SPOILERS

The last Star wars movie became one of the most divisive films in the series’ run, if not in all of the history of cinema.  People either loved or hated the Last Jedi and there did not seem to be anything in-between.

To me, Solo: A Star Wars Story feels very divisive within the film.  There are scenes/moments that I really loved about the film and there are scenes/moments that I really disliked to downright hated which really made the film feel disjointed to me.  Was there more that I loved than I didn’t?  I have been mulling this over since seeing it.  Let’s see if we can work this out.  Be warned, I am going into spoiler territory with this review because I feel it is necessary to full express my feelings on Solo.

The film starts with a non-crawl.  Unlike the other Star Wars movies, Solo did not have a detailed opening crawl, but it did provide info we need to know to start the film.  I liked that use of the non-crawl, which set the film differently from previous Star Wars films, but did not just jump in (like Rogue One did).

However, all of the stuff from Han’s planet Corellia I disliked tremendously.  Especially the part with the ridiculous worm-like creature named Lady Proxima.  We are introduced to young Han (Alden Ehrenreich) and the love of his life Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke).  This intro felt clunky and ill-paced and just dragged the beginning of the film down.

As Han is trying to escape the planet with Qi’ra, we learn how he got his name “Solo”.  This is perhaps one of the worst parts of the film.  There are so many things wrong with this scene that it is hardly worth talking about.

I really enjoyed the moment that Han met Chewbacca for the first time.  This moment was truly well done, hearkening back to when Luke Skywalker was tossed into a pit to be killed.  The Han / Chewy relationship is perhaps the strongest aspect of Solo: A Star Wars Story as these two characters are very well done.

Although, the moment that Han literally speaks Wookie… well, that was a lowlight in what was otherwise a very strong scene.

I very much liked most of this cast.  Woody Harrelson as Beckett, a mentor of sorts for Han, is very well done.  Harrelson continues to be consistently strong in whatever performance he is asked to do.

Everyone is raving about Donald Glover’s work as a younger Lando Calrissian, and I agree that he is one of the strongest parts of the movie, but I would not go as far as to say that he stole the whole movie.  He was definitely excellent, though.

Lando’s droid, though, L3 (voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge) is perhaps the worst part of the film (maybe second to the name thing).  She is a droid who is in favor of droids’ rights and she is constantly harping on it.  It takes everything that the Internet hates about the SJW points of view and doubles down on it.  I would not be surprised to find that L3 becomes as disliked a character as Jar-Jar (for different reasons).

The Kessel Run stuff that we go in the Millennium Falcon was good, but most of the stuff on the planet of Kessel itself felt like a boring distraction.  It felt very much like the casino world scenes from The Last Jedi.  This was where the movie really slowed down its pacing to a crawl.

The film had some predictable twists at the end that you see coming.  The entire film, everyone keeps telling Han that he should trust no one, and, who would have guessed, that turns out to be true.  This was not a good stretch for the movie, but the whole “Han shot first” movement should be happy after seeing this film.

One of those twists that made no sense was Beckett’s rival group led by Enfys Nest (Erin Kellyman), who earlier in the movie was directly responsible for the deaths of Beckett’s love Val (Thandie Newton) and friend Rio (Jon Favreau)- two characters vastly underdeveloped, turns out to be heroic and wanting to start an arm of the Rebellion.  When Enfys Nest revealed herself to be a girl, I was sure she was going to be Beckett’s daughter and that there was a reason she was targeting him.  Nope.  None of that.

However, I loved the ending reveal that Darth Maul (Ray Parks, voiced by Sam Witwer) is alive and that Qi’ra was in league with him.  This played from the animated Clone Wars and Rebel series that featured the return of Darth Maul.  Using this character on the big screen was one of the most effective parts of Solo.

One of the problems with Solo was that I felt no stakes.  All they showed us was items that we already knew about.  We know Han was successful in the Kessel Run.  How Han won the Falcon in a card game (although there was a nice swerve with that). We know he and Chewy are friends.  We know Han doesn’t die here.  I never worried about the character once.

However, I do want to mention that I think Alden Ehrenreich does a wonderful job as Han Solo.  This had to be as difficult of a task that any actor will take up considering how iconic the Harrison Ford version of this character is.  Ehrenreich nailed the role and never once felt, to me, that he was just doing a Harrison Ford imitation.  I stopped thinking about the other version of the character early on and that is an accomplishment.

The story feels very underwhelming, with nothing much more than surface level story telling and character development.  I do not know how much that is because of the well publicized behind the scene troubles this movie faced, replacing original directors Lord and Miller with Ron Howard and then reshooting most of the film.  The fact that this film is not a total mess is a testament to the group of people working on it.

Last week I did the top 10 Star Wars movies list, and Solo:A Star Wars Story would probably fall into that list at #7ish.  It does not come close to the top 6 on that list, but it was not without its enjoyable moments.  It does feel too long and suffers a lot of negatives, but, in the end, I was entertained by most of it. Honestly, as soon as Han meets Chewy, the film gets better.  I am going to slightly recommend this though I can understand if Star Wars fans have trouble with the film.  There is fun to be had here if you go in with your expectations at a reasonable level.

3 stars

My theater was packed for Book Club.  Of course, the demographic of the theater patrons skewed a little older than me.

I expected as much from the crowd when I decided to go to Book Club, since the stars of the film were all actresses and actors of an advanced age.  I was one of the younger people in attendance, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Having said that, I had some positives about the story in Book Club, but, overall, it was perhaps lacking in a few areas.

The cast was great though as we got legendary performers such as Jane Fonda, Candace Bergen, Mary Steenburgen, Diane Keaton, Andy Garcia, Craig T. Nelson, Don Johnson, Richard Dreyfuss, Wallace Shawn, Ed Begley Jr and Alicia Silverstone.

In Book Club, the four lead actresses have been life long friends and get together every month to read a new book and discuss it.  It really is as much of an excuse to get together and drink wine and gossip about their lives.  So when they women decide to read Fifty Shades of Grey, they start looking to spice up their sex lives.

There is a charm among most of these actors.  Keaton, Bergen, Steenburgen and Fonda are very fun together.  I enjoyed the relationship with Steenburgen and Craig T. Nelson as the only married pair of the group.  The other women and their relationships moving forward are enjoyable to a point.

Here is the problem.  The film really becomes your typical, predictable rom-com as the movie progresses.  There are very few surprises in the film (after Candace Bergen and Richard Dreyfuss’s one scene) and it devolves into an unremarkable movie, which, with a cast like this, is a shame.

There is certainly enough likability among these actors that could have sustained the film over the full run time of the movie, but this seemed to really lose steam when we have the same old tropes of rom-coms.

There is a very charming scene involving Steenburgen, Nelson and a Meat Loaf song that is one of the best of the movie, but there is just not enough charm in the film to make up for the lazy writing and the predictable plot.

Now, the music of the movie was extremely varied and fun, with everything from Tom Petty’s Runnin’ Down a Dream, Paul Simon’s Late in the Evening, Hot Chocolate’s You Sexy Thing, and Sybersound’s Don’t Dream it’s Over.  There was a lot of fun music involved here which helped keep the entertainment level at a middle area.

Unfortunately, there is nothing special here.  You may go to Book Club and have a decent time.  There is nothing obviously wrong with the film that will make you hate it.  But it could have been (or should have been) considerably better than it turned out.

2.85 stars

I had a bad feeling about the sequel to the irreverent and crass-filled comedic sense of the first Deadpool.  It felt as if they might not be able to capture the lightning again.

And the first trailer was adequate but not as brilliant as I had oped.  So I had concerns about Deadpool 2, once again starring Ryan Reynolds as the Merc with the Mouth.

However, the final trailer featured some extremely funny lines and a much better tone and I had some hope.  Then the word of mouth was solid, so I had once again hope that it would be better than I thought it would be.

And do you know what?  It was.

In fact, Deadpool 2 was exceptional.  It was funny.  It was absolutely crass and obnoxious, but in the totally best ways.  Ryan Reynolds has proven that he is about the perfect casting of a comic book character as there ever has been.  And the end credits sequence is, arguably, one of the best in comic book movie history.

Deadpool 2 is a thrilling film, with surprising emotional depth, that is chocked full of laughs.

Now, I do think that it is slightly lower than the original.  One reason why I cannot explain because of SPOILERS.  Another reason was that it felt as if the film tried to cram too much of everything into the film.  More action. More crude jokes.  More 4th wall breaking.  There were a couple of times that it just felt too much.

And some of the CGI was a bit wonky.  Compared to what we saw with Thanos and Infinity War, the CGI in Deadpool 2 was no where near as strong.

But those are my only minor criticisms.

I thought Josh Brolin was great as Cable.  He is having himself quite the year, as first Thanos, now Cable and soon Siccario 2.

Then, Zazie Beetz as Domino was an amazing addition to the cast.  I want more of Domino and her luck power.  She had a great chemistry with Deadpool and their bickering was a highlight of the X-Factor stuff.

Speaking of them, I was also amazed at what happened with X-Factor.  Again, this is a spoiler, but their scenes in the film are unbelievably funny and surprising.

Wade Wilson’s (Ryan Reynolds) character arc in the film was great, showing more emotion and depth than you would have expected from what could be considered a spoof of super hero movies.

There is a ton of meta jokes and 4th wall breaking.  Most of them are funny and strike the proper chord with the timing, and it never feels like the meta jokes took me out of the film.  That is just the way Deadpool, the character, is.  He believes he is in a movie and goes about his life in that way.

The music is wonderfully eclectic.  Just like Angel in the Morning serenaded the audience during the first film, Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5, Air Supply’s All Out of Love and Cher’s If I Could Turn Back Time having major moments of the movie.  Add in Peter Gabriel, A-Ha, and Pat Benatar and the film’s music is tremendous.  There is also a James Bond style opening to the song Ashes by Celine Dion.

I was worried that Deadpool 2 would fall into the traps of other comedy sequels and just try to be the same film the first one was, but fortunately, Deadpool 2 is much more than just that.  It has a real heart and has as much profane humor as the original.  It is a very strong sequel.

4.5 stars

Melissa McCarthy is extremely funny, but unfortunately, her movies tend to be up or down.  She has not found a consistent format to translate her humor to the big screen.  Some of her films are just really funny (Spy, The Heat) and some are just terrible (The Boss, Tammy).  Life of the Party falls somewhere in-between.

McCarthy plays Deanna, the mother of Maddie (Molly Gordon)-a senior at college, who is just beginning her senior year.  It was as they were dropping Maddie off at school that Deanna’s husband Dan (Matt Walsh) decides to ask for a divorce.

Crushed, Deanna decides to go back to college, something she gave up on when she married Dan, to complete her degree in archeology.   And Deanna goes back to her alma mater, the same college where her daughter goes.

There was a lot of things that I liked about this film.  I thought Melissa McCarthy was great and I really did like her character Deanna.  The film creates a group of supportive friends for Deanna that actually happen to be Maddie’s friends, which is weird, but works very well.  Several of these characters are funny, especially Helen (Gillian Jacobs) who had spent 8 years in a coma.

There was an interesting relationship formed by Deanna with a young, hunky college student named Jack (Luke Benward) which I thought was interesting.  McCarthy and Benward were good together and made their scenes feel real.

I also thought much of the film was pretty funny and I laughed several times.  For most of the movie, I had a smile on my face and I have said before that if a comedy is funny, it helps cover some of the other flaws that it may have.

And the film does have its share of flaws.  First, there is not really a story here.  I mean, there are what feels like a series of sketches where we throw Deanna and her friends into situations to see what happens, but there is not much of a through line to maintain these scenes and even less of a challenge for Deanna to overcome.

There are some ridiculous moments in the film that just feel too forced.  There is too much focus on the slapstick of the scenes instead of creating the humor in natural ways.

Maya Rudolph played Deanna’s best friend Christine and she was way over-the-top most of the time.  I did truly enjoy her relationship with her husband Frank (Damon Jones) though as it was a running joke that felt like it paid off each time.

The special cameo at the end was probably my least favorite part of the whole film and it felt as if it was in danger of going off the rails.

However, I do think I laughed more than I cringed and I did think much of the film was good hearted so I am giving this one a pass.  If you are a fan of Melissa McCarthy, this one should entertain you.  If you don’t like her shtick, then this will not convert you despite it being better than many.

3.1 stars

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