I was able to see an early showing of Greg Berlanti’s new coming of age film, Love, Simon.  It is officially opening March 16th, so the chance to see it this week was interesting.

Simon Spier (Nick Robinson)is a 17-year old senior who has three great friends, a wonderful family he loves and what looks to be a great life.  Only one thing, he has a secret.  He is gay.

When another student posts anonymously on a web site that he was gay, Simon began a written e-mail correspondence with the boy named “Blue.” Curiosity filled Simon as he speculated about several of the possible Blues.

This film was very clever and beautiful.  I really liked the format in which it told the story.  Every time Simon focused in on a potential subject, that actor would assume the role of Blue, reading off e-mails and being pictured, in Simon’s mind, as the mysterious e-mailer. That technique kept the audience off guard and prevent the mystery of who Blue was a secret.

And Simon’s mind was an ample place as we got many creative scenes involving these possible Blues, including a dance number.  It brought a great deal of fun to the film that could have focused on the drama only.

There were several other wonderful characters here as well, portrayed by an astounding cast.  Simon’s parents, Jack and Emily (Josh Duhamel and Jennifer Garner), were progressive and engaging.  Simon’s friends Leah (Katherine Langford), Abby (Alexandra Shipp), and Nick (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) all have problems of their own.  They are all three-dimensional characters and I believed everything they did.  This young group of four actors, including Nick Robinson, are extremely talented and do a wonderful job with everything that was given to them.

Logan Miller was also standout as the trying-to-hard Martin.  I have to say, there was something that I thought was going to happen near the end of the film that did not happen and I was happy that the film avoided that cliche.  I don’t want to go into it because it could swerve into spoiler territory and I don’t want that.

The teaching staff at the school was certainly unrealistic, but remarkably funny.  In particular was Ms. Albright (Natasha Rothwell) and Mr. Worth (Tony Hale) who stole every scene in which they were in.  Natasha Rothwell’s delivery of her lines were comedic perfection.

I did think that the ending of the movie was too sweet and saccharine to be realistic, but I cannot fault Berlanti for wanting to provide that grand romantic resolution for a young gay couple that movies have usually reserved for heterosexual pairings.   It speaks to the greater acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle coming from the youth of the world.  Sure there are some of the idiocy of the past bleeding into the film, but the vast majority is shown to be accepting of the news, at least eventually.  Society has come quite a long way. At one point in my life time, this film would have been massively controversial.

Love, Simon is like a fairy tale romance (no pun intended) that also looks at the challenge and the fears involved in coming out.  What will my family, my friends, my peers think of me now that I have come out? Who am I now?  These questions are handled with humor, sincerity and a heart-felt courage while putting on a highly entertaining movie.  Yes, it may go too far into the world of sappiness, but its heart is in the right place.

4.1  stars

Disappointing.

I had been looking forward to this adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s classic science fiction children’s book A Wrinkle in Time.  Unfortunately, it looks as if the ideas and concepts in the novel could not be adapted to the big screen.

The film itself was not good.  Yes, there are many who say that wonderful director Ava DuVernay took some big chances and really swung for the fences on this.  While true, that should not be an excuse for creating something that was not good.

Meg (Storm Reid) is a young teen girl and she had a close relationship with her father (Chris Pine), working on big brain scientific stuff.  When he goes missing, Meg becomes depressed and starts to change her mannerisms.  She becomes angry and quick to respond.  Four years pass and she is still getting into fights with the stereotypical mean girls at her school and trying to still protect her young adopted brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe).

When Meg is approached by some inter-dimensional witches who had already befriended  Charles Wallace, she, her brother and tag along “boyfriend” Calvin (Levi Miller) go across the dimensions in search of her father, whom they believed was alive and lost.

Let’s start off with the strengths of this movie. Storm Reid is wonderful in the lead role. There is something original and fresh about her and she is very compelling.  Her relationship with Chris Pine as her father and Levi Miller as Calvin were strengths of the movie.

Much of the movie was beautiful to look at.  The CGI and the effects were lovely, for the most part.

Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling were fine as the witches Mrs. Which, Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Who respectfully.  However, there was not much for any of them to do.  None of these characters had any real compelling reason to be involved in this story.  Unfortunately, Oprah felt like a big time distraction as every time she was on the screen I was thinking that this was Oprah and looking at the funny things glued to her face.

Kaling was completely wasted as the only thing she seemed to be here for was to spout off quotes from the world.  Even more of a waste was the use of Michael Peña, who was in the film for just a few minutes. 

The story itself felt very flimsy.  The scientific parts were brushed over which made a lot of what was happening feel confusing, and the story reduced itself to a very simplistic take on let’s find daddy and love vs. evil.

The antagonist is extremely underwhelming and we have no idea what it is supposed to be, except of course for evil.  We do not know why this evil creature, known as It (not Pennywise, by the way) wants Meg to join him so badly.

Sadly, A Wrinkle in Time felt very long and, at time, boring.  The movie is not long in comparison to some of the other blockbusters released these days, but it definitely felt longer than it was.

Maybe this is truly a book that is unfilmable and we should appreciate the attempt.  There are good parts of the film and I definitely found Storm Reid to be a wonderfully refreshing change, but A Wrinkle in Time just does not live up to the reputation of Disney or the original source material.

2.5 stars

Tremendously terrible.

This one falls into the category of totally horrible movies that entertain you with how bad they are.  I did not sit in the theater grumbling about how bad this movie was because I was too busy laughing at the unintentionally funny parts of it.

As a film, this thing is B…A..Double D… BADD.

An Treasury Agent teams up with a weatherman to try to stop a theft of $600 million dollars of old bills scheduled to be shredded.  Oh, and the theft was planned to take place during a hurricane.

Maggie Grace, Shannon from LOST and probably more well known as Liam Neeson’s oft kidnapped daughter from the Taken franchise, stars as the Treasury Agent Casey.  Grace is passable in the role though she seemed to be able to do way more than one would expect a Treasury Agent to be able to do.  She is, at least, a presence on the screen and is enjoyable to watch.

Toby Kebbell, however, as Will was saddled with having to perform a… I’m going to guess… Southern accent throughout the entire film that was much more distracting than anything else happening.  When he first started talking, I had to stifle a laugh.  I would not stifle many more as the film progressed.

Everything in here so so ridiculous.  The stunts, the physics, the dialogue…. just terrible.  The film started off in a flashback of young Will and his obnoxious brother Breeze out with their father as a hurricane approached.  They were desperately trying to get away, but their truck winds up off road and the boys have to take shelter in an empty house in the middle of nowhere.  As father started outside to try and get the truck freed, you knew what was going to happen.  The storm started bringing the house down and the father got crushed by a rolling water tower in a moment that should not have been as hilarious as it looked.  It reminded me again of LOST how so many people wound up getting killed by being hit by a bus.

Move to the future, the brothers are estranged for, you know, reasons, but Will is still trying to help his brother as another massive hurricane is forming and only Will can correctly identify it because of his sense.  But Breeze is a hard drinking loser who sits around his house in his underwear.  Any guesses if Breeze will find redemption in the third act?

When Casey and Will meet up and help each other out, since Will has a storm chasing vehicle he called the Dominator that can brave the storm. The pair of them go about keeping the bad guys at bay for much of the film.  One of the funniest and cringe-worthiest moments came when Will grabbed a bunch of hubcaps and started hurling them Captain America-like into the wind of the hurricane and one of them wound up buried into one of the villain’s chests.

Of course, Casey and Will were not always on the same page, despite them asking each other constantly, like Aladdin to Jasmine, “Do you trust me?”  Casey suggested, despite Will’s strong objections, that they make the Dominator into a car bomb, much like Timothy McVeigh.  We even go as far as seeing them grabbing bags of fertilizer.  Thing is, I did not see them actually pull it off.  Maybe I was dozing at the time…or perhaps it was a restroom break.  Either way, it felt like it was dropped.

Then, the final semi truck chase scene with a barrelling hurricane behind them is as stupid as you can imagine.  It felt like a Fast and the Furious movie with less sense or realism.

The film was really bad and there was little redeeming quality to it.  My mind immediately went to how great this film would be if it were being riffed by RiffTrax or covered by Mystery Science Theater 3000.  That is this film’s future.

0.8 stars

I had not seen the 1974 film Death Wish, starring Charles Bronson so I did not have that crutch coming into the new version directed by Eli Roth and starring Bruce Willis.  I do plan on watching this version late4r this afternoon, but it did not affect my viewpoint on the film.

I will say that I had very low expectations coming into the film.  I am not going to comment on the pulse of the nation after the most recent school shooting.  That should not go into the review.  Neither will my own personal opinion on guns and the ability to easily get them.

Bruce Willis plays a surgeon named Paul Kersey, whose wife gets killed and his daughter is put into a coma after a house robbery that turns deadly.  Frustrated that the police were getting nowhere with the case, Kersey winds up taking up a gun, putting on a hoodie and going onto the streets of Chicago looking for vigilante justice.  Dubbed “The Grim Reaper” by the press, Willis continues hi search for the men who murdered his wife.

The is nothing original here.  We have seen this revenge story countless times, and done in a considerably better way.  The Netflix Punisher series just recently was way better than this despite covering many of the same tropes and issues.  The film could have taken itself in several interesting ways dealing with loss or dealing with how grief can change a man, but it really only takes the most surface level of story.

And a surface level story is fine if you have other things with it.  Unfortunately, a second major drawback here is Bruce Willis.  I love Bruce Willis, but he has not had a great performance in a while (maybe since Looper).  Paul Kersey has zero development of character.  When we first see him, he is called from one surgery to head to E.R.  He walked into an operation room where a police officer had multiple gunshot wounds and was flatlining.  He put his fingers to the cop’s neck and pronounced him dead without doing anything to him.  Then, he went and told his partner that they did everything they could.  I immediately perked up because that was simply not true so I thought maybe this guy was damaged somehow.

However, we then see him at home where he has a beautiful wife and a beautiful daughter who has just been accepted to a college in New York.  Willis looks to have a perfect life.  So why was he so unemotional at his job?  Is it just that he has seen so many gunshot wounds that he has become hardened to them?  You would think that we would then see that in the film, but it is never addressed again.

In fact, no one has a character arc in the story except for Kersey’s brother Frank (Vincent D’Onofrio), who changes his life after his sister-in-law is killed.  However, Frank is treated like crap by his brother.

There are some fun moments of violence that are put together like an old 1980s action film intended to gain an applause response from the crowd.  These are done fairly well.  There are some spots throughout that, if you turn off your brain, you can find entertaining.  However, there are also moments of extreme humor that is absolutely unintentional.  One of the robbers was going to tie up daughter Jordon (Camila Morrone) and he was searching through the kitchen cupboards.  He even stopped to say, “Where is the rope?”  I almost fell off the seat.

This was not as horrendous as I thought it was going to be, but it is not a good movie.  There is really no character arc at all, little plot, and only passably entertaining action.  Bruce Willis is a much better actor than he shows here.  There is zero subtlety in a story that could have had plenty.  Eli Roth is more interested in the in your face aspect than any kind of character study.  The rebooted Death Wish is not worth your time.

2 stars

Marvel Studios has been rumored to be planning a Black Widow stand alone film for their next phase of films.  However, despite what appears to be the case, that movie is not being released this weekend.  Instead, the film is called Red Sparrow, starring Jennifer Lawrence, instead of Scarlett Johansson.

To be fair, the trailer certainly makes this film feel like the Black widow movie that so many people have wanted Marvel to make, but after seeing it, there is not that much in common with the two characters.  A Marvel Studios’ Black Widow movie would be surely be awesome, while Red Sparrow…

Is not good.

That might even be kind.  I did not like Red Sparrow much at all.  The best part of the film was the number of excuses it found to have Jennifer Lawrence naked.

Jennifer Lawrence played Dominika, a Russian ballet dancer, who, after a terrible accident, cannot do what she loves and is recruited into the Red Sparrow program in order to save her ailing mother (Joely Richardson).  Once in the program, Dominika is trained as a spy, leaning heavily on the …let’s say… seduction of the job and she quickly becomes one of the top Sparrows around. 

She then crosses paths with CIA agent Joel Edgerton and they fall for each other.  Or do they?  Is it all just a trick to get the mission accomplished?  Who cares.

To be honest, I never once felt confused or uncertain about where the loyalties of Lawrence would be.  I won’t spoil where they fell, but I was not confused or taken in by anything that happened.

Red Sparrow was boring.  It was way too long and the story just dragged for most of the film.  The action was fine when it came around, but this film saw itself as a thinking person’s spy movie, but it fell real short.

There were a lot of exploitative scenes in the film that were there for shock value more than anything else.  There were several torture scenes and several sexually charged scenes that were unnecessarily brutal and makes one wonder why they would put this film out with these scenes in the climate of the world today.

Jennifer Lawrence and Joel Edgerton do not have much chemistry between them and it just does not work.  I did not buy how much the film expects you believe they were connected, and the film’s story depends on that relationship being an important aspect of the film.

The cast is fine, but there are no side characters that stand out at all in Red Sparrow, with the possible exception of Charlotte Rampling, who was the Matron of the Sparrow training camp and she was very over-the-top campy.  Had the film been more like that, or we got more of that character, I think things would have been better.

In the end, this is not a Black widow movie as it first seemed to be.  In fact, there is not much comparable between Natasha and Jennifer Lawrence’s Dominika.  Outside of the Russian connection, they are not similar.  So Marvel Studios, we are still waiting for you to knock it out of the park with Black Widow.  When we do see Black Widow, no one will remember Red Sparrow.  That is for sure.

2 stars

I’m torn on this.

Alex Garland’s next film film following his beloved sci-fi film Ex Machina is Annihilation, and I’m not sure what to think about it.

On one hand, the film has some really good pieces of science fiction and looks marvelous.  On the other hand, Annihilation has stretches of boredom and feel too long.  It has an interesting cast, but most of the characters do not receive ample development.  Either the dangling plot points are areas that are open to interpretation and discussion or plot holes that the film never properly addresses.

Lena (Natalie Portman) is a biologist whose husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) disappeared a year ago and she is trying to come to grips with the loss.  One night, her husband returns, but there is something wrong with him.  On the way to to the hospital, they are hijacked by government agents and taken to an isolated area.

Here, Lena discovered that her husband had volunteered to lead a mission into a strange place called the Shimmer.  It is an area in swamp land that is surrounded by a shimmering wall that blocks radio waves and attempts to searching within.  Every attempt to go inside the Shimmer lead to everyone dying…except for one man.

Lena joined with a group of women to head into the Shimmer to try and find answers to the puzzle.  The other women were played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez and Tuva Novotny.

Now the film starts off in the future with Lena telling Benedict Wong about what happened in the Shimmer.  I did not like this at all because she tells you in the first five minutes exactly what happens to the other women who went into the Shimmer and it tells you that nothing was going to happen to Lena.  I’m like SPOILERS, y’all.  I do believe that flashback format was a mistake in story telling.  Why am I going to get invested in any of these other characters if I know they are all doomed from the start?

The relationship between Oscar Isaac and Natalie Portman seemed sweet and loving…that is until it wasn’t.  Let’s just say that there was something tossed into the story that felt like it was added late that did not fit with what I was seeing and felt wrong for these characters.

When the women went into the Shimmer, the first part of this was fairly tense and dramatic.  There were some interesting creatures seen in the Shimmer and the scene flashing back to Oscar Isaac brandishing a knife was creepy as all get out.  However, the longer they were in the Shimmer, the less interested I was.

Then the ending seemed to fall flat.  It seemed as if it was painfully clear what had happened and the film just kept on dragging its feet.

Annihilation is very inconsistent.  Parts of the film were wonderfully done and it was certainly beautiful to look at, but there are other areas that were too long, boring and lacking development.  There will be plenty of people who find this film amazing and several others that think it is a disappointing step down after the great Ex Machina.  Me?  Drop me right in the middle.

2.9 stars

I had been looking forward to this film since I first saw the trailer.  I found that trailer to be very funny, but I will say that I approached it with trepidation because I was fearful that we saw everything really funny in said trailer.

Thankfully, that was not the case and Game Night is an extremely funny film that I enjoyed from beginning to end.  While not a perfect movie, Game Night was an enjoyable romp and a very funny movie, and humor will always help cover weaknesses.

Let’s look at what was great about this movie.  First off, Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams play the lead couple, Max and Annie.  Max and Annie were very competitive people who met, fell in love and got married.  As a couple, they continued to host “game nights” with their friends.  When Max’s jerk and much more successful brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) comes to visit, things start being problematic.  Brooks sets up his own game night, setting up a live-kidnapping mystery.  Unfortunately for him, Brooks is in actual trouble with criminals and gets kidnapped for real.  However, none of the game night crew realized that the real kidnapping wasn’t the fake one.

All of the cast is wonderful here.  Kevin and Michelle (Lemorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury) are a fun couple with a secret that comes out during a round of “Never Have I Ever.”  Billy Magnussen was Ryan, a fairly dumb but lovable guy, who in order to prove that he did not just date the same type of blonde haired air heads, invited Sarah (Sharon Horgan) who was smart and witty and British– everything he usually did not go for.  Jesse Plemons plays Gary, Max and Annie’s neighbor, who used to be included in their game night when he was married to their better friend Debbie, but now is ostracized since his divorce.  Gary may be a police officer, but he is one weird person, fixated on game night.  Jesse Plemons (from Breaking Bad) was just amazing as this over-the-top cop who loved Sebastian, the cat.

The other big time winning aspect of this film is the writing.  The dialogue really pops in the film.  It was quick and sharp and funny.  I sat in the theater and marveled at how clever and entertaining the dialogue was, especially between Bateman and McAdams.  They became an easy couple to root for.

There were also a bunch of movie allusions and quotes that really helped make this a treat for me.  When Annie quoted Honey Bunny from Pulp Fiction, I nearly fell out of my seat.  Then, later, Max not only referenced “Tony Stark” but also “Jarvis.”  It was as funny because I am sure there were bunches of people who had no idea to what he was referring with that one.

Another winner here was the soundtrack, which featured some awesome songs that fit beautifully in the film.  The music was very eclectic and the sound of Queen was just a great surprise.

The film was pretty dark at times, but it really was entertaining.

Now, where the film almost lost me was it really started to become zany with some of the story.  I mean, there were some things that happened that were a REAL stretch of realism.  Credibility was strained to its limits several times.  However, just when I thought that the film was going to go too far and become too cartoonish, it pulled back and focused on the characters involved.  And of course, it was funny.  Most of the ridiculousness in this movie was really funny and that helped keep it from ruining the film.

Game Night had some lapses in logic, but a series of fun performances with extremely witty and clever banter that was simply funny, makes this film engaging and energetic.

3.85 stars

I saw the previews for this animated movie and I thought it looked terrible.  Then, I saw that it was at 81% on the Tomatometer and I thought that maybe this was going to be a great surprise, the way Ferdinand was last year.

Nope, hated it.

Within the first five minutes of this film, I was checked out, wishing that I had not bought this ticket.

I will say that I do like the claymation animation style that the film uses, so it is not the animation that I disliked.  That was fine.

This was such a stupid, predictable and dull tale of cavemen who survive the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs and these cavemen took up residence in the cavern remaining form the impact.  And they started playing football (aka to we Americans “soccer”) with the actual meteorite.  Yup, I did not mistype that.  They started playing football with the still hot meteorite.

As the years passed, the cavemen continued to live in their isolation in the “valley” and the world started to advance around it, arriving in the Bronze Age.  Men from the Bronze Age attacked and took over the cavemen’s valley and chased them away.

Led by weird little Dug (Eddie Redmayne). the cavemen wind up playing a game of football against the Bronze Age people (who, by the way, are experts in football) for the right to the valley.

Wanna guess who won?  No spoilers here, but I bet you can guess…

There were so many stupid puns and poor writing that these characters were nothing more than one dimensional creations.  I don’t know how many times I completed the sentence during the film and was absolutely right.

I fought with myself to keep me in the theater.  I was very close to leaving the theater several times.  I did get a short little nap in during the film which was the best part of the movie.

There is a great voice cast here including Redmayne, Tom Hiddleston, Maisie Williams, and Richard Ayoade.  That’s about all I can say.

I hated this film.

0.5 stars

There is a lot riding on the release of the newest Marvel Studio film, Black Panther.  Not only is this the last MCU film before the release of the massive 10-years-in-the-making Avengers: Infinity War, but the Black Panther has become a culturally significant tent pole film, kicking off the first MCU film with a black super hero as the lead.  That’s a lot of pressure, so Marvel apparently knew that they had to get this one right.

And they really got this one right.

Marvel loaded this cast with amazing African-American actors, starting with Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa, and Michael B. Jordan as Erik Killmonger.  Throw in an astounding supporting cast with such stars as Danai Gurira, Lupita Nyong’o, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Sterling K. Brown, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis.

Then, they gave the film to one of the hottest young filmmakers in Hollywood today.  Ryan Coogler has had two great films on his resume, Fruitville Station and Creed.  Black Panther would make his third great film.

Picking up after the events of Captain America: Civil War, we see T’Challa preparing to take his rightful place as the monarch of Wakanda, a country hidden in Africa that the world believed to be a third world nation, but, in reality, is a thriving, industrious, technologically advanced country built upon a mound of vibranium, a metal that landed in Africa upon a meteor.

Wakanda has hidden its advanced technology from the world for years.  However, the chance to capture the renegade villain Ulysses Klaw sent the Black Panther out of Wakanda and toward the world as a whole.

Klaw was not alone, though.  He was stealing antiques made of vibranium from a museum with Erik Killmonger.  Killmonger had a desire to get to Wakanda as a way to gain revenge for past deeds against him.  I don’t want to go into much detail here to avoid any spoilers.

The story is extremely amazing.  It is so full of depth and layers that it feels rich and developed.  It keeps you off balance and never feels predictable. These characters are fully realized and developed and you understand their motives.  Each character has their chance to shine.  This is a true ensemble film and this ensemble does a tremendous job.

Fact of the matter is this… the film is not just about Black Panther.  This film is about Wakanda.  The country itself is as much of a character as anyone in the film.  Coogler amazingly weaves the culture and history of Wakanda into the film and you feel the life.  The country feels lived in.  Even though this is a setting unlike any other in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you never feel like an outsider.  The film takes some time to introduce you to the five tribes that make up the Wakandan country and these intros pay off big time.

The cinematography is gorgeous and exploring this world of Wakanda and the after life involved in breathtaking in its loveliness.  The score of the film, along with the soundtrack, are another strength of this film.

The film may have started just a little slow, but it picked up the pace and, after the beginning, I absolutely did not feel as if I were sitting there for 141 minutes.

Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger is one of the best Marvel Cinematic Universe villains we have had because we can see why he is doing the evil things that he does and we understand it.  In fact, there are probably many people who can completely justify the anger Killmonger rocks in this film.

The women of Black Panther are completely kick ass.  Oyoke, the general of the Dora Milaje, Black Panther’s female royal guard, is one of the great characters of the film and shows off her ability with a staff throughout the film.  Young Letitia Wright, who plays T’Challa’s sister Shuri, is a breath of fresh air and provides much of the film’s Marvel humor.  Shuri is a technological genius on the level of a Tony Stark, but she has not lost the wide eyed innocence of youth.  Lupita Nyong’o shines across the screen as the super spy Nakia, and a love interest for T’Challa.  These women really are as important to the film as Black Panther is and they step up their game fully.

I really do not have much in way of criticism for this movie outside of a couple of minor nitpicks.  The CGI in the third act had some moments where it did not look great.  It certainly did not live up to the rest of the film.  The other criticism I have would be a major SPOILER  SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER. The fact that both Killmonger and Klaw die in the film makes me unhappy.  Yes, I believe that Killmonger’s death scene was one of the most lovely and powerful moments of the film, but I really did not want Killmonger to die.  Both Klaw and Killmonger were remarkably entertaining and tremendous and losing them both in the film brought it down just a little bit.  END OF SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER.

Black Panther is long overdue in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  It gives a section of the public a hero to look up to.  Someone who looks the same as they do.  This allows people of color a chance to see themselves in a super hero for the first time.  Sure, there was Blade, who is really the first African-American comic book movie, but Black Panther is first in the new age of comic book movies as a massive film genre.  There is an absolute audience built in as the box office will attest to (Black Panther made over 25 million on Thursday night alone).  It is one of the strongest introductions in the MCU and feels like something new and different for that decade spanning franchise.

4.85 stars

This is an amazing, real-life story told the most boring and unappealing manner.  Director Clint Eastwood made several choices here that I just do not understand.

Of course, the biggest and most apparent choice made by the Oscar winning director was taking the real-life heroes from this major news event and have them play themselves. Childhood friends Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sadler star in this movie based on their heroism of one day on a train from Amsterdam to Paris.  On that train, the trio, along with a few train customers, stopped a terrorist from hijacking the train and most likely saved the lives of everyone on the train.

This portrayal of this heroic event took all of ten minutes to show and play out. These ten minutes at the end of the film were amazing and suspenseful.  Unfortunately, the previous 75 minutes of the film was filled with boredom, questionable narrative choices, truly awful writing and dialogue, and wooden delivery from the entire cast, not just the inexperienced men playing themselves.

The film starts by showing the three boys as children in school, which accomplishes nothing narratively, except, perhaps, to allow Eastwood to comment on his obvious dislike for the educational system.  We are shown that these three boys are constantly getting into trouble, although most of the time it is the teachers and the administrators who are to blame because of their unfair accusations toward the boys.  We are introduced to Anthony (young Anthony played by Paul-Mikél Williams) as a smart-mouthed troublemaker who appeal to the outcast boys Spencer(William Jennings) and Alek (Bryce Gheisar).  They become friends, do stuff together, until Anthony decides he is leaving the all-boy Christian school to get a girlfriend.  He does I guess.  Then, there is more trouble and Alek is sent to live with his father out of town.  This was apparently tough for Spencer,but we do not see it.  As soon as Alek is taken away, we flash forward to older Spencer, who is back with Anthony (sans girlfriend, oh well).

At this point, Spencer has made a decision to join the Air Force and texted Alek, who does not return that text, implying that there is some distance between them, though Spencer was confused by it.

None of the story with the children actors is ever dealt with or returned to, nor does it factor in to anything that the threesome decide to do in the second half of the film.  It is literally just a time filler.

We see Spencer fail in his attempt to earn the positions in the Air Force that he wanted, and to be asked to leave.  Again, though, none of that carried any stake for the remainder of the film.  It was just something that happened and is never mentioned again.

Just a few scenes after being tossed out from the Air Force, Spencer is convincing Anthony (who we know next to nothing about) to accompany him on a trip across Europe.  The pair engage on the “selfie-tour” across Europe, eventually meeting up with Alek in Germany because he wanted to spend time with a girl he had met (though, I believe he made her up since we never see her at all and he acts later as if he is completely free of a relationship).

During this whole trip, you cannot imagine how wooden and awkward the scenes with these three are.  There seemed to be very little acting skill on display, and even if they had great skills this dialogue was unlike that spoken by human beings.

There was only one scene in the entire movie, prior to the train sequence, that made me think it was important for later and that was when Spencer was learning some first aid in the Air Force.  Practically every other scene in the film could be tossed aside.

The train sequence was thrilling and very compelling.  I do not understand why the remainder of the film could not have been this interesting or could have built better to this ending scene.

I feel bad for Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sadler because they are true heroes who put their lives on the line to help save people without a second thought for their own safety.  A film of this incident should have highlighted this more than this film did.  I do not know what Clint Eastwood was thinking through most of this film, but it was surely a shame.

1.2 stars