Happy Mother’s Day.

In honor of Mother’s Day, we have a film about a mother protecting her children from a home invasion.

You can take your mom to this movie for Mother’s Day… or you can take her to a better one.

Gabrielle Union played Shaun, a mother of two and her estranged father has just recently passed away which led her to taking her kids to his home, where she grew up, to prepare to sell it.  However, four men are there as well, searching for something that her father had hidden away inside this house that is like a fortress.  Shaun winds up locked out of the house while her children were trapped inside with the robbers.  And so she had to try to break in.

There were some interesting potential ideas here, but none of them were expanded upon and, in its place, was simply a paint-by-the-number thriller with nothing that much thrilling going on.

The film hinted at Shaun’s father being involved in some kind of criminal enterprise, but we have no idea what that might be or if that is the reason why Shaun and her father were estranged.  The film hinted at Shaun having a bad childhood in the house, but does not go into more detail on it.  The film keeps saying that these crooks broke into the wrong house, but it wants you to think about Shaun as a typical mother despite consistently calling her an “exceptional woman.”

Any of these bits could have made the film more interesting.  Still, it basically comes down to the typical story.

None of the villains were interesting at all. The leader of the group was Billy Burke, and his character was after this item for reasons.  The rest of the group was as stereotypical as you could get with these type of characters.  None of them are memorable, even in the slightest bit.  That is, of course, because we have no idea what their motivations are, how they were connected to her father etc.

I liked Gabrielle Union here and I appreciated her being front and center as the main protagonist.  She did not need anyone to rescue her and, in fact, when her husband (who appears late in the film without any introduction) arrives, he gets slapped down quickly.  Heck, even the children get more to do that this guy.

Breaking In feels like it had a premise that could have been solid, but it squandered it completely.  Gabrielle Union is fine here, but the villains are forgetful and the stakes are low.  The film sets up lots of potentially intriguing bits that never pay off.  It is basically a cable TV movie at best.

Happy Mother’s Day

2.4 stars

Motherhood never had it so good.

Charlize Theron stars as Marlo, a mother of two who is now very pregnant with her third child and is having the pressures and the constant barrage of parenting weighing down upon her.  Her husband Drew (Ron Livingston) seems like a good guy, but he is busy with a new job and does not have the time to help.  So Marlo’s wealthy brother (Mark Duplass) provides an option.  A night nurse, who will come to the house and take care of the baby, allowing Marlo to get some much needed rest.  Despite being resistant to the idea at first, Marlo comes around after an exceedingly difficult day.  And so, we meet the free-spirited Tully (Mackenzie Davis).

Theron and David show great chemistry right off the bat and the pair of them carry the movie with their interactions and their dialogue.  You can see how much of an effect that Tully has had on Marlo as she appears to be getting along considerably better than she was.

I have to say, the ending, which I had considered early on in the film as a possibility, is an ending that I am not sure how I feel about.  Without spoiling it, I do not necessarily think they needed to go in this direction.  It does not ruin the film, but I am not sure it was needed.  It is definitely an interesting idea that was hinted at as the film moved along, so it is not as if it just came out of nowhere.  I can see people being torn between this ending.

This film is listed as a comedy from Academy Award (R)-nominated director Jason Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air), but I am not certain this is a comedy.  If it is, it falls more into the dramedy type films similar to what Judd Apatow might make.  The humor come more from the writing and the dialogue than the situation.  That does not make it bad, by any stretch.

Tully provides a real look at the difficulties of motherhood, especially facing a family with a limited budget, a special needs child whose behavior needs more than they can give, and a newborn.  Theron plays this brilliantly, showing the frustration and the anxiety of the situation.  She looks like she has been through the wringer, tired, beaten and depressed.  She is also able to project the joys that come from just sitting and watching your child sleep.  These quiet moments are very strong in Tully.

There is a clear charm to this film and I like some of the ideas that it raises.  I am not sure I liked the ending but I do appreciate the effort to do something original.  Charlize Theron and Mackenzie Davis are the main reasons to see this movie as both give wonderful performances.

My guess is this will resonate even more with the mothers and fathers out there.

3.65 stars

I knew very little about Bad Samaritan before I went into the theater.  Honestly, I wasn’t sure about anything.  Once I saw David Tennant walk on-screen, I actually vaguely remembered seeing a trailer once for this movie, and I thought, oh, yeah.

That was this movie.  It was an “oh yeah.”

It wasn’t horrid.  It wasn’t good.  It existed in-between.  It felt like a typical low budget thriller where the hook of the movie was David Tennant doing his best over-the-top psycho imitation.

Small time thief with a heart of gold Sean Falco (Robert Sheehan) used his position as a valet for an Italian restaurant, with his friend Derek (Carlito Olivero), to sneak customers cars and rob their houses while they eat.   However, when he arrives at the house of customer Cale Erendreich (David Tennant), he finds more than he was expecting.  There in his office is a woman (Kerry Condon) chained up and leather-strapped to a chair.  After an unsuccessful attempt to free her, Sean has to get the car back before Cale discovers what has happened.  Filled with guilt over leaving her behind, Sean tries to make it right by going to the police.

Let’s start with what I liked about the film.  Robert Sheehan was a fresh face that I was able to relate to as he struggled to try and get someone to help him stop this killer.  I liked Sheehan and thought he gave a very solid and charming performance here for what it was worth.  I also think the character did things that made sense and I never thought about how stupid some of his choices were and that helps in this type of movie.

David Tennant is his usually strong self, really taking this character over-the-top.  I believed that he was a crazy man who was obsessed with order and chaos, especially as the person in control of both of those.  However, the writing on the character of Cale Erendreich was too implausible for me.  He was that type of character who always is one step ahead of everyone and somehow is able to take each twist as if he were expecting it.  So while I did enjoy the excessive nature of the character, I found the ludicrous things that happen to be stretching the possible.

However, the plot and the plot contrivances are so tough to swallow that the film loses credibility.  For example, Cale realizes almost immediately once he returned home that someone had broken into the house, and he does so with the barest of clues.  Then, he is able to remove all signs of the woman and his serial killer nature before the police arrive.  The time frame of this seems to deny the possibility of this man being able to clear his home of all manner of evidence in a remarkably minimal period.  I had trouble with that immediately.

And then…Cale Erendreich, serial killer or Internet troll?  When part of his attempt to break Sean includes posting fake posts on Facebook and cyberbullying his girlfriend, some of the juice gets taken out of the character.

I was entertained enough by the film, especially since I came into it with zero expectations, but it is hardly a good film.  It is not the worst way to spend a lazy afternoon or evening with some time to kill, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it.

2.75 stars

I am emotionally scarred.

This will be as spoiler free of a review as I can do because I went out of my way to avoid spoilers and I think it truly enhanced some of the unbelievable things that happen here.

To speak on that for a moment.  After the premiere earlier this week in Hollywood, some online reviews, in particular Forbes and Variety, posted reviews filled with spoilers for the new Avenger film.  Now, you may say so what.  The articles are clearly marked as spoiler filled so if you read it and were spoiled, it is your fault, right?

Not necessarily.  Because there are trolls out there in the world of the Internet whose sole purpose seems to be to try and ruin anything like this by posting spoilers on Twitter or in comment sections just to be assholes.  There was a group on Facebook that had the hashtag #AvengetheDCEU and they wanted their followers to vote Infinity War down just because. Understand, I do not blame DC fans for this.  These people are not DC fans. They are just little people who want to feel powerful by ruining this epic film-going experience.  So now, Forbes and Variety, in all of their stupidity, just armed these idiots with everything they need to know to cause problems.

With that knowledge, I avoid everything social media for the last couple of days because I did not want to be spoiled.  I went into the original Avengers spoiled about Coulson’s fate and it was just not as impactful as it should have been.

So I stayed off Twitter.  I avoided reading any YouTube comments.  I did not read or watch any reviews online.  I did not go to Facebook.  I just shut that part of my existence off.  And it was so worth it.

Now, Avengers Infinity War.

God, it was great.

Thanos, the Mad Titan (Josh Brolin) is on a quest to claim all six of the Infinity stones scattered across the cosmos and our heroes, everyone from Avengers to Guardians of the Galaxy to individuals like Spider-man and Dr. Strange came together in an attempt to prevent that from happening.

Lets start off with Thanos.  Thanos is amazing.  The best Marvel villain ever.  The hyperbole is certainly earned.  But it was more than just the big time bad ass that he was.  Thanos had tremendous depth to him and truly believed what he was doing was the right thing to do.  Josh Brolin brought so much unexpected emotion and characterization to the purple sociopath that you can almost understand why the guy is trying to this horrible thing.

And lets talk CGI for a minute.  I never once thought about Thanos being a CGI character.  He was so well done that it never entered my mind.  In fact, it wasn’t until after the movie when I was listening to a review that mentioned the CGI that I even remembered that Thanos was mostly created by technicians.  I marveled at the precision of each moment this character was on screen.

Honestly, this is Thanos’s movie.  He carries it very well.

The action is second to none.  There is so much going on that there are very few moments to catch your breath.  Infinity War reminded me very much of some of the battles in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, when they would bounce back in forth between different locations with different action beats going down.  Although I do not feel this way, I can understand some people’s criticism of the film having too much going on because there certainly is a lot happening.

I believe that each character involved in the story has their special moment to shine and stand out.  Directors Anthony and Joe Russo showed that they were capable of doing this in Civil War, and they really bring it here as well, but this time with way more characters.  However, I will admit that, because of the vast number of characters, very few characters are allowed to develop more.  That is for their individual movies.  This is a grand team up and it does depend on you already knowing who these heroes are. I, of course, already knew them, so that was not a problem for me.  There are some characters who are background in this film.  Again,. not a bad thing, just what had to happen.

There is so much emotion and depth to this simple story that I came out of the film shaken.  There are so many awesome surprises in this film and some that are devastating.  I will not spoil any of them, but just know that the stakes have never been higher.

This is still a Marvel movie so there is still their trademark humor here, but this time it was different.  The rest of the movie was so dark that the humor was a welcome respite to the mood of the film.  Tone did change depending on who was on screen.  The Guardians of the Galaxy felt like a different tone than the Iron Man stuff or the Vision stuff.  And despite that being a danger in film, here the Russo Brothers made that work extremely well.

There were great performances everywhere, led by Josh Brolin.  Robert Downey Jr. was his normal brilliant self.  Tom Holland embodied Spider-Man.  Benedict Cumberbatch really feels like Dr. Strange.  Chris Pratt brought it as Peter Quill, Star-Lord.  Karen Gillian is not in it as much as I would have liked, but her scenes were wonderfully impactful.

One of the best aspects of the film is seeing these heroes interact with heroes from other films.  Seeing Dr. Strange with Spider-man and Iron Man, seeing Thor with the Guardians etc was great and the writing of the dialogue continues to provide us great witty banter and in depth character traits.

Now, the ending.  I loved it, but I do have to say that I have one issue with it, but it would be a HUGE spoiler so I cannot go into now.  It is not going to affect my score, but it was something that made me pause as I watched it.

This is the beginning of the culmination of 10 years of Marvel Studios.  This is a brilliant film that encompasses all of what is great about the last 18 movies and delivered on the tease of Thanos big time.  And the comic book geek in me squealed at the end post credit scene.  Dark, funny, tragic, dramatic, exciting, pulse pounding moments filled the 150 plus minutes and left me feeling both exhilarated and crushed.

Thankfully, it is just one year before Avengers 4 arrives.

5 stars

There has been a lot of hatred leveled at this film, and I am not certain the reasoning behind it.  Claims of “fat-shaming” seem to fall short if you, you know, actually watch the movie.  Now, if they claimed that the movie wasn’t as funny as it could have or should have been, perhaps I would agree.

Amy Schumer plays Renee Bennett, a woman who has a low level job that is matched by her low level confidence.  She sees how the world treats the beautiful people and she desires to have a part of that.  So when she has an accident during exercising and hits here head, she suddenly awakes seeing herself in a different view.  She actually sees herself the way she always wanted to be seen.

We, as the audience, only ever see Amy Schumer as she is, but the perception of herself as a beautiful woman changes the confidence of Renee so that she can get the job of her dreams, hook up with a sweet and kind man (Rory Scovel) she meets at the dry cleaners and become remarkably successful.

While there are plenty of plus sized jokes to be had here, I do not think the main message is fat-shaming.  I believe the message is clearly self-confidence leads to happiness and success.  If you believe in yourself, you can accomplish anything you want.  It does not matter what the world sees you as, but what maters is how you see yourself.

All of these fit together in a solid message that I think is worth hearing.

Now, the film itself is okay, but nothing really jumps out as great.  Amy Schumer is very good in the lead role.  She is warm and charismatic and delivers a strong performance.  Michelle Williams, who plays Renee’s boss, is really good as Avery, a rich, spoiled, yet deeply self-doubting woman (whose voice is like a baby doll).  The connection between Renee and Avery is a positive in the film.  I also enjoyed the natural feeling relationship that developed between Renee and Ethan, the man she meets in the dry cleaners.

Many of these side characters play against type.  You would expect them to respond in certain ways to Renee, but then they stop and do something different.  It had a feel of realness about it, despite the silly concept going on with them.

One problem is that the film, which is meant to be a comedy, does not have a ton of laughs in it.  It has a few that are nice chuckles, but nothing that really makes you laugh out loud.  It is more like an uplifting, crowd pleaser of a film than a comedy.  That is not necessarily bad, but fans of Schumer’s may be expecting something else.

The film does also feel fairly predictable.  You kind of know how this movie is going to go, and, in the end, that is really how it turns out.

Still, despite it not being a great film, I enjoyed watching it.  It may have felt overlong, but the message is an important one for people to hear and Amy Schumer does a solid job delivering it with some entertainment.

3.2 stars

This one ain’t no A Quiet Place.

The latest cheaply made horror film from the new masters of cheap made horror films, Blumhouse, came out this weekend.  However, many of Blumhouse’s recent films, while cheap to produce and make, are not cheap in the area of filmmaking.  On the poster for Truth or Dare, it tells you it comes from the producers of Get Out and Happy Death Day.  Truth or Dare does not remotely come anywhere close to either of those two films in quality or entertainment value.

Well, there is entertainment to be had here, in the same manner that Tommy Wiseau’s The Room is entertaining.  It falls into the “so bad it’s good” area and there is unintentional humor to be found here.

A group of college kids head to Mexico before graduation and wind up in an old broken down monastery playing a game of Truth and Dare.  However, when they return to the  States, they realize that there is a demon that is forcing them to continue playing the game with deadly consequences.

Where do I start?  How about the funny faces that the kids make when the demon possesses them?  It is perhaps the most laugh-inducing thing of the whole film.  It looks like a poor man’s Joker face.  Come on, that isn’t creepy.  It is just laughable.

Then, none of these characters are worth cheering for.  In fact, most of them are just horrible people.  Even the film’s supposed heroine/protagonist Olivia (Lucy Hale), who tries to get out of the Spring Break trip by going to build houses for Habitat for Humanity, is shown in the end to be a selfish, lying schemer.  What she does at the end of the film is simply impossible to believe and flies completely opposite of what this character was intended to be in the first act of the film.

When these characters die, there seems to have little to no effect on the others in their group.  They keep saying that they have lost friends to this game, but they don’t look like they are upset.  Plus, none of the deaths have any style to them.  The film is rated PG-13 so the worst death we see is one of them stabbing a pencil into his/her eye, and even that is angled so you don’t really see anything.  This film feels like a bad rip off of the Final Destination films without the creativity.

This is a bad film, but it can be funny so it is not a total waste of your time.  Don’t see it in the theater though.

1.4 stars

Wes Anderson is back with a brand new movie, his second animation film, called Isle of Dogs.  You can definitely tell that this is a Wes Anderson film.

In a futuristic Japan, a crooked mayor exiles all dogs to a garbage island to protect the humans from the deadly Dog Flu, despite there being a potential cure being found by his political adversary.  However, the mayor’s ward, Atari, hijacks a plane and heads to the Isle of Dogs in search of his personal dog, Spots.  Crashing the plane on the isle, a pack of Alpha Dogs find him and choose to help him try and find his dog.

Atari is not actually the main character.  That would go to the Alpha Dog, Chief (voiced by Bryan Cranston).  Chief is the lone voice of opposition to helping the boy, trying to get the rest of the group to follow him away.  He is always getting outvoted, so he has to go along with them.

Let’s start with the positives, because I think there are plenty of those.  The animation is wonderful and feels original.  It is unlike most anything I have seen and I did enjoy looking at it.

Another positive is the great voice cast.  Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Scarlet Johansson, Frances McDormand, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Greta Gerwig, Harvey Keitel, F. Murray Abraham, Yoko Ono, Tilda Swinton, Ken Watanabe, Courtney B. Vance, Liev Schreiber, and Bob Balaban are included.  Many of these actors are regulars in Wes Anderson’s films and have a comfort level with the material.

The story felt simplistic, yet needlessly complex both.  The villainous mayor and his political plans never really make sense, outside of the fact that he and his years of ancestors were cat people.  There is a political agenda in this movie and it is not that hard to see what Anderson is implying about the mayor and his manipulation of the public.

I also have a bit of a question on why this is set in Japan in the first place.  With the dangers of making an analogy between what is happening to the dogs and what has happened to other races being taken to interment camps, I am not sure Japan was the wisest choice.  I believe Anderson meant to infuse the Japanese culture into the story, which he did, but I am not sure that it truly aided the movie or is worth the potential trouble.

Plus, an argument could be made that there is the “white savior” in this story, thanks to the young girl character Tracy Walker (Greta Gerwig) who stands up to the mayor and helps save the day.

Another issue is that the film does not always translate the Japanese language for the audience.  They pick and choose when they translate and, since that is what Atari speaks, the film is in danger of isolating one of the main characters from the audience and thus not giving the crowd a real reason to cheer for the boy.  The dogs speak English, however, and I felt considerably more connected to them than I did the boy.

Isle of Dogs is a good movie that has some great touches to it, especially if you love the Wes Anderson eccentric films of the past.  However, there are some distinct questions in choices made by the director that might have limited the reach of the film.  Still, I liked more than I disliked.

3.5 stars

The latest video game based movie is Rampage, starring The Rock.  Over the years, we have had very few video game movies that are worth anything.  The video game this movie is based on is one of the simplest games you are going to play so there aren’t a ton of expectations for a brilliant film.

However, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is always entertaining and is worth watching in just about anything he does.  This film came from the director Brad Peyton who brought us San Andreas and Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.  This film falls right into that company so you should know what to expect.

Primatologist Davis Okoye (Dwayne Johnson) works at the San Diego Zoo and has a special relationship with an albino ape named George.  When George is accidentally exposed to a dangerous gas, he begins growing and starts becoming much more aggressive.  Turns out there are two other animals that had been exposed to the same gas and have been turned into giant beast.

Davis does everything he could to keep George calm, but when a group of government agents arrive, led by cowboy-like Russell (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), they take control of George.  Unfortunately, two evil villains at the company whose experiments led to these accidental transformations are looking to draw these monsters to Chicago so they can make money out of the situation.

The three monsters arrive in Chicago and start crushing the city.  And Davis and Naomie Harris arrive to try to stop George.

Okay, so Rampage is a stupid movie.  There are so many moments that are so ridiculous that you can’t believe it.  Some of the characters are poorly written and have terrible dialogue.  Another problem is how these characters suddenly come up with ways around impossible situations- from out of nowhere.  The old Batman (1966) series would have Batman and Robin solving riddles and making illogical guesses that always turned out to be true (like Glu Glutton’s Glue Factory).  There are a lot of “Batman Leaps” in Rampage.

And yet, there is just something entertaining about The Rock and monsters destroying Chicago.

Yes, the two villains are simply horrid.  They are some of the worst villains to grace the screen in a long time.  Still, villain Claire Wyden (Malin Akerman) gets one of the funniest (albeit unintentionally) exits of the film.  I actually laughed out loud when she met her fate.  These villains are total failures and they threaten to turn this movie from a silly B-movie monster flick into a terrible movie.

Thankfully, The Rock is here and he is one of the most charismatic actors we have ever seen.  He can make the worst film watchable.  He does it here as well.  However, the Rock does feel like a video game character himself since he seemingly could not die.  He went through a lot of stuff here, but it never appears to stop him.

The monster fights were actually pretty good.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan felt like he was playing a movie version of Negan (from Walking Dead), and yet I liked him.  He is one of those charismatic individuals whom may come close to The Rock.  He is just enjoyable to watch, and he is fun to root for here.

Sure, there are plenty of moments where you can’t help but roll your eyes at the ridiculousness of it, but you can be entertained by Rampage.  You have to approach it in the right manner.  This was never going to be an award winner.  It is a big, dumb action movie, with giant monsters.  If that is enough, then there may be enough here for you to have a good time.

3 stars

Chappaquiddick tells the true story of a political scandal that ended the presidential run of Edward “Ted” Kennedy in 1969.

Kennedy, brother of President John Kennedy and candidate Bobby Kennedy, was planning a run for president in 1972 when his car went off a bridge into the water, claiming the life of a political strategist Mary Jo Kopechne.

According to the scandal, Ted left the scene of the accident and did not report it for 9 hours, thus leaving Mary Jo to die in the submerged car.

Ted Kennedy, played here by Jason Clarke, is shown as a damaged man who was desperately seeking the attention and approval of his father Joe (Bruce Dern).  Too drunk to be driving, Ted drove the car off the bridge.  However, the film does not show us how Ted escaped the car or why Mary Jo (Kate Mara) could not.  According to the film, Ted retreated to the party that he had come from to find his two friends/associates Joe Gargan (Ed Helms) and Paul Markham (Jim Gaffigan) to help him.  They returned to the scene of the accident and tried to get into the car to save Mary Jo, unsuccessfully.  Joe and Paul left Ted with the expectation that he would report the accident, but he does not until the next morning.

The film indicates that Mary Jo survived for a while breathing in a small pocket of air in the car.  Had Kennedy called immediately, would she have survived?  He certainly believed that after he and his friends had returned that she was already dead, thus reducing the immediate need.  This was still left up in the air for the audience to infer what happened.

The film also played with the spinners after the event happened.  They were coming up with reasons why this had happened and how they would make it not destroy Kennedy’s career.  They kept claiming he had a concussion and was in shock.  Though the film hinted that that was not the case with a flash to the face of the doctor, I do believe that the film showed Kennedy in a state of shock after the events happened.  Maybe not concussed (though I would believe it), but certainly diminished.  Was he thinking straight?  I don’t know.

The performances were strong.  The story was well tole, but it did feel as if there could have been so much more to this story than what we got.  Maybe a mini-series on TV would be more effective.

What the film does very well is show the character of Ted Kennedy and the drawbacks he has.  The relationship between Ted and his father was very compelling and I could have used more of that.  It really was a psychological character study of a man who some believed would be president, but who failed to live up to the dynasty of his family name, especially inside his own head.  Ted’s lack of confidence lead to this entire situation, while the strength of his last name led to the lack of results in the criminal case.  I think there is no doubt that this prevented Kennedy from becoming president.

I still wonder how Ted Kennedy escaped from the car while Mary Jo did not.  There are several questions in this film that are left unanswered.  Sure it would have called for speculation, but some of that would have helped the overall quality.  Still, good performances, in particular from Jason Clarke, Ed Helms and Bruce Dern, carry this to a decent biopic.

3.35 stars

This past week, The Top 10 Show did the Top 10 Raunchy Teen Movies list and I had a definite problem filling my list (which I do every week after their podcast) up with films. In fact, I could only find six that I could rank.

Now, Blockers would be number one on that list.

As I stated, this genre of film is far from my favorite, but I really found Blockers to be more than just the sex jokes and the raunchy teen film.  It had some real heart, some very strong characters and a lot of really funny humor.  Who would have guessed?

Three senior girls(Kathyrn Newton, Geraldine Viswanathan and Gideon Adlon), who had been best friends since the first day of school, make a pact that all three of them would lose their virginity on prom night.  #sexpact2018.  Their parents (Leslie Mann, John Cena and Ike Barinholtz) accidentally discover this pact and decide that they would prevent their daughters from being successful in their pursuit of sex.

And so hilarity commences.

There were several things about Blockers that caught me off guard.  Mainly, I really liked how the story played the girls part of the story in a realistic light and showed three young female characters who were strong, brave and knew what they wanted.  These three young ladies were very different, but their friendship absolutely came through on screen and that chemistry between the three of them was a huge plus for the movie.  It was especially nice to see this type of a film coming from a female perspective that did not feel the need to play the girls off as the victims or as naive.  And all three actresses do a fantastic job, in particular Geraldine Viswanathan, who looks like a star.

The other half of the film featured the adults, chasing their daughters and this part of the film was considerably more slapstick or cartoonish, and these three actors do a great job with that.  Leslie Mann is great here, bringing the most experience in the role.  John Cena continues to show that he has skill in comedy and, while he still is learning, he provides a very solid and believable performance.  However, Ike Barinholtz was probably my favorite character because of how much his character played with the expectations of who he was.  He was shown originally as a scumball who cheated on his wife, but we learn more and more about him and we see him play against that type most of the time. This sets up the emotional reveal at the end that is a very strong pay off.

Most importantly, this movie has laughs.  It is well written and expertly executed, which is even more amazing when you consider that this is director Kay Cannon’s directorial debut.  She does an admirable job of balancing the two parts to the story and creating a group of characters in this ensemble that really stretch across the spectrum seamlessly.

The trailers make this look like a film that relies on the low brow humor, but I did not find it that way.  Sure there are jokes that would fall into that, but there are many other instances that are extremely funny and, most of those low brow jokes actually do fairly well.

However, I had to deduct a huge part of the score because of an extended puke scene and I HATE puke scenes.  Sure, this scene was not particularly realistic in its projectile vomit use, I still hate those.  I just do not like them.  It is a personal preference.

I also liked the three boys whom the girls take to prom.  Each of them play on typical stereotypes of characters but switch things around to make them fresh.  They felt like real kids who might actually like being together.

I will say that there were a couple of moments at the end of the movie that did not necessarily ring true.  At least one of the storylines between the parents and the kids turned out to be too easy of a fix- almost as if it were on a sitcom that had reached the end of the episode and needed to wrap up.  It felt as if the girl (without spoiling) should have been more angry with the parent than what she was.

Either way, Blockers was considerably better than I ever thought it would be.  It was very funny, keeping me laughing consistently throughout, and had unexpectedly sweet and pretty developed characters.  There are great performances and these characters end up playing against type.  Blockers is a very entertaining comedy, and that is something I don’t say too often.

4 stars

(sorry Chris…)

Hoo-boy.

A Quiet Place is a horror/thriller, heavy on the thriller as I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, desperately looking to grasp on to anything to brace myself.

I have not been this full of tension and apprehension in a film in a long time.  And A Quiet Place starts off filled with this intensity and just never lets up for the entire 90+ minute run time.  I felt the need to inhale and try to be as quiet as I could while in the theater just because…

A Quiet Pace is the story of a married couple, Lee (John Krasinski) and Evelyn (Emily Blunt), who are the parents of three children (Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, and Cade Woodward).  This family lives in what seems to be a post apocalyptic world where alien monsters arrived and, while blind, respond violently to any sound that is made.  So in order to avoid being immediately slaughtered by these hideous creatures, the family is forced to live their lives without making any sound whatsoever.

Therein lies the tension because the human race is not meant to be a quiet race.

John Krasinski is also the director of this film and he does an absolutely tremendously spot on job.  Despite the fact that the dialogue is basically eliminated from the film, the manner in which he tells this story is amazing.

One of the best parts to me is that Krasinski does not waste time with endless exposition explaining what has happened to the world, or how this family has survived up to this point.  None of that is important.  Krasinski provides some newspaper clippings that help fill in some of the blanks, but the rest of it is left up to the imagination of the audience.  The cold open begins with a black screen with the words 89 days on it.  This tells you that whatever it was that caused this apocalypse has happened.  Then after the opening (which leaves you breathless, by the way) the film jumps to day 472 (around there).  Because of that, it seems obvious that this family has spent most of the last 390+ days figuring out how to live with the minimal use of sound.

And I accepted that completely.  I did not feel the need to know every little detail about how things work or what had happened to get them to this point. The film drops you into this point in time and you go with it.  Exposition weighs down so many movies that the distinct lack of exposition was a novel way to go.

The sound editing of this movie is absolutely brilliant.  The silence is played perfectly, and every little sound is masterfully placed for maximum intensity.  There are some jump scares, but they are well done and are placed int he film in exceptional locations.  They fit and this movie by no means depends on them.  They are just simply another tool that this film uses with utmost proficiency.

Then, the performances are mind blowing.  Emily Blunt has so much skill in conveying what she needs to with her face and her body and her attitude.  Krasinski is powerful here and he had me completely engaged with his character.  Both main children, Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe are amazing.  Simmonds is in real life deaf and so is her character Regan, and the film does this very creative technique to demonstrate that whenever Simmonds has the point of view.  It was very effective.

They also showed the use of sign language, which was one of the way this family communicated with one another and it was compelling.  I have never seen someone yelling at each other in sign language, but I did see it here.  Amazing job by these actors.

There is a great connection between these characters who are dealing with so much more than just these monsters that will kill them if they make any sound.  There are intricate problems between each character and these actors bring out the best in each other.

Another great thing is this family of characters are shown to be very intelligent instead of the bumbling idiots that usually take up horror movie space.  I love that.  They were doing things that made sense and even those choices that might not be wise are done in service to the characters.  It is apparent that the characters are the most important part of this story and everything else just goes to help show who these characters are and how they are going to grow.  And you believe it totally.

The creatures were made by Industrial Lights & Magic (ILM) and it shows because these monsters are terrifyingly authentic and look to be right out of someone’s nightmares.  There is no troubled CGI here.  However, Krasinski wisely does not over use the shots of the monsters and use them at the proper time to illustrate the characters and the terror of the situation.

There are so many moments when I was simply holding my head and wondering if this film could be more tense…and then it topped itself.  I legitimately came out of this movie with a physical visceral anxiety, amazed at what I had just seen and shaken by the process of seeing it.  I sat through to the end of the credits not because I wanted to see them or expected any post credit scene, but because I needed to take a breather.

This is maybe my favorite movie of the young year so far.  I was completely invested in the film and the characters as I gritted my teeth and held my breath through each anxiety filled scene.  A Quiet Place is an original film with great performances, a well-told story that does not bog itself down with unnecessary exposition and tension from the get-go.  Great job to all involved.

5 stars