Escape Plan- If you take out the hyper violence and gore out of Saw, you get this movie. What’s left is a surprisingly fun watch. You see the trailer and it’s impossible not to make the comparison. Instead of being kidnapped, the group of people here are brought together under the guise of being invited to win money by figuring out the world’s most difficult escape room. Then in typical murder mystery fashion they start making connections that they weren’t randomly chosen for this and the world building of who is doing this and why comes together at the end to set up a sequel or two. Making a PG-13 Saw movie is a pretty safe bet when it comes down to getting funding for a Hollywood movie. Even if it is far from original, it’s well made and it got the budget needed to do the script justice. The cast is good, the direction is solid, and the production design is really impressive. The entire movie takes place almost entirely in just a few “puzzle” rooms and they are all hyper detailed, unique, and are really the stars of the show. I’d say this is a good movie to watch on a rainy day and you just want to take it easy.

Jungle- I watched this because Daniel Radcliffe is in it and he’s great in basically everything. Based on the true survivor story of Jossi Ghinsberg, Radcliffe plays Jossi, a young man traveling the world as he figures out what he wants to do in life. When the movie starts he’s been on the road for months, been in many places around the world and makes a new friend named Kevin in Bolivia. The two run into Marcus, whom Kevin knows from his own journey around the world. Together they meet Karl, who says he can bring them to a remote Indian village in the jungle that basically no one in the outside world has seen and Jossi is all about going. He doesn’t want to do touristy stuff and this is the perfect chance to go on a real adventure. The others soon agree and a few days into the trip, it’s clear they’ve made a mistake following Karl. Jossi gets put through the ringer and you are with him every step of the way. Well made survival movie as great care was done to make each brutal step feel like it’s own unique challenge instead of one long montage of misery.

Glass- I loved Unbreakable when it came out and M. Night Shyamalan turning that one off into the start of a trilogy all these many years later has been a lot of fun to watch. Split was a wild romp with the great James McAvoy as the twists and turns of his character with 24 personalities unraveled on screen. I think the ideas in Glass bring it all to a really creative and enjoyable head with McAvoy returning as the monster, Samuel L. Jackson as the manipulator, and Bruce Willis as the super hero. With so many comic book movies coming out, it’s a real treat watching one that paints outside the lines. Shymalan is a big fan of comics and he gets to do his own thing while paying a lot of homage to the industry here. It’s light on action but no worse off for it. The character work is great and I really liked the reveal at the end. I’d recommend watching the first two movies if you haven’t to get the full enjoyment out of this one.

Captain Marvel- This is what you’d call a cookie cutter Marvel movie. No surprises in this comic book movie. It’s not that it’s bad, just kinda…there. It certainly looks good, the special effects doing their part to make the fantasy elements look real. But acting-wise, it falls short. Samuel L. Jackson is his charming self, happily glowing and sashaying through all his scenes. Brie Larson as the title character more or less sleepwalks her way through this. Most of the time it doesn’t seem like she’s having fun on set. She’s monotone through the whole movie until the last act where Carol Danvers shows some kind of personality. Everyone else felt pretty forgettable to me too. In the Marvel library, I think this is going to be a one and done for me (along with Black Panther and the first 2 Thor movies).

The end of the summer months means the TV schedule is pretty light so that gave me room to catch a few movies. Netflix keeps rolling out the hits and the fall TV season is starting soon so that means movies will be put on the back burner. Let’s get to it.

If Beale Street Could Talk- A beautiful but heartbreaking film. It’s the early 1970s New York City and 19 year old Tish and her 22 year old boyfriend, Fonny, are madly in love. One day Fonny is wrongly accused of a terrible crime and detained. While waiting for trial Tish tries everything to get him free while preparing for their first child to be born. Exceptional acting and cinematography bring this love story to poetic life but there are some strange decisions in the presentation. This half love story and half political/social justice strife tale is stitched together with stage production and voice over narration. Whenever the switch happened it took me right out of the movie and I lost interest. It feels like the movie abruptly changes genres (mediums, really) with melodramatic lighting and character exposition. Oddly awkward moments that mar an otherwise great movie.

Alita: Battle Angel– This turned out to be way more fun than I thought it was going to. Based on decades old manga series, director Robert Rodriquez helms this action fiesta. Alita is a cyborg that was found in a dump and revived by Dr. Dyso Ido. With her memory wiped, she comes to learn who she was and who she is as she gets tangled up with cyborg assassins and the mega corporation that runs Iron City. They used the Avatar motion capture technology to make this movie and as a result the visuals are amazing. Some of the best CGI around makes for some fantastic anime-action come to life. Alita is a lot of fun to follow around, there’s some neat world building that sets the stage for a lot more that I hope we’ll someday get to see. As far as action movies go, this is one of the best in a many years. Plus it’s a brand new world for Hollywood to explore so that makes it stand out more. Nothing else looks like this.

Creed II- I loved the first movie and this absolutely a worthy sequel. Adonis Creed is the heavyweight champion and as such he must defend his belt. From the other side of the planet comes his biggest threat–Viktor Drago–the son of Ivan Drago. While Rocky’s career went skyward after their astonishing fight in the 80s, Ivan went home a failure and his boxing career basically ended on the spot. Now, Ivan has been training his son to go win the success he never did by taking on the son of the man he killed in the ring 30 years ago. The challenge comes to Adonis as a sense of pride and revenge, how can he turn down a fight with this kind of legacy on the line? When Rocky steps away, wanting nothing to do with petty revenge, possibly repeating history that’s haunted him all this time, Adonis looks elsewhere for a new cornerman. A great movie on many levels, Dolph Lundren returns as Ivan and the guy they found to play Viktor, Florian Munteanu, is a hulk of a human being. He and Michael B. Jordan standing toe to toe perfectly mirrors the 1985 American movie classic, Rocky IV. While you can predict almost everything as it comes, it doesn’t keep this movie from being a great experience. I can’t see any Rocky fan not liking this picture.

When the people around you are involved in crime, it seats you next to them in the life raft, whether you know what they are doing or not. Being an accomplice or guilty by association can have the same amount of blowback, just from different sides of the law. In Widows, four women are left with the debt their dead husbands left behind after a heist goes wrong. They are forced to fight for the future when the most dangerous people in Chicago come to get their money back.

Heist movies are a lot of fun and when they are done right, it’s some of the best storytelling around. Widows is one of those movies. It’s a smart and believable film with a cast of three-dimensional characters led by the powerhouse, Viola Davis (Veronica).

Veronica, Linda, Alice, and Amanda don’t know each other, but their husbands do. The trouble comes to these women when the men are all killed stealing $2 million from Jamal Manning, a man with deep ties to the criminal underground and growing ties to the political world of the city. With the men dead, it opens a new dangerous void. Linda’s business is taken from her, Amanda is left as a single mother, and Alice is left adrift having been dependent on her husband’s cash flow. When Jamal comes to Veronica, threating her for the money–which was destroyed in the heist–Veronica is forced to take charge and put a plan into motion. Her husband, Harry, was the leader of the group[ and planned all of their work. He kept detailed notes and she finds them, detailing a $5 million payday. She contacts the other women and the layers of the story build and unfold from there.

The pacing of Widows is remarkably done. Not just in terms of plot points and progression, but with character traits. Each scene seeds what happens next, small character details and actions that don’t seem to be important come back to make a big difference. I also like that the women are all normal, there are no superheroes or highly trained professionals fixing things. They come from different backgrounds and are at very different points of life. The thrills come from watching these characters work their own angles, using their own talents to make the heist happen. No one stands still in the story, they are all important. When problems come up, when ideas don’t work, it ratchets up the fun and excitement perfectly. The crisis level never gets outlandish.

It’s a very believable move too, enough is done to make everything plausible. A lot of world-building is done in a short amount of time and it all feels natural. This great script comes to life with the fantastic direction of Steve McQueen. The camera placements and movements are carefully and artfully done. All the detail of the story isn’t told in dialog, it’s subtly expressed with the scenery. My favorite shot is the one after the press conference in the projects with Jack Mulligan. He does all of his talking points about his small business initiative and then flees in a town car after a reporter pressures him on some of his scandals. The camera is placed on the hood of the car, pointed to the left, towards the windshield so we can see everyone standing in this dilapidated block as Jack gets in. The car drives away from the projects and the characters talk in the backseat in one complete take. We never see them talk, just voice over. As a powerful man whines about his political world, the environment changes. In about two minutes, the borders of a few tax brackets are crossed. The camera has panned to the right, the car stops in front of a big beautiful home, Jack stops ranting, and he exits the car.

I wish I had seen Widows sooner, I completely missed it when it came out. Easily one of the best movies of 2018.