However, that was not the tone of this movie.

This movie was more comedic than it was violent.  It was more weirdly uncomfortable than it was vicious.  Eastwood played a character who was an old man with old world values who did not know when he should not say something or know when he was saying something inappropriate…or racist.

Earl Stone (Eastwood) was a 90-year-old horticulturist is having money problems and is shown as a deadbeat father and husband.  He takes a job “driving” for some people, who turn out to be a Mexican Drug Cartel, and he is driving drugs.  However, Earl does the job very well and the cartel wants to increase his load.

Meanwhile, DEA agents Bates (Bradley Cooper) and Michael Pena (who has no name in the film) are trying to operate a sting inside the cartel which puts them on the trail of earl as the mule.

Earl’s family is having severe problems as well and he finds himself split with his attempts to be there for his family now, making up for the years he missed.

The film is very odd.  As I said, Eastwood’s Earl is extremely likable, but he says things that show him to be somewhat racist, or, at the very least, not empathetic toward people of different races.  He comes off more as an old guy who doesn’t know any better rather than a racist, though.

He also did not seem to be bothered much about driving these drugs around for this cartel.  He liked the money they were paying him for sure.  The film did a great job keeping Earl likable despite his outright criminal behavior.  Sure he needed the money to help his family, but that really did not excuse his activities.

There were several storylines that began but were dropped.  There was a relationship begun between Earl and his “handler” Julio (Ignacio Serricchio), but nothing came from it.  Serricchio was a former General Hospital star and was seen recently in Netflix’s Lost in Space reboot.  He was good here, but I was looking forward to a pay off of that relationship, but it never came.

There were plenty of things that happened in the plot that did not make a whole heck of a lot of sense either.

It was a strange movie because I found myself unsure of how I felt about the characters involved and Earl just was shuffling his way through this movie and he never felt as if he fit in with the narrative being told.  It was in opposition to the trailers that they showed and made me kind of uncomfortable.

That is not a bad thing.  The film was okay.  It is not up to par with some of Eastwood’s best films, but it was better than many, especially some of the recent one. Eastwood fans should enjoy this movie.

3.4 stars

What were the odds that I wasn’t going to love this movie?  I mean… Spider-man is my all-time favorite character.  It seems to be receiving rave reviews from almost everyone.  The first time we see Miles Morales.  There is Peter Porker Spider-Ham and Spider-man Noir (voiced by Nicolas Cage).  Of course I was going to love this, right?

Right?

Right?

Am I building the tension?  Do you think I am waiting to pull the rug out?  No?  Of course, I loved this. It was fabulous.

Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse is the origin story of Miles Morales(Shameik Moore) and how he became his universe’s Spider-man.  Miles is an incredibly smart and talented young man who is on his way to a new, special school throwing his life into a spin.  Unable to talk with his father Jefferson (Brian Tyree Henry), Miles heads to his uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali) for help.  After going with Aaron to a secret location, Miles gets bitten by a radioactive spider from Alchemex.

Miles finds himself in the middle of a big fight between Spider-man and the new Green Goblin around a gigantic collider that is potentially tearing a hole in the time-space continuum.  Tragedy strikes and Miles winds up with the only thing that can stop the machine.

He is approached by a group of time displaced Spider-people including an older Peter Parker (Jake Johnson), Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), Peter Porker the Spectacular Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), Spider-man Noir (Nicolas Cage) and Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn) and this group is trying to find their way home.

And come one, Spider-Gwen is just cool as can be.

So is Spider-man Noir.  The whole black and white thing was such a cool joke.

And Spider-Ham.  C’mon.

The story is so tremendous and very deep.  The characterization is beautiful, the plot is intense and the relationships between characters, especially between Peter and Miles, is special and original.  We get a fun version of Aunt May (voiced by the classic Lily Tomlin).

The animation of Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse was unbelievable and was the most creative type of animation I have ever seen.  It felt like a comic book come to life, literally.  It was weird, artistically astounding, filled with texture and style.  It seemed as if it were in 3D, but it wasn’t.  This was not a typical animated movie.  They took a chance by making this film different and it worked extremely well.  I could see some people having problems with the animation, because it is so different, but I found it to be an awesome stylish piece of art.

Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman were the directors of this movie, but many people seem to be giving a ton of credit for the film to Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who were involved as producers and Lord was one of the writers too.  They brought their trademark humor to the film and it worked perfectly for Spider-man.  The witty banter from Spider-man is such an important aspect of the character and it is the best example of it here than any previous Spider-man movie to date.

The fact that they showed that Miles Morales is half African-American and half Puerto Rican is a moment of inclusiveness that takes the world to another level.

The only thing I was not wild about was the portrayal of Kingpin.  The character was well done and I liked the voice by Liev Schreiber, but the look of the character was something that I had a hard time getting past.  It was the one negative that I can state of Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse.

This is one of the best movies of the year.  I need to see it a second time to really judge where on that year end list this is going to land, but it will certainly be in the single digits.  This film could open up the market for theatrically released superhero movie and that would give the genre even more ability to tell amazing stories.

4.95 stars

This is a fascinating experiment.  Taking the rated R Deadpool 2 and recutting it to make it PG-13 is intriguing.  I especially liked the fact that part of the money made from the box office of the movie goes to fight cancer.  “Fudge cancer” is the PG-13 version of that.

Then, they shot a bunch of new scenes featuring Deadpool and Fred Savage, whom Deadpool kidnapped, tied him up, dressed him as Fred’s character from The Princess Bride and read him the story of Deadpool 2.  This framing device is all new and very creative, filled with a ton of meta jokes.

I LOVED the Fred Savage stuff.  Every scene with Deadpool and Fred are GOLD!  I absolutely loved watching every second of these creative bits.

The problem is that the rest of the film felt wrong.  Maybe the fact that most of the parts that are remaining was the parts of Deadpool 2 that I did not love.  I did not love them killing Vanessa.  I was not a fan of of the kid, Russell (Julian Dennison).  This movie felt as if it really doubled down on these aspects of Deadpool 2.

Then there was Cable (Josh Brolin), who I thought was great as Cable, but Fred Savage had made a joke about Cable in one of the framing sections.  Fred was excited in the story when Deadpool mentioned Cable because of how developed and intricate the character in the comics is, but the joke is that the Cable in this movie was nowhere near as developed as the comic.  So they were making crap out of their own film character.  I found that strange and I hadn’t considered that.

Then, the story itself just felt off.  It did not fit the PG-13 rating.  What they did with Deadpool 2 was neutered.  Even the best part, the introduction and immediate dispatching of X-Force, is considerably less funny here.  Maybe I just knew it was coming, but I think the overall brutality of that moment is what makes it so hilarious and it just is not as funny in this one.

Now, what this tells me is that Deadpool can absolutely survive in a PG-13 world, as they prove with the Fred Savage scenes, but Deadpool 2 can not be redone to be PG-13 and be effective or anywhere near as entertaining as the rated R version.

The most emotion that I had in the film was at the last post credit scene which was a tribute to Stan Lee.  It almost brought me to tears.  It was a beautiful tribute to the man.

When I first saw Deadpool 2, I loved it, but did not think it reached the level of the first Deadpool.  Once Upon a Deadpool’s framing scenes with Fred Savage are every bit as good, if not better, than either film.  The rest of the movie is just not up to snuff when compared to the other Deadpool movies.

3 stars…(overall-  but 5 stars for the Fred Savage-Deadpool stuff)

Netflix’s latest release comes from the mind of director Andy Serkis, and is the newest adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s classic tale, The Jungle Book.  However, this is not your Disney version of The Jungle Book as Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle is considerably darker and edgier than the animated Disney film or Jon Favreau’s live action adaptation from a couple years ago.

The story is similar to start.  Mowgli (Rohan Chand) is a baby when his parents are killed by the violent tiger Shere Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch).  Mowgli winds up with the wolf pack and is protected from the tiger’s teeth as Khan swears to eventually taste the man cub’s blood.  Mowgli is raised in the pack until the tiger returns to cause further chaos by inciting the humans by killing their cattle.

The panther Bagheera (Christian Bale) and the bear Baloo (Andy Serkis) do what they can to protect the man cub from the dangers of the jungle while still trying to teach him how to survive.

There is a lot of violence in this version, so do not mistake this for a children’s movie.  This is more in line with the original version from Rudyard Kipling than it is with the other theatrical versions.  The dark tone is not a problem as it seems to fit fairly well with the life of these animals.

The CGI of some of the animals are nowhere as smooth as the Favreau version.  There are times when these talking animals were simply weird to look at and that is a major drawback after we saw the exact same type of CGI pulled off flawlessly.

While it may not be fair to compare the two versions (or the animated Disney one) of this story, it is difficult to avoid, especially with the said version coming out just a few months ago.  And with WB selling this to Netflix for release, there is the idea that WB did not believe that this film would have survived a theatrical release.  I think they were probably correct in that assumption.

Again, that does not make this a poor movie.  It only makes it one with flaws.

The voice cast is tremendous, including the wondrous Cate Blanchett as Kaa.  There was no music, not a sign of “Bare Necessities” anywhere and that is a good thing since it would have felt totally out of place with the story this film was telling.  The young actor who played Mowgli, Rohan Chand, was solid in the role.  He may not have stood out as much as did Neel Sethi did in 2016, but Chand was respectable.

The film is uneven as it suffered from moments of dullness, despite other moments of freedom and drama.  There was not much dealing with the humans that was worth the time in the film, and that connection for Mowgli is lost.  Perhaps that was the idea.

Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle is not a bad time and is most likely a decent watch on Netflix.  Most of the film looks good and the story is different enough to keep you invested.

3 stars

I have to say… I may not be a big fan of most Christmas movies… the new Netflix film, The Christmas Chronicles starring Kurt Russell, is charming, clever and a load of fun.

Kurt Russell makes a fantastic Santa Claus, updated for the new generation.  There are many smart and fun adaptations of the classic Santa tropes in the film that you have to really pay attention to the dialogue or the surroundings to catch them all.

Kurt Russell performs the song “Santa Claus is Back in Town” and it is one of may favorite music moments in movies this year.  It was a real jailhouse rock, literally.  It was also the moment of the film that won me over.

In The Christmas Chronicles, Santa gets distracted by two arguing children, the boy heading down the wrong track Teddy (Judah Lewis) and his sister, the ever-joyous Katie (Darby Camp).  With these two causing a dangerous sleigh accident, Santa is stranded in Chicago with Christmas spirit rapidly dwindling and nighttime hours slipping away.  The three of them have to work together to save the holiday.

The film is sugary sweet for sure, and can be completely predictable, but it is a Christmas film.  You fond yourself engaged with the struggles of these two young people and the coolness of Kurt Russell as St. Nick is undeniable.

It is not a forever classic, but the film is a fun watch and a great family movie to watch with your kids.  Kurt Russell is awesome in the role of Santa Claus. He totally immerses himself into the role, making it feel special.  A combination of The Santa Clause and Home Alone, The Christmas Chronicles is a good time.

And the Mrs. Claus cameo is exactly what I had wanted.

3.2 stars 

You know that the movie is in trouble when 15 minutes into the movie (in the empty theater that I was watching it) I think to myself, “I should really give this more of a chance than I am and not be ripping it so much already.”

Unfortunately, even with that unambiguous personal comment, there was just so much to rip.  I felt as if this needed the RiffTrax or MST3K guys to make the ambiance complete.

The Possession of Hannah Grace was just a ridiculous film with laughable moments that wanted to be scary, but failed miserably.

The film started with the typical religious exorcism that we have seen plenty of other times before, but one that takes a sudden and weird turn, one that really did not make any sense at all.

Then, three months later, the body winds up at the morgue and former police officer, recovering addict and new morgue late shift worker Megan (Shay Mitchell) starts seeing some strange things happen.

There are some things dangled in the story that are never dealt with.  Plot holes I guess you could call them, but there really is not that much of a plot…can there be plot holes when there really isn’t a plot?

Hannah Grace looked silly as she spider-crawled around the morgue and made it through doors and locks without any problems… and crackled and popped as she did it.  It was just humorous, and of course, unintentional.

In the opening credits, I spotted the name of Stana Katic, who played Beckett on ABC’s Castle for years.  I loved her and I started looking for her, but her role was severely disappointing for me.

I don’t know what else to say about this stinker.  I did laugh several times, though I wasn’t suppose to.  It was not scary.  It lacked a story.  The characters were weak or non-existent.  It was just bad.

1 star