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.

I’ve done some movie watching. It went alright.

Robin Hood (2018)- I like the story of Robin Hood. I think most people do, it’s been around for a long time. Rob from the rich and give to the poor. If you’re going to crime it up, giving back takes the edge off of it for most it. It’s rather noble. Every once and awhile Robin Hood comes back to the film world with an attempt to twist the knob a bit to make it another story worth repeating. All the staples are present and account for: Robin of Loxley, Little John, Friar Tuck, the Sheriff of Nottingham, and Marian. The story also starts strong with Robin being introduced as a playboy, having a good time living it up with a family name attached to wealth and status. Things are going great with his lady Marian, when he gets drafted into the war. The good times are over as he’s put through the wringer on the battlefield. After trying to stop a war crime he’s shipped back home to discover that everyone thinks he’s been dead for years and his family estate has been absorbed by the Sheriff for the war effort.

At this point I’m all in, I like Robin he’s a good dude, John becomes an ally for change and the Sheriff is a well-established crumb bum. And then the movie becomes less interesting as it falls into the well established Hollywood script mold. All the beats are predictable, right down to an (unnecessary) training montage. It’s not that anything is truly bad, it’s a well produced movie, but nothing new is brought to the table. My biggest complaint is with the action. It feels way too modern, way to slick and overproduced. It gets so over the top that the visuals stop being grounded. I guess it’s just the nature of where action movies are today, the competition is off the charts. If you don’t try to do anything mind-boggling no one will pay any attention to you. At one point during an elaborate escape sequence, things are blowing up for no reason. There are these gigantic columns of fire repeatedly shooting out of nowhere as if they are running from Pompeii erupting. They’re all coming out from behind large castle pillars so it looks like obvious camouflage. These gasoline-powered mortars are stuffed all over the place waiting to be triggered like it’s a KISS concert. It looks stupid and is more distracting than anything else. Michael Bay fatigue is a real thing and should be avoided (but what do I know, the insanity of the Fast and Furious franchise makes a fortune). If you skip this I don’t think you’ll miss anything.

The Mule– I couldn’t get over how stupid this movie is to enjoy it. Clint Eastwood plays Earl Stone, a 90-year-old horticulturist (yes you read that right) who runs drugs across the border for a Mexican cartel. On the surface that makes sense, Earl doesn’t fit the profile of a drug mule so he’s perfect to travel around without getting stopped. As a flower guy getting pushed out of business by the internet (shakes a fist at technology!), Earl’s monetary savings aren’t what you’d call positive so he fits the mark of “I really need money.” The fast cash would be attractive to him (which is why anyone sells drugs).

But why did I watch Clint Eastwood do his best impression of Mr. Magoo? I don’t want to see that! Does anyone? Earl aw-schucks his way through almost every encounter so painfully (and that includes 2 (TWO!) threesomes!) that this is one of the cringiest movies I’ve seen in years. Earl is so naive (until the exact moment he doesn’t need to be) and one dimensional that it’s hard to take anything seriously. His biggest regret that is pounded into you with nearly no exploration is that he was a bad father and husband. He’s not mean or obnoxious (when he tells his ex-wife his flowers were more important than his family–with no semblance of rationale–I almost jumped out of my skin) that’s just how he is because he’s old and doesn’t know any better. Everything so revolves around his age that it seems like the writer’s main goal was to ham-fist a message of the elderly shouldn’t be ignored or left behind, they can still contribute. Except the main character for this message is a joke.

He’s old! He doesn’t know how to use a cell phone! He’s old! Why would he know what the guys with the guns could be putting into his trunk for a ton of cash? He’s old! So he wouldn’t waste a tenth of a second to question a thing when he does end up looking! Watch as he drives around slinging casual racism for no reason because he’s old and doesn’t know why anyone would have a problem with what he says! He’s so innocent and squishy (read: old) looking he makes friends with everyone! In the end, he’s a good guy, no matter what. Woof.

Bohemian Rhapsody– A.K.A the Freddie Mercury show. This movie isn’t a documentary, Freddie was the frontman for Queen and did get all the attention in real life. That’s important to think about, watching this ultra condensed story, so I can see why they’d take the approach they did. And let’s be real, this movie would have died before it hit the screens if it wasn’t for Rami Malek. He absolutely kills it as Freddie Mercury. He’s one of my favorite actors and he absolutely transforms in this movie.

This is a great movie that feels held back. Each moment feels a bit too perfect, too concise, too sanitized. The band Queen comes together really fast. No struggle is shown as it comes off like they blew up in about a week. Songs are shown being put together at lightning speed. Freddie’s personal struggles are stepped on for mere moments before moving on. I guess pacing is my biggest problem.

A two hour+ long movie isn’t short and in the end, I wanted to see more. I would be perfectly happy to have ditched the remake of Queen’s 1985 Live Aid show for more story. That would have freed up I think 15 minutes or so. I wanted to see the band interact more, watch Freddie navigate more of his personal and professional relationships. The best parts for me was when they were dealing with pressure and their personalities pulling at them (Freddie’s house party is probably the highlight of the movie there, that scene at the best character developments). Sure, we see the band argue about decisions here and there but it’s so fast and spotty it always came off as rudimentary and cleaned up. Why not show their inspirations, how did they write this music that’s stuck with people for 40 years now? Freddie was at ground zero for the rise of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, why not better show how the world reacted and addressed it? We’re still going through that (and more) today. I liked seeing Freddie with his family and ther were very few scenes with them. A lot (character) came out of the scene where the band meets Freddie’s family for the first time and they got the call they were signed to a record label. There must have been more moments like that to show.

I guess more than anything, Bohemian Rhapsody made me want to dig deeper into history. That’s not a bad thing to be left with.

Look how cool that poster is! The whole movie is just as fun and exciting. The short review: Into the Spider-Verse is one of the best animation films of the decade.

The cinematic debut of Miles Morales, Spider-Verse is about this young man’s journey into great power and responsibility. Miles is just a kid at the start of a new boarding school in the city. Smart and talented in art, Miles has a lot to figure out. His police officer father wants him laser–focused on school while his Uncle Aaron lets him indulge more on his creative side. When Miles gets caught up in a dangerous plot being run by Kingpin, Miles’ life takes an unexpected turn.

The movie doesn’t take long to kick off with Miles being forced to take over as Spider-Man to try and stop Kingpin from doing unbelievable amounts of damage by messing with other dimensions of reality. This scheme brings five other Spider-People into Miles world and where the original Peter Parker left off, the others mentor him to become a greater person than he ever imagined he could be. There are a lot of trials and tribulations along the way.

Spider-Verse is a stunning achievement in animation. New animation techniques, a mish-mash of styles, and all the colors known to mankind are utilized to make one of the most unique looking movies I’ve ever seen. Words can’t explain how crazy this movie looks. Great character designs, a solid voice cast, and a snappy script make this a treat to watch from start to finish.

There’s very little to knock here and I have to really nitpick to come up with anything: Miles is clumsy through the entire movie until a switch suddenly flips and becomes unstoppable. The ramp-up to become confident and comfortable in his skin (so to speak) could have been done a little better. The way he gets the powers is also devoid of any creativity. Sure, there’s only one way to get the spider powers (Peni Parker’s backstory actually does a great twist on it) but this spider (which I think is mechanical, not biological?) just seemingly walks from Kingpin’s dimension collider on a mission to specifically bite Miles, which it seemingly knew when he’d be down in the sewers.

Still, none of that makes a significant dent in how great Spider-Verse is. Miles is awesome, the way all of these deep cut comic book Spider characters come together and the action scenes are fantastic. Everything you want from your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is here.

An adventure above and below the ocean’s surface, Aquaman is one of the best DC films made to date. Jason Momoa first portrayed the character in Justice League and the wait to see him really strut his stuff was well worth it.

Aquaman is a pretty goofy character on paper, after all, he can talk to fish. There have been many good comic book runs for him over the decades and there’s a reason why he’s a longtime member of the Justice League: the guys a hero. It’s been a long time coming for Arthur Curry to get his own movie and the technology to make his world believable is here alongside director James Wan to give it much needed flair. Aquaman runs the fine line of being weird but not too over the top and serious without taking itself too seriously.

I think this movie succeeds in all the right areas. The introduction to the main character’s background is well done and paced well. Half human and half Atlantian Arthur grows up without his Atlantian mother because she broke the rules running from Atlantis and falling in love with a man from the surface. She must leave her young family to keep them safe and when Arthur finds out she was executed for her “crimes” he becomes bitter to the world. Not to say he doesn’t succeed and grow up with his father but it makes a lasting mark on his psyche. While he does accept training from an Atlantian named Vulko when he discovers he has extraordinary powers, Arthur is pretty reserved when it comes to helping others. He’s not one for the spotlight despite his boisterous personality. And then Atlantis comes knocking on Arthur’s door when a war on the surface is called by his half-brother King Orm. Having sworn off having anything to do with Atlantis, as heir to the throne Arthur is forced to act.

And the globe trotting adventure begins! An eye popping film, Aquaman is vibrant and beautiful in every scene. James Wan dances with the camera during action scenes and I lost count of how many stunning poster quality shots there are. There are some sections that look like they were torn right out of a comic book. Seeing Black Manta in his full comic book outfit fighting Aquaman in real life was an absolute trip.

This movie could have been a complete disaster if the SFX were done poorly. Plenty of time for pre and post production was clearly given as I can’t complain about any of it. The underwater visuals are done fantastic and that’s about half of the movie. There are some odd looking things here and there but for me that’s nitpicking. I believed what I was watching and that’s all I need.

I feel like this movie was the perfect length, even if parts of it feel rushed. There’s a lot of quick setups just to get to the next scene and how Arthur and Mera travel the world with seemingly no resources is never considered. But I liked the overall story arc, watching Arthur basically grow to become a hero for everybody. When he dons the classic yellow and green suit it feels earned and amazing. I think my only big knock on the movie is the odd music choices that don’t fit the mood or the action of the movie.

Aquaman is a great example of getting the right people on a project. A lot of love and care was put into making this and it shows on screen.

With this third film, the John Wick franchise continues to be the best American action film series, hand down. While there are a few contenders for the crown (the last Mission: Impossible comes to mind) the level of creativity and execution is nearly unmatched.

The first John Wick released in 2014 and took everybody by surprise, I don’t think many people even knew it was being made while in production. Until then, Keanu Reeves action resume basically revolved around the Matrix series where we all saw his level of dedication (along with the rest of the cast) to fight prep. The Wick series is his continuation of that crazy work ethic. Gunplay far beyond what we saw in the Matrix movies married with intricute fight choregraphy and brilliant stunt work filmed from a distance with long takes. Usually you have to turn to Hong Kong cinema to see that. We all rejoiced to see John Wick get revenge on the punks who killed his dog.

While I’m in the middle of the road for part 2 (I think the original is a better watch) Parabellum is a sight to behold. The plot, John Wick desperately trying to survive a massive bounty on his head after killing a high ranking assassin on sacred ground in part 2, is just there to stitch the action scenes together.

And these action scenes are nuts. Right away, we are treated to a monstrous one on one fight in a library. It just explodes from there, with the first half hour of the movie being almost entirely action. Fights with I think every kind of weapon in existence. Small fights with one or two people, huge fights with waves of baddies and everything in between. Different locales all gorgeously lit and framed. The dance of violence in this movie hasn’t been done since The Raid and The Raid 2 (and the first two John Wick movies).

I’ve seen a ton of action movies so I thought I’d seen it all until Sofia (the fantastic Halle Berry) hits the scene with her two trained German Shepard attack dogs. I think the fight scene with those dogs is somewhere around 8 minutes long and I have no idea how they did it. I mean they had these dogs doing insane stunts, mauling dudes left and right like they were made of Snausages. Some of the most riveting action and stunts I’ve ever seen.

Odds are if you are into action movies, you’ve already scene this so I’m preaching to the choir. This whole thing is just a long way of me saying I love Keanu Reeves and I love John Wick.

Another great speaking event in the books!

These are so much fun. Meeting people who took the time to read my work and talking about the in and outs is a special experience. It also helps the ego when a room full of people tell you that they like what you’ve put so much hard work into.

There were a dozen women in this book club and they had their questions prepared and ready to go. So this time, I kept my introduction briefer than I did before. Talked about the genesis of the novel (which actually answered a few of their questions) and then I went right into Q and A. I did my best to keep eye contact with everyone (seating was arranged in a circle) and I made a conscious effort to move on when I noticed people losing interested. It’s very easy for me to give a long-winded answer to a question.

The hour went by fast, the conversation was easy and the questions were good and spurred conversation about the world and society (which is what the book is about). That was really exciting to see that my main message is getting across and it makes people think. A few women talked about their own blackout experiences. Two women there became close friends years ago because the power was out for days and they met and bonded at a community relief center!

I sign a bunch of books and one woman was a standout, she was really excited to meet me, talk, and was first in line to get her book signed. It reminded me of when I’ve gone to a signing and watching others be so happy to meet that author/artist. An honest and real excitement to meet a creator. That’s a trip.

The sale of Fox to Disney has changed the media landscape. Among those changes is a DC property not existing on a now Disney owned channel. So Gotham was brought to a close in a shorter (12 episodes) fifth season. When the show started I had an idea of how it could best end and that’s pretty much what happened.

Gotham wasn’t about Batman which is what many people wanted from the start. It put that first tent pole into the ground right from the start, that they’d show how Bruce and Gotham came to need Batman.

Over the years I’ve enjoyed Gotham a lot. I liked seeing the new angles of established characters and lore along with new characters. The big highlight was always the casting, which was near perfect. The standouts for me are Sean Pertwee as Alfred, Robin Lord Taylor as Oswald Cobblepot, Cory Michael Smith as Edward Nygma, Drew Powell as Butch Gilzean, Erin Richards as Barbara Kean, Benedict Samuel as Jervis Tetch, Anthony Carrigan as Victor Zsasz, Donal Logue as Harvey Bullock, BD Wong as Dr. Hugo Strange and Cameron Monaghan crushed it as 3 eras of Joker. The Batman universe has many colorful characters so quality character actors were needed. I also appreciated the effort into making Gotham look like its own city (looking at you with the side eye Christopher Nolan). The production value on this show was always tops.

The series started rough. The tone of the show swung wildly from scene to scene. The first major trouble maker was a guy who tied giant helium balloons to people’s legs and they’d float away. It’s pretty absurd and goofy looking. In the next scene, you’d see Penguin in a blackout rage shank a guy in the neck with a broken beer bottle. From there the show found its groove, leaning onto the darker side of things. I guess being consistent helps keep you on a path, the show was never afraid of offing someone on camera and they stuck with that. The villains on this show were committed to being awful people in their own ways.

The other problem was that the writers tried to do too much. Batman has a huge rogues gallery that is stuffed with characters that fans love. It seemed like they wanted to get every one of them on screen come hell or high water. Being a prequel, some characters wouldn’t fit in the timeline so they’d age the character down. Every season there was a major villain introduced and things got crowded real fast. From the start they stuck with Riddler and Penguin and that worked the best. The two main mob boss families had great roles too.

There must have been a mandatory minimum of 6 active villains at once because if one went away they’d be immediately replaced. I mean, they managed to get Solomon Grundy on here. They did some great starting stuff with Scarecrow, but that fizzled out and disappeared. The worst was Ivy. The case of de-aging the character might have seemed like a good idea at first, making her a friend to a young Celina Kyle, but the writers had no idea what to do with her. She was never more than a cameo and they changed actresses I think twice, making her look older, to try and use her but that didn’t work well either. She might look older but that’s still supposed to be a teenager. While she ended up having an impact on the show in a late Celina plot, she was never truly Poison Ivy. The approach from the start didn’t work and that cut off any avenues of growth. Ivy becomes Poison as an adult, that’s something that couldn’t be shoehorned into. She had specific life experiences that got her there.

In the end, I had a lot of fun with this show. I think it gave a lot of people a kick to their careers because there’s some fantastic acting work here. While there are bumps for sure, nothing knocked me off the show and I watched every week. I love this universe and I’m happy with the end product. The final season was really tight too, so that helped. The writers knew how much time they had left when starting this final season and that enabled them to write a series finale that stuck the landing.

A brief pause for the Batman universe as Epix has a Pennyworth show airing soon, Joker starring Joaquin Phoenix comes out this October, and the next solo Batman movie helmed by Matt Reeves for a summer 2021 release is starting to take shape.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a kid in a red suit granted super powers by an ancient wizard! It’s Shazam!

This DC character dates all the way back to 1939 and while he’s had his own TV show and cartoons over the years, he’s been more or less a background character in the DC line-up. He’s even a Justice League member but the likes of Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern and Superman always take up more attention. It’s with this movie that he gets put front and center.

Billy Batson is a 14 year old foster kid who’s been bouncing around the system since his single mother disappeared when he was around 6 years old. Billy understandably has a hole in his heart from this traumatic event and when we meet him, he’s run from a foster home in search for his mother. He gets caught and is once again sent to another foster home, this one with a young couple and 5 other foster kids aged 7-17. Billy is pretty stand-offish in this environment and one of the kids, Freddy, does his best to bring Billy into the family fold.

At the same time, the Wizard is looking for his Chosen One, a person pure of heart to absorb his amazing powers and defend Earth from the Seven Deadly Sins. He discovers Billy and it changes his life (understatement of the year).

A combination of Superman and the classic Tom Hank’s movie, Big, Shazam! is a ton of fun. It’s a good mixture of humor, action, and drama that uses the superhero mythos to wrap the story in adventure and character development. Along with Superman, there’s a side dose of Spider-man. An average person becomes extraordinary after one chance event. For every problem he has, he can practically punch his way through it now. And for someone dealing with anger and abandonment, that’s an even greater challenge to manage. These powers, as Billy quickly finds out, are dangerous. When he says “Shazam!” and transforms from kid to super being, it’s a lot of responsibility.

There’s a lot of kid fantasy going on this movie. If you could fly, had incredible strength, and could fire lightning out of your hands, what would you do? Freddy is next to Billy through all of this and together they figure out what Billy can do. Freddy has to watch on the sidelines though, watching his new friend flounder and struggle with these abilities he would love to have. They argue too after Billy inadvertently causes more harm than good and gets the attention of a supervillain, Dr. Sivana, who has become obsessed to claim the powers of Shazam after the wizard denied him the chance decades years ago.

There’s a lot to like in Shazam. It looks fantastic, the special effects are all around very good. There are some killer hero shots spread around (my favorite being when Billy jumps off an apartment roof and transforming just as he starts to fall and flies off like a boss to save the world) and the action scenes, while rather infrequent, offer something different each time. I really like Dr. Sivana, his set up is pretty dark and motivation works well to me. I was really suprised at how intense the movie got, there’s some scary imagery for the younger set to witness here. The movie walks a line of showing that there are big stakes at play, but it never gets gruesome. The humor balances things out as well too, the entire cast (especially Zachary Levi as Shazam) looks like they had a lot of fun making this.

My only complaint is that the beginning drags a bit. It’s an origin story so there’s a lot of set up and if you’ve seen the trailer you basically know every beat. But once it really gets going, the last half really flexes and the movie never looks back. I think all the build up has a great payoff at the end as the finale surprised me in it’s direction and was a lot of fun to watch.

Finally, kudos to the writer for taking an interesting and rather daring take on family. Billy’s history is an example that very few get born into what I will–for the sake of convenience–call a normal family. Some never know their mother, their father, or both. They may be raised by grand parents or people they have no blood relation to. And then there is life itself which throws more at you than you can ever imagine along the way. It’s Billy’s quest to find his family that sticks with you most. Your family doesn’t begin and end with the one you are born into, it expands into the one you make when you open up your heart to others.

Hereditary- I heard this was a good horror movie and avoided any detail about it so I got to watch it fresh. This is really impressive right from the start and the slide into madness is one wild ride.

The movie starts at a funeral. Annie’s mother has passed and with just a few carefully chosen sentences in the eulogy that veil her true feelings about her mother, we get the idea that the world is a better place without this woman.

This is Ari Aster’s first feature length movie and let me just say this guy knows how to write and direct. Perfectly paced and expertly framed, this story immediately establishes that something is off with this family and the sense of dread mounts from there. We learn about how Annie’s childhood scarred her for life, to the point where Annie kept her first child, Peter, away from her for years. When her daughter Charlie was born, her mother managed to maneuver her way in and became close to Charlie. Annie never liked that and as the movie progresses we find that grandma had been up to no good.

Aster puts the camera wherever he can to effectively keep the audience on their toes. This man does not simply set up a camera in front of two talking people and lets things play out. Scrumptious cinematography also helps make forboding and disturbing scenes pop off the screen. One of my favorite design choices matches Annie’s job. In her art studio in the home. she makes miniature models of buildings and scenes, essentially professional dioramas. Her job doubles as a therapeutic outlet which plays a role in the story. There’s one shot that starts on the bedroom of the miniature of their home that Annie has made and it transitions directly into a scene in the actual house (something director Wes Anderson loves to do). After that, you can see it in the set design. Everything is super clean, everything at 90 degree angles with the furniture placed far apart. It’s hard to tell if Annie made the model based on her home or if it was the other way around.

It’s the subtle details that show a tremendous amount of care and thought went into this project and that makes it stand out more. Plus, Toni Collette puts in a hell of a performance as Annie (and I saw that without downplaying the rest of the fantastic cast).

Paddington 2- This might be the most adorable movie I’ve ever seen. When it was released in 2017 it got amazing reviews and I agree with the glowing praise. This is the perfect movie for children and adults. It so well made, every single minute has purpose and heart.

Paddington Bear is happily living with the Brown family in London. His Aunt Lucy’s birthday is coming up and he finds the perfect present for her, a pop up book about London. The problem is it’s a expensive so he works to save up the money but then the book is stolen which makes a whole world of trouble for Paddington.

Paddington is one of the sweetest, warmest, and sincere characters put on film. He’s a phenomenal role model as he’s kind, thoughtful, and he always looks at the bright side no matter what. He makes a positive difference to everyone around him and it’s a joy to watch him work.

I didn’t think this movie would be anywhere near as funny as it is and the action sequences are fantastic! During the last one, I thought I was watching a James Bond movie! The direction can be best described as kinetic, it’s so lively and fun. The movie is bright and colorful, the supporting cast is terrific, and the special effects are top notch. I totally bought that Paddington is a living, breathing, walking, talking bear.

I can’t say enough positive things about this creative and touching movie. Absolutely watch it no matter your age or the age of anyone around you.

I have a three hit combo for you today.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado- Sicario hit theatres in 2015 and took everyone by surprise, a terrific film that wasn’t on the radar for many people. Three years later and we get a follow up that builds on the best parts of the original.

The best parts are Benicio Del Toro as Alejandro and Josh Brolin as Matt. Soldado picks up not long after the first film with Alejandro and Matt still working on the same side. Alejandro is still haunted and enraged at the murder of his family and Matt’s job in stopping the drug war at the southern border is still far from over. With a new plan to whip rival cartels into a war, both Alejandro and Matt see value in making it happen: further revenge and duty. When the plan doesn’t work Alejandro and Matt are split in what they should do. They choose sides and come to their own realizations with what they’ve become and where they should go from here.

Another impressive movie from this team and I think it stands as a great example of what sequels should strive for. It’s not pinned down to more of the same but what does this do to our characters? Great writing, Del Toro and Brolin are as good as ever and they make both sides of the coin compelling. Taught action, great pacing, and a satisfying ending. Highly recommended but you must watch the first movie if you haven’t already.

Mandy- It’s 1983 in the Pacific Northwest and Nic Cage goes berzerk to get revenge on the cult that murders his girlfriend. If that sentence gets your interest, that’s probably all you need to read. This is a love it or hate it flick and I’m not exactly sure where I fall with it. It’s got its redeeming qualities but I know I’ll never watch it again.

This is a slow burn, 70s cinema style. It takes almost an hour for the pivot point of the story to happen and then it’s pretty much all carnage from there to the end. There’s not much to it, just revenge. Red (Nic Cage) and Mandy’s (Andrea Riseborough) relationship is established as a great one and Brother Swan and his followers are established as complete nutters. Mandy is killed in front of Red and Nic Cage gets to show off his commitment to freak out on camera (he goes all out in his underwear on the toilet if you are curious). And cue the gore.

The admirable part of Mandy is the effort it took the filmmakers to make this movie look the way it does. It’s a total throw back to the 70s. Hallucanation like scenes bathed in red light and the surreal, a grimey film grain we never see anymore, long takes with no hyper fast editing. Visually I found it fascinating to watch but story wise it leaves a lot to desire. I think this one is for the film nerds and gore hounds.

The Predator- I want to like this. It’s so goofy and dumb in all the wrong ways. This movie is considered the 4th in the franchise, the Alien vs Predator movies are ignored. The first is an absolute classic, I like 2 a lot (I appreciate taking it to the ‘concrete jungle’) and I think Predators (2010) has a lot going for it but clearly behind the other two. We have a new worst movie (I’m not including the AvP movies in this equation).

Writer/Director Shane Black is a real hit or miss creator for me. His name is attached to some great stuff but he makes ponderous story choices. I think he might put action before all else and when he comes up with a scene, its whatever goes to get to it.

What I did like. There is a sense of fun to the movie. The misfit gang of characters can be endearing and it throws back to the ragtag action movies of the 80s that so many of us grew up on. Here are some guys (and a girl) who are thrown into this crazy blender, watch them work together to try to survive and save the world. Special effects are very good, the Predator looks fantastic. It’s such a cool and iconic alien design it still holds up and all of the changes they made to update it all work. The action is great too. There’s a good amount of it, and the Predator goes for the R rating by cleaving anyone in his way. When a Predator is on a mission, get the hell out of the way or you will be wearing your own butt as a hat. I also like that Olvia Munn’s character was her own woman. She’s got her own goals and she becomes part of the team, a romance angle isn’t shoehorned in there. So that cliche is avoided.

What isn’t avoided: deus ex machina. The mother of all story cliches is not just used but is embraced. Very little happens without a truckload of luck and happenstance. There’s so much I can’t begin to scratch the surface so I won’t try. And then we have all of the “Wait, what? Really?’ plot devices that come up. The main character, Quinn, his son Rory (12 years old maybe) is the focal point of the movie. He’s autistic and at the start they clearly and repeatedly want you to know that he’s incredibly smart. It goes way beyond intelligence though, the level of absurdity means this kid has superpowers. He somehow figures out the Predator language in like 2 hours by messing around with the Predator’s equipment. He figures out how the OS of this alien tech, with all of these completely foreign symbols, works. It controls all sorts of stuff but he doesn’t know a blaster is in the helmet until it blows up a house. At one point he activates the force field on the Predator ship by using a control panel as he slides past it at like 20 miles an hour. How did he know that panel was there, what buttons were on it, that you could even do that from there? He clearly jumps down there to get to that panel and just dragging your entire hand across it makes the force field turn on? Autism is so next level that space aliens want to collect him? At the end the kid is a government employee all of a sudden! There are tons of unexplained things that the movie just wants you to go along with.

This is such a weird movie and it went through major reshoots so I can’t even imagine what the first cut was like. Predator deserves better.

Something crash lands into a lighthouse located in the United States. A strange phenomenon begins to emanate from the landing site, a sort of bubble or force field. The US government quickly moves in and quarantines the area. Luckily, the site is easy to keep secret as it’s in a rather remote and unpopulated area. The bubble, deemed The Shimmer, proves to be impossible to research because anything sent in never comes out, even data transmissions. It’s a total mystery as to what’s in or going on in there. The Shimmer is expanding and when a military team disappears inside, the government becomes very worried that time is running out. Then, a year after the last human expedition went into The Shimmer, one of the men appears at his home, greeting his wife, Lena, who thought he was dead. His mission was a total secret, he never told her where he was going and she never got an answer from his superiors. He immediately becomes ill and during the trip to the hospital, the ambulance is pulled over by armed guards and Lena wakes up isolated in some kind of facility. It is here where she finds out about the threat and she volunteers to go into The Shimmer with four other female scientists in a final effort to solve the mystery.

The terrific Alex Garland directed and adapted the book of the same name into this wild ride which I consider one of the genre’s best. Despite the large premise of the story, Annihilation has its eyes focused on relationships.

This movie is cool in many ways. It’s an alien invasion movie but it’s not. It’s an action movie and it’s not. It’s just as beautiful as it is horrific. Anchored by Natalie Portman, the cast is very strong. Movies led by an all female cast are pretty rare still, especially one where they are in a high stakes military mission so this changes the perspective quite a bit.

I felt like the pacing was pretty much perfect as just enough info is given at the start and by going with the women into the unknown, picking up on the trail from the doomed team before them, makes all of their discoveries and battles taught and intriguing. Why is Lena doing this, why are any of them going in there when they know the odds are so stacked against them? That’s part of the journey. The other is what’s at the lighthouse? Both are tough questions to answer in new and interesting ways and the answers shown are the biggest reasons why I liked this so much.

Aside from the story, Annihilation is a visual feast. Inside The Shimmer, our world is changing. It’s subtle at first, little things are different and then the mutations get bigger and more extreme. There’s a really cool visual design throughout that’s hard to describe. It’s like nature being deconstructed and reconstructed, familiar and foreign at the same time. Many times it looks like a painting come to life.

This movie is a real head trip so I’m hesitant to give many details up. It’s important to see each element presented in the order the movie shows you. And a lot of is a surprise so that’s half of the fun. It all stacks up to create a thought-provoking sci-fi movie with a great ending. We don’t get many of those.

Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson is ready to leave Sacramento, California behind. She’s in her senior year of high school and she wants nothing more than to leave the west coast. New York City is her goal, so applying to schools is the start of her escape plan. Lady Bird is very sure of herself but as the year goes on, she experiences a world of changes. The Lady Bird at the start of the movie is a different woman from the one at the end.

Coming of age movies are one of my favorites and Lady Bird is one of the best I’ve seen in a while. Saoirse Ronan is a tremendous actor and she brings the conflicted Lady Bird to life. A concoction of dreams, fears, low-self esteem, regret, loyalty, angst, and anger are constantly mixing together in her mind. She’s a sweet girl who’s sure she knows what she wants (in leaving home at least) and inadvertently steps on a lot of toes in the process. Her greatest flaw is probably when she acts without thinking of anyone but herself. She says things to others as a joke and when it blows back onto her, she has to scramble to apologize. She also lies a lot in order to fit in with others, who she thinks she wants to be like the most. That brings her trouble too.

Lady Bird is a great character as she is believably flawed. She’s not a bad person, she just often sticks her foot into her mouth. As a teenager, she thinks she knows everything, what’s right for her at every turn but in reality, she has a lot of growing up to do. Her father is a teddy bear of a human being where her mother is the authority. Laurie Metcalf is another tremendous actor and her chemistry with Saoirse is largely why the movie works so well Lady Bird’s best friend Julie is also a very important part of the story, like the footbridge between adult and childhood. Lady Bird constantly butts heads with her mother, mostly being catty to each other but thee are a few instances where things get real and they have it out. Her mother is a hard ass for sure, she can be overbearing to the point of suffocation, but Lady Bird does need someone to call her out on her nonsense when it flares up.

While a lot happens in the movie (romantic relationships, social climbing, applying to colleges) the story revolves around how Lady Bird sees herself and wants to become much more. Growing up in a lower income home skews her perspective. She lives next door to a much more affluent part of town, goes to school with kids from that area, and she wants nothing more than to live that life that she’s convinced is better in every way. Much of her motivation to leave home comes from this, she’s ashamed of where she’s from and how her family lives.

Lady Bird lies to try and get a leg up and fit in, dumps her best friend to hang out with the cool kids, dates the popular boy and finds out that’s not what she expected at all. She is at the pivotal time where she’s finding out who she is and what she stands for. Her future is totally up in the air and for the first time, she’s becoming aware that all the decisions she makes now have big repercussions. She also comes to realize that her home and her family–what she’s “ashamed” of–is way more valuable than she realized.

It’s Lady Bird’s relationships with others that I found the most compelling and enduring. How she acts and handles each group: her parents, her adopted brother and his girlfriend, her boyfriends, her new best friend Jenna, and her true ride or die friend, Julie. It’s these relationships that I thought of the most once the credits rolled. The end is pretty abrupt when it happens but I think it’s the perfect choice on reflection.

We get to follow Lady Bird through the most important year of her young life so far. We know her goal right from the start and the question is always will she be able to do it? She goes through a lot in that year, we blast through it in about 90 minutes and more than just her life changes in that time. It’s not a total metamorphosis of course, as a year can contain only so much. For example, she makes a stupid decision when she’s arguing with her mother in the car in the first scene and at the end, she makes another painful mistake. But she’s learning. When the movie cuts from Lady Bird that final time, her journey for that part of her life is over. Everything after that is brand new territory.