I love Godzilla. So I was very excited when I saw the trailer for this new Japanese film. Godzilla Minus One is potentially the best Godzilla movie that I have seen.

Godzilla comes from the oceans and attack as a force of nature. This Godzilla is not the “protector” Godzilla as we have been used to over the last few years. This Godzilla is out there as a motiveless devastation.

One of the reasons why this is one of the best Godzilla movies ever is because this film was able to do something that very few (if any) Godzilla films have been able to do: create human characters that are compelling and who I wanted to see.

Fact is many times when the human characters are on the screen in a Godzilla movie, my thought has been, “Get them off the screen, bring up Godzilla.” However, in Godzilla Minus One, the human character are just fantastic. These are characters that I loved and found engaged with every second they were on. Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) is amazing and he fills the screen of this film.

Godzilla looked tremendous. The beast looked like a true monster and he was frightening. Watching Godzilla walk his way through the Japanese cities was unbelievable. It also had the feel of old school Godzilla films.

Yes, this is in Japanese, but, as with all really great foreign films, you forget that you are reading the captions and it just becomes part of the story. The score is utterly exceptional and works to enhance the scenes, especially with Godzilla.

The finale of the film is tense and anxious. It has an extremely emotional ending that had some tears forming in my eyes. The story was more than just Godzilla on a rampage and I loved it.

4.8 stars

Even though I am not a Doctor Who fan, I am aware of the character and I was interested in the first of three specials airing on Disney + that were celebrating the 60th anniversary of the character. After watching special 1 today, I am looking ahead to the next two specials, which are “Wild Blue Yonder” (Dec. 2) and “The Giggle” (Dec. 9).

I thought the special did a great job of introducing me to the characters that were going to be important in this story, especially Donna Temple-Noble, played by Catherine Tate. They gave me, a casual viewer, the information that I needed to enjoy the story and the relationships within the story.

David Tennant looks to be having a blast running around and assuming the face of The Doctor once again. Tennant has so much energy and charisma that you immediately embrace the character, even if you have just a passing knowledge of him.

The special effects are decent for a TV movie, which this basically is. Some of the creatures are fun and have a creative design. Again, not knowing what other creatures on the series looks like, it is hard for me to criticize the current situation. Nothing pulled me out of the story, which is a victory.

Catherine Tate was great too. I can see why this character was as popular as I had heard she was. She had great chemistry with Tennant and the pairing truly worked.

The mystery of why Tennant returned to the Doctor’s face is intriguing as I know that has never happened before in the history of The Doctor. It is something that I look forward to discovering.

3.5 stars

I had no idea what Saltburn was about. I have heard about this movie in reference to the Academy Awards, and I do think that I knew, deep in the recesses of my brain, that Barry Keoghan was in the film. Other than that, I had no idea. I do not even remember ever seeing a trailer.

This was a wild trip. It was dark, demented and disturbing. There were many moments that shocked me or made me grimace. It also has one of the most repulsive characters I have seen in a movie in a long time. I won’t spoil which character it is because there are several options but this character is just horrible.

According to IMDB, “Struggling to find his place at Oxford University, student Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) finds himself drawn into the world of the charming and aristocratic Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), who invites him to Saltburn, his eccentric family’s sprawling estate, for a summer never to be forgotten.”

Barry Keoghan does an astounding job with his performance. He takes his complicated character and makes him relatable. Jacob Elordi, who we just saw playing Elvis Presley in Priscilla, played Felix and brings so much charm and charisma even though there is an uncertainty to exactly what this character’s deal was.

The eccentric characters that were see once Oliver and Felix get to Saltburn are fascinating and include some exceptional acting. Richard E. Grant, Rosamund Pike, Paul Rhys, Carey Mulligan, Archie Madekwe, Sadie Soverall, and Alison Oliver.

The film is very unsettling and I did not expect the way the plot developed. Emerald Fennell, who recently directed Promising Young Woman, does a great job here in a film that is truly wild.

4.25 stars

Ridley Scott is back with a new epic film featuring Napoleon Bonaparte played by Joaquin Phoenix.

This film follows the life of Napoleon Bonaparte from the beginning through to his death. We meet Josephine (Vanessa Kirby), his future wife who could not give him what he wanted most of all, an heir.

We see a bunch of excellent battles with Napoleon leading the French armies against his multitude of enemies. The battle scenes are perhaps the best scenes of the film. Sadly, the best scene was the scene on the ice, which was spoiled in the trailer.

This movie looks amazing. It is shot beautifully. The action scenes are special. The costumes are perfect.

The acting is decent, but maybe not to the level that one would expect. Joaquin Phoenix is good, but it is curious that he never once attempts to have a French accent. I wonder if they were just incapable of doing the accent properly. Not doing it would be better than doing it badly.

Unfortunately, there are more problems with the film. The story just does not work for me. It feels as if it is nothing more than a series of events from Napoleon’s life. There is just not enough of a throughline in the film to make these moments feel like anything but a scrapbook.

I think the film wanted that throughline to be the relationship between Napoleon and Josephine, but that relationship just does not work fully. It felt very inconsistent.

Then, this film is two hours and forty-three minutes long and it absolutely feels like it. I was checking my phone for the time several times during the runtime. I have had films that were this long or even longer that felt like time flew by because the pacing was great. This one was not paced well because I was bored in several situations and that should not be happening.

There are positives here, but there is just something missing from the story that does not allow this to pop the way it should have. I think there could have been a better version of Napoleon.

2.8 stars

Directed by Alexander Payne, The Holdovers was emotional, entertaining and filled with some of the best acting of the year, among an exceptional cast.

According to IMDB, “Nobody likes teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) — not his students, not his fellow faculty, not the headmaster, who all find his pomposity and rigidity exasperating. With no family and nowhere to go over Christmas holiday in 1970, Paul remains at school to supervise students unable to journey home. After a few days, only one student holdover remains — a trouble-making 15-year-old named Angus (Dominic Sessa), a good student whose bad behavior always threatens to get him expelled. Joining Paul and Angus is head cook Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph)-an African American woman who caters to sons of privilege and whose own son was recently lost in Vietnam. These three very different shipwrecked people form an unlikely Christmas family sharing comic misadventures during two very snowy weeks in New England.“

This is wonderfully written and spends a great amount of time developing these three main characters of the film. Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph are amazing in these roles, with these two characters that are so broken and pulled down by life. Giamatti and Randolph act their butts off.

Dominic Sessa played Angus, the one boy who winds up stuck at the school during break, does an excellent job as well, playing off Giamatti. He never looked out of place opposite Academy Award nominated actor Paul Giamatti.

The story was simple, but the characters were extremely deep and developed, bringing the conflict with them. This is not a plot driven film. It tells a story about these people and we see how they get through their lives.

The Holdovers was funny, dramatic, and full of a natural energy. The performances were so good, and I have a feeling that there may be one or two of these names will be back come Oscar time.

4.6 stars

The third film in the Trolls animated franchise arrived in theaters this weekend. Like all of the Trolls movies, there were some fun music and color galore.

This is the typical story trope as we discover that Branch (Justin Timberlake) was once in a boy band with his brothers called BroZone and he has to go and ‘get the band back together’ to save their missing brother.

This was fine. I did like the use of the music throughout the film. The music was highly entertaining as it was more than just boy band music.

The colors are sensational and the animation looked great. It is certainly a visual feast for the young child’s mind. Of course, younger kids are the target audience for Trolls Band Together and, in that manner, it should be very successful.

Positively, I do think there are some clever writing sprinkled in the script that will keep the adults in the audience entertained.

It started a little slowly, but they were into the mission soon and things got better. It has a good message and has great music and visuals.

3.4 stars

I got the opportunity tonight to go to an early screening of the new Disney animated film, Wish, at Cinemark. Wish is scheduled to be released for the Thanksgiving holiday next week. I love getting the chance to see this early.

However, it was, at best, an okay Disney animated film.

I did not hate the film. I did not love it either.

According to IMDB, “Wish will follow a young girl named Asha (Ariana DeBose) who wishes on a star and gets a more direct answer than she bargained for when a trouble-making star comes down from the sky to join her.“

Wish felt more like a series of references to past Disney animated movies than a new and vibrant story of its own. There were a bunch of Easter eggs to former Disney films and it was fun to spot the allusions, but it also tended to get in the way of the story this film was trying to tell.

As always, the animation and the visual look of Wish was stunning and extremely beautiful to watch. There is no doubt that plenty of young children will be engrossed by the movie simply by the way it looked.

The music was okay. Some of the original songs were catchy, but, honestly, there are none that stick out in my head, just a few hours later. While I tapped my toes and nodded my head during the actual songs, there is nothing that sticks out as a big-time hit like films such as The Lion King, Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast had. There was not even songs like Let it Go or We Don’t Talk About Bruno on this soundtrack.

Chris Pine provided the voice for the antagonist of the film, King Magnifico, and he does a solid job. The voice cast was very consistently solid, including Alan Tudyk, Victor Garber, Evan Peters, Jennifer Kumiyama, Angelique Cabral, Natasha Rothwell, and Harvey Guillen.

For a film about the magic of wishes, there did not feel like there was enough Disney magic to make the film feel special.

Having said that, Wish is certainly not a bad time. It was beautiful to look at and had a simplistic message about giving up one’s dreams that is worth hearing. I just would have liked to have connected to this movie more than I did.

3.2 stars

This one is a long way from Jo Jo Rabbit.

Heck, it is a long way from Thor: Love and Thunder.

I was excited about this movie, from Taika Waititi, since I saw the trailers. Michael Fassbender as a coach of soccer, trying to turn around a team from American Samoa that lost a FIFA match 31-0. A soccer game, 31-0. That just should not happen and yet it is a true story.

Sadly, the film was about as good as that soccer team. Not very good.

It was a typical sports movie, with the underdog team getting better as their coach struggled with his own problems.

The film was just not funny. The best parts of the film, I had already seen in the trailers, which I enjoyed. The rest of the film seemed childish and overly silly.

Taika Waititi does have skill at weaving in emotion to what should be a ridiculous situations and there are some moments at the third act that work well. Unfortunately, by that point, I was checked out and was not willing to check back in.

The reason Fassbender was the way he was could have been a real powerhouse moment, but it was not developed properly during the film and so it felt as if it came out of left field, excuse my mixing of sports metaphors.

Within the first ten minutes, I kept saying to myself, “Uh Oh.” I could feel that this wasn’t going to be an enjoyable time, but I held out my hope because I enjoy Waititi so much. The hope was gone soon after and it felt like a wasted opportunity for a really funny and enjoyable sports film.

2.2 stars

David Fincher returned with his latest film that has been in select theaters and debuted on Netflix this weekend.

Michael Fassbender played the Killer, an assassin who missed his most recent target and had to face the consequences for failure.

After his girlfriend is attacked in response, Fassbender methodically started on a quest for vengeance against everyone that was involved in the attack, even adjacently.

Honestly, the story of the movie is pretty simple. Fassbender does a voice over narration but his character says almost zero lines of dialogue through the film. We follow this man who is clearly anything but your typical protagonist as he brutally and without passion executed person after person.

Fassbender is a likable actor and that helps make this assassin human, because his actions are anything but. The voice over repeats the Killer’s mantra before every kill, reminding himself to stick to the plan, and that empathy is weakness.

Fassbender is excellent in this role. It seems to fit him beautifully. Again, he is the standout of the movie because the simplistic plot is only somewhat engaging and the dialogue is nearly non-existent.

Tilda Swinton makes an appearance as one of the eventual targets and her short time on screen was excellent as always. However, we know so little about her character that it does not give us much to feel with her eventual fate.

There is an effective use of tone and mood in this piece, but it is a surprisingly sleight film.

3.6 stars

There have been a lot of negative comments about the latest MCU film, The Marvels from the reviewers that I usually listen to or follow. And I understand perfectly that I am more likely to like this than most people considering my background with Marvel. To call me the target audience would not be a stretch. I have also been a fan of almost everything Marvel Studios has put out (I’m looking at you, Secret Invasion).

So going into The Marvels with a little trepidation because of the reviews (even though it is currently at 61% on Rotten Tomatoes, so considered FRESH), I was nervous.

I am pleased to say that I thought this was a lot of fun and that I enjoyed myself watching it. It is definitely messier than many of the other Marvel Studios movies, but, for me, that did not distract from the key of this film.

That key is the three lead women of the film, Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau, and Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel. Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris and Iman Vellani have such an easy chemistry with each other and they are truly well written. Iman Vellani is a joy and she is charming. She was great in the Ms. Marvel Disney + series and they bring her right into this without skipping a beat. I really believe that Iman Vellani can be the next face of the MCU if done properly. She is a star.

I did enjoy the conflicts that were there between the leading ladies, especially with Carol and Monica. It just felt as if these conflicts were too surface level and could have been deeper and were dealt with too quickly.

They also included Kamala’s family, actors Saagar Shaikh, Zenobia Shroff, and Mohan Kapur, in The Marvels. While it was great to see them again and they did provide some wonderful moments grounding the character bits with Kamala, but they were part of the messy aspects of the film too as Nick Fury brought them aboard the spaceship for some reason.

I have heard a couple critics talk about two major things that were too silly, and ruined the tone of the film. I think a big reason why you may not like this movie is that these two moments bother you. Those who want more serious superhero movies or who may not believe the humor worked well will probably allude to these scenes as the ones that ruin the film. For me, neither of these moments (one deals with cats, one deals with music) bothered me in the slightest, but I have never been opposed to some silliness in my superhero movies.

The villain of The Marvels was Kree warrior Dar-Benn, played by Zawe Ashton, was admittedly weak. There was not a ton of development for her, much like Ronan the Accuser, her predecessor, was in Guardians of the Galaxy. She did have motives that were potentially good, but she was approaching this in too much of a vengeful manner. There have been considerably better villains in the MCU than Dar-Benn.

The special effects of the film were up and down. Much of the CGI was really good, but there were enough moments that stick out to notice.

The last scene of the movie is really like a post credit scene and involves a great cameo that I did not expect to see but was totally welcomed. Meanwhile, the actual mid-credit scene had a cameo that had been spoiled for me, but it opened up a huge area for the MCU.

One problem here is that if you had not watched the Ms. Marvel or WandaVision Disney + shows, you would be more confused than you should be. That is, again, not a problem for me considering that I watch all of these Marvel Disney + shows. However, the normal film goers might struggle at times with the new characters. The film does an okay job of letting us know who these characters are and some details, but it just has a lot to get through considering Monica was involved in 9 episodes of WandaVision and Ms. Marvel had 6 episodes of her own show. I do think that is an issue that Marvel Studios needs to address moving forward.

I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. Iman Vellani was wonderful and I liked both Brie Larson and Teyonah Parris too. There are a lot of Goose the cat (actually the Flerken). The Marvels had its messy moments but it was fun and entertaining.

4 stars

Based on the novel Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley, Priscilla becomes the latest film featuring a story with the King of Rock-N-Roll, Elvis Presley.

However, this time, the film is not specifically about Elvis. The protagonist of this film is Priscilla.

We start the film during the time when Elvis (Jacob Elordi) was in the army and in Germany. During this period, he met 14-year old Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny). These two hit it off, even though Elvis was considerably older than Priscilla. We saw how the pair of them grew closer as Priscilla continued at her school in Germany.

Eventually, Elvis convinced Priscilla’s father (Ari Cohen) to allow Priscilla to come to Memphis to finish school. He said that she would be looked after by his family and staff. Somehow, the father agreed to this. I guess when you are Elvis, you get things done.

The film, directed by Sophia Coppola, continued to follow Priscilla through the years, showing the tribulations of this first love mixing with toxic stardom.

This is absolutely the darkest presentation I have ever seen in reference to Elvis Presley. So much so that I might actually call him the antagonist of the film. Elvis was portrayed as a manipulative, control-freak that insisted on certain things that he expected Priscilla to do, to the point where Priscilla was becoming lost inside her own life.

I found a lot of these scenes very fascinating, although, prior to her death earlier this year, Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis and Priscilla’s daughter, complained about the characterization of her father in the script.

The performances were very strong, in particular Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi. Elordi’s performance was probably the most difficult since there was just recently an Oscar nominated portrayal of Elvis (from Austin Butler in Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 Elvis) and Elordi does a great job of doing something different and not just doing a copy.

I do feel as if there is something missing from the narrative of this film. The ending comes to an end suddenly and did not feel as if it built up to make sense. It seemed as if it needed something more than where it left off because the ending did leave me flat.

There were also a lot of scenes that felt as if it could have been trimmed from the script. There were several moments where I was not sure the purpose for the inclusion of certain scenes in the film and that there were other moments that could have done a better job of spelling out the ideas that Coppola wanted to get through to the audience. Sadly, by the last part of the movie, I was becoming kind of bored.

So I feel the performances were decent and the look at the relationship gave us something new between the two main characters, but I just did not feel the proper development of a narrative and there was too much that did not work. While it is not a terrible film by any stretch, Priscilla could have been so much more.

2.8 stars

With the new Beatles song dropping today, which I had not heard of until today, I discovered that there was also a short which I watched on YouTube.

It was the story of how Paul and Ringo came back and finished a song that had been on the tapes that Yoko Ono had given to them back in the 1990s that led to “Free as a Bird.”

Listening to Paul tell this story was truly emotional and had me feeling as if I were ready to sob. This film is only 12 + minutes long, but it was amazing.

This has been my favorite short in years. It made me feel and I was utterly fascinated by the story of Now and Then, the “last” Beatles song, a song that included John Lennon’s vocals, Paul on bass, Ringo on drums and a mix that included George on a guitar solo.

You are able to get a song that includes all four former Beatles, despite the fact that two of them are gone. For Beatles fans like me, this short is magnificent. I think that even those people who are only slight fans will love seeing how they were able to create this song.

Go out of the way to see this.

5 stars

Edit: I see that this is also on Disney +, which surprises me that I was able to see this short on YouTube.