Despicable Me 3 Review

It's been a busy month for animation as three of our huge animation studios have all released summer tent-poles. We started early in June with DreamWorks delivering "Captain Underpants," then Pixar punished us with "Cars 3" and now Illumination is back at it with the third installment of their marquee franchise, "Despicable Me 3." As concerning this franchise, I consider myself a huge fan. I own and love "Despicable Me." I think it's not only a hilarious and cute movie, but I feel it's also super emotional and deep when it comes to the themes. "Despicable Me 2" wasn't as deep, but it was a hilarious romp from start to finish. I even enjoyed the much hated "Minions" spin-off/prequel as 90 minutes of Minion gags had me cracking up. I totally get why people hate it. But I thought it was fun. Because of all this, I was looking forward to "Despicable Me 3." After a movie without Gru and the gang, I was excited to see them back with our beloved Minions. Underwhelming trailers didn't push me away because bad trailers for good movies happen all the time. But despite my excitement, I have to unfortunately announce that "Despicable Me 3 is a bad movie. I was in shock at what I was watching and was really angry and disappointed walking out of the theater.

The plot. This is where I describe the plot. Oh man, this is going to get complicated. The biggest question mark that I personally had from the trailers was that every time we released a new trailer, it didn't feel like the latter trailers were building off the previous trailers, it felt like each trailer was advertising a new movie. So what in the frack was this movie going to be about? Which of the completely different marketing pushes was this movie going to focus on the most? The answer? All of the above. For some reason they decided that they needed to set up so many different story arcs that for over half of the movie is spent going sidewards with the plot and when we've finally introduced every plot point, the movie was only capable of moving so far forward because it was forced to bounce around between all of these plot points. By the end of the movie, it felt like we had only progressed forward a few feet. The emotion and depth is what I like most about this franchise and there was potential with some of these story arcs, but there were simply too many of the story arcs which consequently made it so it was impossible for there to be any depth in this movie which also wiped away any emotion that they attempted to set up.

So let's attempt to tackle some of these. In this movie, Gru learns that he has a twin brother named Dru. Their parents were divorced when they were babies and each parent got to raise one child. We've already established that Gru's mother doesn't like Gru and now we establish that Dru's father doesn't like Dru. In fact, each parent seems to like the other one better. Here we had potential to dive deep into an emotional family drama where Gru and Dru figure out that they both have a sense of worth, which helps them bond as a family. Do they do this? Nope. Too much time with everything else. We just kinda introduce this idea, which is played off for laughs instead of actual emotion, and never dive into it. Ouch. Instead, Dru wants Gru to teach him how to be a villain, so Gru takes advantage of this opportunity to finally stop our villain, Balthazar Bratt, which I'll get to in a second. Steve Carell does voice both Gru and Dru, which I found very impressive because he is able give each character a distinct voice and personality to the point where I often forgot that Gru and Dru were voiced by the same person. That's impressive voice work. But unfortunately that effort was wasted because the movie chose not to dive as deep as they could've.

In "Despicable Me 2" we introduced the wonderful character of Lucy, voiced by Kristen Wiig, who ends up marrying Gru at the end of the movie. I really loved Gru and Lucy in that second movie. I thought they were perfect crime-fighting partners that fed off of each other quite well. But this time around I surprisingly have to say that Lucy annoyed the heck out of me. Her whole point in the movie is that she has to learn how to be a mother to the three girls and she has no idea how to do this. Again, there is potential with a story arc like this. In fact, that's the whole story arc of the first movie. Gru trying to figure out how to be a parent. So not only does this specific story arc feel like a complete rehash, but it's also a poor, second-rate copy of that original story arc that, again, they don't have time to dive into, so it feels extremely rushed and undeveloped. And it was also really annoying. Every time we went over to Lucy trying to be a mother, I wanted to scream at the movie to just stop. I developed this weird sense of anger towards Lucy because she was completely useless and a huge distraction in this movie. I also didn't feel like Kristen Wiig gave any effort this time around, so there was an imbalance because Steve Carell definitely put his heart and soul into this project.

Now should we talk about another major distraction in this film that breaks my heart to tear apart? The girls. I absolutely adore these girls and I would go as far as to say that they are the heart and soul of the first two movies. So now for me to say that they were annoying, pointless distractions actually hurts me. I mean, you have three of the best characters from any animated movie and you can't figure out what to do with them? Ouch. Margo has a tiny bit to do. At one point Lucy forces her to go be nice to this young boy, which blows up in both of their faces. Then we have a conflict between mother and daughter. Potential here? Yes. Developed? Absolutely not. We have two short scenes between Margo and this boy that served no purpose. And was again a rehash of something better, this time from the second movie. Then we get to Edith, who literally has nothing to do, so the movie sends her off with Agnes, who is on a hunt to find a real life unicorn. When I speak of useless and annoying, this takes the cake. Agnes and her unicorns was an adorable sub-plot of the first movie. This time around it felt like we were recycling old jokes and shoving them down our faces in an extended sequence that I really just wanted the movie to stop.

We're not done with introducing our story arcs and I'm not done complaining about them either. So how about just two more? It's time to finally talk about Balthazar Bratt, our villain. The introduction to our movie was a Balthazar Bratt exposition sequences, which annoyed me. Because they didn't feel like taking the time to develop him like a normal movie would, or like the first two movies did with their villains, they shove it all down our faces in the first few minutes. Then they leave him sitting there in the background for most of the movie while they develop these other sub-plots that I mostly didn't care about. This was disappointed to me because I actually loved his character and I think Trey Parker had an absolutely blast playing him. Yeah, sure, he was a cliche villain from a kids movie where they didn't seem to put much thought into why he was a villain and quickly threw together a cliche backstory. But man he was fun. He was a character stuck back in the 80's with his hairstyle, outfit, music and gadgets. It was a lot of fun to watch and Trey Parker added a lot of personality to him. Kudos to the movie for creating such a great character. But then I have to take all those kudos back because they could've done a lot more with this character.

I think you get the point by now. When I said I have two more, the final one is the Minions. You either love the Minions or you think they are the worst side characters on planet Earth. I'm in the former. I love the Minions. They are a lot of fun. In this movie, they get mad at Gru for not being a villain and most of them leave, giving us yet another story arc to follow. But this one was a lot of fun. Every time the group of rebellious Minions are on screen, I had a blast. In fact, I had so much fun with those scenes that there came a point in the movie where the only thing I wanted to see was the Minions. I wanted to follow their little escapade through prison and whatnot and nothing else, because everything else just because so stupid and/or underdeveloped. And I consider this a huge negative. I didn't care about Gru and Dru. I hated Lucy. I thought the girls were useless and unfortunate distractions. I thought Balthazar Bratt was underdeveloped and underutilized. I just wanted to see the Minions. And when I walk into a "Despicable Me" film excited to see Gru, Lucy and the girls and I end up not caring about all of that and I just want to see another "Minions" movie, that's an unforgivable sin this franchise has committed and thus I'm giving "Despicable Me 3" a 5/10.

The Book of Henry Review

I've had my eye on "The Book of Henry" for some time now. Not necessarily because I was extremely excited for it or that the trailers looked amazing, because that wasn't really the case. The reason I had my eye on this is because this is a movie that comes from director Colin Trevorrow, who has a very small sample size of directorial efforts which, outside a few small shorts, TV movies and documentaries, really only include "Safety Not Guaranteed" and "Jurassic World." Based on that alone, LucasFilm made the decision that he was worthy enough to direct Star Wars Episode IX. And I'm willing to bet that this was based solely on the fact that "Jurassic World" made a ton of money, because that movie is more dumb fun then epic. Not a worthy "Jurassic Park" successor. Consequently that hire made me really nervous, but since we've had such a small sample size of Trevorrow films, I really wanted to see what else the man could do before I make a determination on if I'm excited for his chapter of Star Wars, which is set to be the finale of our new trilogy. Enter "The Book of Henry." And oh my heck, red flags are now going up everywhere because "The Book of Henry" is a pretty big dumpster fire of a film that's gotten worse as I've pondered over it.

I watched an interview with Trevorrow about this film and what really stood out to me was that he has a strong passion and desire to bring the world some great original films. I have mad respect for this. And if you know me by now, you'll know that smaller independent films are the style of movie that I actually prefer over our big blockbusters because that's where the creativity and passion come in with movie making. The directors making these smaller films aren't guaranteed that they are going to make any money, so they're often filming with their hearts instead of filming with the studios breathing down their necks giving them certain mandates based on how the studio thinks they are going to make the most money, which can create all sorts of problems if the studio and director aren't on the same page. Thus a small film like "The Book of Henry" would show us what type of filmmaker Trevorrow is and I was crossing my fingers that this would be a great independent film that would be a good change of pace during our busy, blockbuster-heavy summer. But sometimes too much creativity can be a bad thing when you sacrifice things such as logic and common sense in favor of making a movie that you hope few people have done. That's what I feel happened here. 

Being that many of you may not have any idea what this movie is, allow me to describe by touching on elements from the first and third act of this movie. Oddly enough, it's the second act of the movie that is the major spoiler, so I will avoid that section because thankfully the marketing team did, too, so that middle portion was a huge surprise to me and I want to allow you to witness that surprise for yourself if you decide to be rebellious and actually see the film, which I won't recommend you do. Anyways, the setup for this movie centers around a super genius boy named Henry and his rather naive and uneducated mother. Even though she is an adult and he is a kid, mentally it's the other way around. She's the kid at heart who has no idea how to run a family or live a responsible, adult life while at just 11 years old, Henry knows essentially every detail of the world and is the one running the house, including making all of the financial decisions for everything. Then we have the younger brother played by the great young Jacob Tremblay who is just trying to be a normal kid, which is understandably difficult when you have a perfect older brother paving the way for you and a fairly irresponsible mother who is often not very good at being a mother.

This is actually a family dynamic that I mostly enjoyed. However, I think the movie got a little carried away with the role reversals of Henry and his mother. I think they could've written his mother like a struggling adult instead of a child in a grown up woman's body and I think they could've scaled Henry back a bit. Make him a gifted child, but go easy on his vast knowledge of things that no kid no matter how smart would know anything about. It took me out of the movie a bit during the first half of the movie. But I still was enjoying it as there was some true emotion displayed and some fantastic acting all around despite some cheesy writing and some not-so-great directing. And I was curious to see where they were going to take this. One of the unfortunate problems here that is out of the control of everyone around is that when I describe how I think this premise could've been refined to make it a special movie, I'm essentially describing the plot of the movie "Gifted" from two months ago. Since the release dates are this close, I'm guessing that Trevorrow and his crew had no idea about "Gifted" when they started writing, but strangely enough, both movies had a similar unique idea, but "Gifted" pulled it off so much better and released their movie first.

That's the unfortunate aspect of this movie. Trevorrow wanted to make a unique film and in the production of this movie, I'm certain that everyone involved thought this was an original idea, but the movie "Gifted" completely stole their thunder, thus the originality of the movie is no longer a strength and consequently they had to rely on the execution to make it great. The whole cast obviously did their absolute best to make this work, but the writing in this film is such a massive train wreck that the whole thing derails and left me cringing in my seat. As I've stated, I could probably forgive the cheesiness of the over-the-top role reversal if the direction this movie went was good, but that's not the case. And the eventual third act of the movie heavily involves the girl next door. I'm not going to give specific details or resolutions away, but Henry begins to have suspicions that his female crush from school, who is also his also his neighbor, is being abused by her father, who happens to be the well-respected chief police in town that everyone loves. If this child abuse angle is true and this man is covering up his tracks so well, how is an 11-year-old kid going to convince the world that a problem is going on when the girl herself will admit to nothing? 

These specifics are totally believable plot points. In theory, with a bit of refinement, this premise could work. But there comes a point in the movie where Henry makes a decision on what he is going to do about it and that's when the floor falls out. We eventually get to the point where the mother is listening to instructions from Henry on how to follow through with his plan and I practically had my hands in my face the whole time with how awful things get. Not scandalous, dirty or violent. But a horrendously written plot that had me embarrassed at what I was watching. I won't go any further on what happens next, but the movie shifted gears from family drama that I was enjoying to dark, intense crime thriller. The shift wasn't the problem, though. I was cool with that. But I love watching crime thrillers and I've watched so many good ones, which includes 12 seasons of "Criminal Minds," that I immediately know what to look for. I practically have it down to a science. And "The Book of Henry" breaks pretty much every rule of what NOT to do in crime thriller. I could detail this third act, but since I don't want to actual spoil the movie in this post, you're just going to have to trust me on this one. It's one of the worst crime thrillers that I've seen in a long time.

But credit has to be given where credit is due. Jaeden Lieberher is great as Henry. Naomi Watts is great is the mother. Jacob Tremblay nearly steals the show as the little brother. Sarah Silverman, Dean Norris and Lee Pace are fine, even though there is a horribly awkward scene between Sarah Silverman and Jaeden Lieberher. But who does steal the show for me is Maddie Ziegler, who made me practically jump out of my seat in excitement when her name came up in the opening credits. If you don't know Maddie, she is the stand-in for every Sia music video and even some live performances. Sia doesn't like showing her face, so she never shows up in her videos. But she has Maddie in every one of them. And by goodness can Maddie dance. She is able to successfully portray the emotion in Sia's songs through her dance skills and I love it. You can go watch the music video for "Chandelier" as a classic example. In this movie, Maddie plays the girl getting abused and although she doesn't say much, she gets the opportunity to express a high amount of emotion... through dance! I won't say how it connects to the plot, but there's a dance sequence that is integral to the plot where Maddie totally owns it! It almost made the whole movie worth it. 

Unfortunately, though, the rest of the movie did happen and it ended up being pretty bad. Had the final act of the movie been solid, I could've forgiven some of the cheesy moments in the first act or the awkward moments in the second act, but the third act was so bad that it made those moments even more glaring when I thought back on them. I love the intentions from Trevorrow, but the final result was bad. If you want a better version of this movie, go watch "Gifted." I loved that movie. But despite a great cast, this movie just doesn't work. So yes, this does make me mildly nervous about Star Wars Episode IX. If we need to drive home some emotion and have some powerhouse directing that will wrap up this new trilogy perfectly, I'm not so sure Trevorrow has the talents to pull it off. But luckily it's not just him working on it. It's a team project and LucasFilm has already shown just recently that if they don't like what a director is doing, they aren't afraid to step in or pull the plug on the directors. "Rogue One" had 40 percent of the movie re-shot last second and the directors for the Han Solo film were straight-up fired last week. So hopefully things work out. But as pertaining to "The Book of Henry," I was extremely disappointed and am giving the movie a 5/10.

Cars 3 Review

One of the best film studios in existence is back with yet another film. It's the illustrious Pixar Animation Studios! Along with every other sane individual in the world, I love Pixar! Not only do they make great movies for kids, but they normally also make fantastic movies with mature themes that adults can appreciate just as much, if not more, than the kids in the theater with them. Anyone that says animation is a kids only genre clearly has never seen a Pixar film. Which means I should've been excited for this film and rushed out opening night to go see it, right? Well, not in this instance. "Cars 3" just finished its second full weekend of release and I had to fight myself just to go give it a shot. I had no desire to see this film. Never once did I have any faith that it would be good. And not one trailer convinced me that this was a movie worth seeing. Thus is why I went nearly 10 days without even seeing this movie. I just didn't want to. When I finally forced myself to go see this, I was an angry, bitter mess. And I was having a great day up to the point where I made the decision to go see this movie. Was it as bad of a movie going experience as I was expecting it to be? Well... for about 95 percent of the movie... yes. If you were on the fence with this one, then just don't worry about it.

The big thing that caught most people off guard with this film was that first teaser trailer. We had that really dark, shocking moment where Lightning McQueen gets in a major accident, which was followed by a statement that said something to the effect of "from here on, everything changes." That made people wonder if we were going to get a dark, deep, emotional Pixar film that would end up in the top tier of Pixar films. Effective teaser, I admit. But I didn't buy it. I had no idea what they meant when they said that everything was about to change and after seeing the movie I still don't know what that means. But a teaser is a teaser. All I got out of that is that we were going back to the racetrack with this film and that towards the beginning, Lightning McQueen was going to get in a wreck and experience some sort of other setback, but then we would proceed with a cliche sports movie where he spends time training and improving before going back on the track for one more go of it at whoever this new racer was. Do you know what? I hate to toot my own horn, but that's exactly what we got with this movie. It's a cliche sports/racing movie with no major twists or turns that is only here because the "Cars" franchise is second only to "Star Wars" in toy sales.

In fact, the only big surprise here is how big of an over bloated mess this film is. I was kind of expecting a by-the-numbers racing film here. And I got a by-the-numbers racing film that felt like they had no idea how to extend it to 110 minutes, so we got a whole bunch of worthless crap that my best explanation for is that they wanted more toys, so they found ways to include as many new vehicles as possible until they finally decided to get to our actual ending. And you thought this was going to be a dark, emotional film after we saw that big crash in the teaser? Ha! Joke's on you. Do you know how long it took Lightning McQueen to get over that crash and decide to go back on the racing course? Two minutes. After he crashes, we get a thing that says four months later wherein we see Lightning McQueen in Doc Hudson's place looking at videos for a few moments. Sally drives in and tells him that he needs to go back to racing, so he drives out and announces he is going back. That's it. Thus everything you saw in that teaser that made you excited is what I call trailer fodder. It's only in the movie to make the trailer interesting, but has little pertinence to the movie itself. "Cars 3" is what you thought it was going to be when you heard it announced.

Most of this movie is a bunch of drama about Lightning McQueen being old news. He's been the king of racing for a while, but now we have a whole host of new racers that are simply better than Lightning McQueen. They are updated cars with fancier technology. The world is moving forward while Lightning McQueen is stuck in the past. He refuses to accept the fact that world is changing and that he needs change with it if he wants to stay relevant. There's new ways to train. New technology to work with. Things that could make him better. But he refuses to accept any of it as he would prefer to train by going to race on the dirt tracks and other old-fashioned ways that have always worked for him. So basically he has become Doc Hudson and he has to learn how to deal with it and he's not doing a very good job. This is all fine and dandy on paper if the movie itself had any actual focus or emotion. Which is unfortunate because, speaking of Doc Hudson, the entire movie is practically a tribute to the late Paul Newman, the legendary actor who voiced Doc Hudson in the first movie, but passed away before they could make "Cars 2." Way too much happening in this movie and not enough voice actors seeming like they even care about this movie they're making.

If the movie had decided to pick one angle with the training and run with it, then I may have been able to give this a pass. The idea of the world leaving the older generations in the dust is a real issue that could've made for a classic Pixar film that entertains kids while leaving adults in deep thought. Bring Lightning McQueen into the new training facility with this hard-nosed trainer and let the two duke it out emotionally like one of our "Rocky" movies. Instead of having one big training sequences that is fleshed out, we get four different training sequences with each new sequence shifting gears thematically and tonally. Thus when we finally got to the final race that's going to determine whether or not Lightning McQueen's career continues, given a deal that him and new boss man make, I didn't feel like we had given Lightning McQueen enough time to be ready because the movie couldn't make a decision on how it wanted to go about things after Lightning McQueen's big crash in the first act. A proper sports movie hinges on the second act of the film. If that second act succeeds, then our final sporting moment has the emotional weight to make us care about the final outcome. Because of this failure, the final act of this movie lacked this emotional weight to make things work.

So let's talk a bit about this final act. In vague terms because I don't plan on spoiling things. When I said at the beginning of this review that 95 percent of this movie was exactly how I expected it to be, there is one moment in this film that I really appreciated and it happens in this final act. No, I'm not going to give it a full 30 percent because I think the second act was bad enough to make it so I didn't really care about what happened in the end, but there is a small moment that almost redeems the film. A little bit of a twist that I didn't see coming that made me smile. In fact, it made me smile enough that I was able to bump this film up a notch. Instead of driving home saying the movie belonged in the trash bin with "Cars 2," I instead found myself debating in my head as to how this ranks when compared to "Monsters University" and "The Good Dinosaur," the two Pixar movies that are just slightly better than awful. But when push comes to shove, "The Good Dinosaur" had a lot more individual sequences that made me smile while "Monsters University" had a more powerful ending and a slightly better first and second act. But kudos to this movie for making it onto the same tier as those films while avoiding becoming a complete dumpster fire.

Speaking of tiers of Pixar movies, I have determined in my mind that there are five tiers of Pixar movies. Bring out your torches and pitchforks ladies and gentlemen, because I'm going to quickly place all of Pixar's movies into those tiers. The top tier are the Pixar classics. The masterpieces that you turn to time and time again. For this I'm going with "Toy Story 3," "Toy Story," "The Incredibles," "Monsters, Inc.," "Finding Nemo," "Inside Out" and "Up." Just under that level, but not quite at the masterpiece level, are our second tier of Pixar movies. This includes "Finding Dory," "Toy Story 2" and "Ratatouille." In our third tier, our good but not great level, I'm including "Brave," "A Bug's Life," "WALL-E" and "Cars." Jumping down to our very bottom tier, the fifth tier of awful Pixar movies, luckily there is only one. "Cars 2." But it's in the fourth tier of Pixar movies, the disappointments, where "Cars 3" belongs." As I mentioned, with it are "The Good Dinosaur" and "Monsters University." The ending of "Cars 2" moved it up from the fifth tier to the fourth tier, but the rest of this movie was bad enough for me to comfortable declare it belongs no higher and is unfortunately the second worst Pixar film. I'm giving "Cars 3" a 6/10, and even that feels a bit generous.

47 Meters Down Review

It's now time to review our yearly shark thriller! This type of film has practically been a yearly tradition ever since "Jaws" was released in theaters 42 years ago in the summer of 1975. "Jaws" was such a landmark film for so many reasons that filmmakers have endlessly attempted to recapture the magic that Steven Spielberg masterfully created. Yet no shark movie since "Jaws," not even the "Jaws" sequels, have been able to pull off what "Jaws" did. And that's OK to me. I don't expect any shark movie to be on the level of "Jaws" and I'm certainly not going to tear a movie to shreds just because it wasn't as great as "Jaws." I like my shark thrillers. They're fun. Many of them for different reasons. "Jaws" is a very character-driven horror film that does horror right. It's practically the perfect example of how to properly make a horror film. I mean, how many thousands or millions of people have hated going in the water and been terrified of sharks just because of "Jaws"? Brilliant. But then on the complete opposite side of the scale we have "Sharknado," a movie I also love. That movie is so dumb that it's awesome. The key ingredient there is that the movie is so self-aware that they are making an enjoyably awful movie that it's an absolute blast from start to finish.

The problem is when you get a movie that's trying to be the next "Jaws," but ends up being "Sharknado" instead. If you're trying to make a bad movie, it can work. It's a hard balance to find, though, because if you don't capture the magic of purposely bad filmmaking, you can often wind up simply making an awful, unwatchable film with no redeeming qualities. And it can be worse if you were trying to make a good movie, but failed in every way. When I watched the trailers for "47 Meters Down," that's exactly what I thought we were getting. A movie that was trying to be the next "Jaws," but ended up accidentally being on "Sharknado" level in a very bad way. Not helping their case for me was that this was initially intended as a direct to DVD film before an company called Entertainment Studios, who had never distributed a theatrical film before, swiped it up and decided to throw it in theaters. That, combined with the awful trailers, gave me no hope that this was going to be even worth watching. I was expected the critics to lash and give it a score in the teens or single-digits on Rotten Tomatoes. But that's not what happened. Instead initial reviews had this up in the 70 percent range before sliding down and settling in the mid-50's. I was floored.

Pretty soon, I found myself in the theater seeing "47 Meters Down," before "Cars 3" or "All Eyez on Me," both of which were initially higher on my list of movies to see. But even then, I went in expecting a shark thriller that was extremely cheesy and over the top, hopefully in a good way. In the opening sequences of this film, that's exactly what was playing out. We have two sisters on a trip in Mexico. One has recently broken up with her boyfriend, so her sister decides that they need to party hard so that she can forget about him and make him jealous that they're having fun. So of course the logical sequence of events is to party all night then go cage diving with a couple of awesome Mexican dudes that they just barely met and made out with. None of this was even remotely interesting, thus I started to feel like I would be on team shark in this movie, which is not really a good thing when you're trying to make a successful horror film. Then the two of them get into the cage and one of the first things that happens is one girl drops the camera and immediately a giant shark comes and snaps it up. And I was laughing so hard at how ridiculously awful that was. That's the type of movie this is going to be? OK. Let's do it! Bring on the sharks and bring on the cheese!

Then something happened. And no, I'm not talking about the chords breaking on their cage, sending them to the ocean floor. If you didn't know that was going to happen after watching the trailers or looking at the title of the movie, you'll know after the first five minutes that both of these ladies are destined for the ocean floor, 47 meters down. No, by saying that something happened, I mean that the movie actually became a good movie. Not a movie that's so dumb and so cheesy that it's good. A movie that's legitimately good. No, this is not on the level of "Jaws." No shark movie ever will be. But it's also not on the level of "Sharknado," for better or for worse. This is actually very comparable to "The Shallows" from last year, which I also rather enjoyed. I thought "The Shallows" was very complimentary to "Jaws" in that "Jaws" is a movie where a killer shark terrorizes an entire town while "The Shallows" is a movie where a killer shark terrorizes one girl who is unfortunately trapped on a small rock off the shore of an empty beach, with no way of getting a hold of anyone. While "The Shallows" also doubled as a Blake Lively photo shoot, she also managed to give a pretty good performance as a girl stricken after being trapped close to a killer shark.

I do think it's worth mentioning at this point that if you are not a fan of shark thrillers, "47 Meters Down" is not the movie that's going to covert you to this sub-genre of horror. If you're one of those people that's hated every shark movie since "Jaws," then skip "47 Meters Down." It's simply. But if you're like me and you've enjoyed a lot of different shark thrillers for many different reasons, then this is a movie to go see. Once these ladies fall to the bottom of the ocean in the cage, the movie actually becomes fairly intense. The two of them are trapped so far down that there's no service with their little walkie-talkie things and they have to figure out how to escape and survive this situation in a timely manner because their air is slowly running out. This often requires them to sneak out of the cage for certain periods of time where there is a danger of running into a shark. I was worried that this was going to be a gore-fest with a lot of shark attacks. It wasn't. I thought it was going to be 90 minutes of girls screaming at the camera with cheesy sharks surrounding them, trying to have a quick, easy dinner. It wasn't. Mandy Moore and Claire Holt are our two main girls and I quickly came to care for their characters and was rooting for their escape.

One thing I think this movie really does right is that our shark scenes are held to a minimum. The suspense comes in play mainly due to the unknown. The movie teases us at the beginning with sharks, informing us that they're there, but then the movie chooses not to reveal them very often, leaving us in suspense because we know they're there, yet we don't know when they're going to show up. So every time one of the girls swims out of the cage, things become suspenseful. And the discount John Williams theme is good enough to make the scenes suspenseful while not sounding too much like that classic score that every knows, even those who haven't seen "Jaws." When the sharks do show up, I think they made me jump every time. I'm not one who usually gets tricked by horror movie jump scares, but these got me. Then they quickly went away, leaving us in suspense again. This leads me to my next point. When compared to other shark thrillers, these sharks are fairly realistic. They aren't killer sharks that are out to get these girls. They're just there minding their own business when these girls invade their space. When the girls get too close, we get a brief chase sequence, then the shark goes away. I was successfully scared of these sharks throughout the whole movie.

Granted, no shark movie is going to be perfectly realistic. Not every shark movie is as ridiculous as "Sharknado," but not even "Jaws" gives an honest portrayal of how sharks really act. If you expect that out of your shark movies, then you're going to be disappointed every time because a perfectly realistic shark movie is going to be very boring because sharks aren't quite as scary and evil as "Jaws" and all of our "Jaws" wannabees make them out to be. You mind your business and they'll mind there's. But that doesn't make for a good horror movie, so you have to suspend your belief when you go into these movies. But comparatively, I think "47 Meters Down" is a lot more realistic and terrifying than some, which pleasantly surprised me because I was expecting a full out cheese fest, but didn't get it. I'll also quickly say that this movie has a very bold ending that I didn't see coming. My whole theater was floored at this twist, with all sorts of different reactions. Listening to those reactions was rather satisfying. It might turn people off, but I applauded it. That's all I'll say there. In summary, my final recommendation is simple. If you are like me and you enjoy shark thrillers, then check this one out. If you hate shark movies, then skip it. My grade for "47 Meters Down" is an 8/10.

Love, Kennedy Review

It's time to dive into Mormonville with my next movie review as we discuss T.C. Christensen's latest film, "Love, Kennedy." If you are an active member of the LDS church and you've watched any church videos, short or long, you've definitely seen T.C. Christensen's work, even if the name is jumping to your head right away. Films like "Finding Faith in Christ," "The Restoration," "Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration" and "Treasure in Heaven: The John Tanner Story" are all examples of his work. Recently, though, his feature-length theatrical releases include "17 Miracles," "Ephraim's Rescue" and "The Cokeville Miracle." See? I told you that you know this man's work. With a lot of LDS-themed films under his belt, it's safe to say the man knows how to make a film for the LDS audience. If you're not LDS and you're reading this review, well I'm not exactly sure what to tell you. If you don't like these religious films, then you probably weren't going to see this anyways, but you can still read on if you want to. But I'm going to assume that most people that clicked on this review are active members of the LDS faith because that's exactly who this movie is made for. This is a movie that's here to remind us of what's most important in our lives and it does a great job.

No director has a completely flawless record. It's just the nature of the business. For me I think "The Cokeville Miracle" was a bit of a bump in the road for T.C. Christensen, but I chalk that up to subject matter, not poor film making. It's a bit of a curious choice to make a movie about a school of children who miraculously survived a school hostage situation not long after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting where 20 kids were shot and killed. Why did God allow those kids to die while deciding to save the kids from Cokeville Elementary School? That's a question that wasn't really answered at all in the film, so I don't think it was great timing. I was hoping with this latest film that T.C. would make a recovery because I really enjoyed both "17 Miracles" and "Ephraim's Rescue," even though they are like the same movie, but from different perspectives. With "Love, Kennedy,"  there's no issue with the subject matter as T.C. goes back to making a faith-inspiring film that LDS audiences should eat right up. The big trick here is the narrative structure is such that it's hard for any filmmaker, regardless of experience, to get completely right and I don't know if "Love, Kennedy" completely succeeds at this even though it makes the audience bawl their eyes out.

This narrative structure I speak of is that of telling the story of the life of an individual. This individual is Kennedy Hansen, who as a young girl grew up like a typical child with lots of dreams and aspirations which include dating, driving a car and being a cheerleader. On top of that, she's the sweetest, most loving, Christlike child you'll ever meet. But once she gets older they discover she has what's called Batten Disease, an extremely rare, incurable disease where the person slowly starts losing their eyesight and mental capacity until the inevitable happens. So yeah, being diagnosed with a terminal illness is not a fun thing for anyone involved and everyone reacts in a different way, but often confusion and anger is mixed in there somewhere. Why me? Or why my daughter. What did she/I do wrong to deserve this? In this instance, young Kennedy was practically perfect in every way with how she handled things, thus inspiring everyone around her, from family to friends and even strangers who didn't know her well. Consequently, we as an audience watching her story unfold are also inspired to learn or remember what's most important in life and what attitude we should have towards the things that trouble us. Thus her life becomes a love letter to all.

Perhaps it's the analytical thinker in me who has watched and reviews a whole ton of movies in the last five years, but I'm not one to give an automatic pass to every faith-based film just because it left me with an inspiring message. I prefer the film making qualities to be up to par with the message and theme. There's a lot of poor quality films with great messages that I'm not going to simply ignore the flaws because my heart strings were successfully tugged at. I'm not saying this is one of those poor quality films, but I was slightly distracted at the fact that this didn't feel quite as polished as some of T.C.'s previous work in terms of the technical aspects of the film. The movie felt a lot more homemade that usual as if they didn't quite have as big of a budget to work with this time around. The camera work and editing felt more like a first time filmmaker instead of a seasoned veteran and the cinematography didn't quite jump out at me. If they were working on a smaller budget this time around, I can understand that, but I still don't give it an automatic pass because I've seen movies made on small budgets that you certainly would've fooled me had you claimed they had a big budget to work with. Then sometimes you can flip that around and fail with a big budget, so no excuse.

I really do feel bad saying these things because I know a lot of people are going to love this movie and certainly won't be as nit-picky as I am right now. I've also met and talked with T.C. Christensen and I definitely have a lot of respect for him as a filmmaker and as a person in general, so I hate to be the annoying little movie critic, but I commit myself to being honest and I'm not going to blindly praise a movie that I found a bit distracting and slightly unpolished. Then we have this narrative structure I referenced earlier. There's not really one major through story arc here. It's Kennedy living through her first year of high school while suffering from this awful disease as she slowly digresses throughout the film. There's a lot of individual segments that often only loosely connect together to make one movie. With much of this film, you could probably watch a lot of these individual segments on their own or even out of order without missing a beat as they sometimes stumbled a bit from scene to scene. Then you think the movie is going to end, but we have another major segment of the movie attached at the end. Thus instead of having a beautifully polished narrative that flows seamlessly, we have a great, inspiring story that's a bit a bit rough around the edges.

But oh my freaking goodness, what I am doing here? I was a lot more negative in those last two paragraphs than I meant to be. Even if the movie is a tad bit clunky at times with a bit of a low-budget feel to it, this is a movie that grabs you right from the start and forces you to brace for the worst. We introduce this family that is extremely likable and this little girl that is just a precious little angel, then we get slammed in the head with a baseball bat as she is diagnosed with this terminal illness. Immediately you know what is going to happen, but you don't want it to happen, thus you are prepared to have your heart ripped out and stomped on. Then throughout this journey we are introduced to character after character who completely melts your heart with the stunning acts of service that they perform for Kennedy that make me want to go find the real life people and thank them for what they did, which is not entirely impossible in this scenario given that this is a recent story that took place practically in my back yard somewhere in Utah. Christlike love and service are shown in abundance throughout this film that it's no wonder that there were so many sniffles in my theater. I could also use the cliche statement that there wasn't a dry eye in the building during certain scenes because it was true.

Then we have our cast. Holy cow were they great! The only name and face that I recognized is that of Jasen Wade, who has played the lead role in several of these recent T.C. Christensen films. He pulled off another great performance as Kennedy's father, who went through quite the emotional journey throughout this film. We also have a slew of supporting characters that all did a great job. I'm not going to name them all by name because I've already talked your ear off, metaphorically speaking, but I do want to call out the absolute star of this film and that is Tatum Chiniquy as Kennedy. I've never seen her in any prior film and her IMDb page claims this is her first major theatrical role, but she took on quite the difficult task here of playing this teenage girl who is slowly degenerating mentally and she knocks it out of the park. This movie hinges solely on us caring for this girl and Tatum gives the absolute perfect performance. I was reminded in many ways of Eddie Redmayne's Oscar winning performance as Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything." So if any of my friends happen to know Tatum, which has happened before with these local movies, pass on the word to her that I'm a huge fan of what she pulled off here and I hope to see her on screen again soon.

Overall, I did a lot more complaining in this review than I meant to, so I hope you don't walk away thinking I hated this movie. There were just certain technical aspects of the movie that I didn't feel were up to par with what T.C. Christensen usually produces and the narrative wasn't as smooth as it could've been. And it may have had a bit too much narration. But despite that, this is a movie that knows its target audience and what it needs to do to please them and it fully succeeds. We have a gripping story that is both tragic and inspiring as there's a whole lot that everyone can learn from the story of Kennedy about life and perspective. There were plenty of people in my theater with me that were downright sobbing at the end of this film. There were a lot of sniffling and a lot of tissues wiping away tears. That should say a lot. This movie is kind of leaving theaters quickly, so if you don't see this now, you may have to wait till the DVD comes out, which wouldn't be the end of the world. But at the moment it's in most of the Megaplex theaters in Northern Utah if you're anxious to enjoy this on the big screen. But act now. Or you can wait as this will make a pretty darn good Sunday movie night with your family and friends. I'm going to give "Love, Kennedy" an 8/10.

It Comes at Night Review

Last summer was a pretty darn good summer when it came to horror films. Not only did "Lights Out," "Don't Breathe," "The Shallows" "The Conjuring 2" all do well at the box office, but they were all pretty good films in my book, with "The Conjuring 2" being the lesser of the bunch in my opinion. All this coming after we knocked it out of the park earlier in the year with "The Witch," a movie that ended up in my top three best movies of 2016. This year we are already off to a solid start as "Get Out" is right up there with "Lights Out" and "Don't Breathe" in terms of quality in my opinion, and I'm on the lower end of the spectrum with that. And if we want to blur the line between horror and thriller, then "Split" is still my favorite movie of the year. So heading into this summer I was ready for a few more horror breakouts, thus I had my eyes on A24's "It Comes at Night," hoping it would deliver. When the critic reviews came in very solid with an 86 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and weekend projections had the movie around $15 million, I was happy because it appeared that this was going to be the fun, creepy summer horror film that I was hoping for. I just didn't see it as soon as I wanted because my bank account wasn't quite my best friend, so I waited for Tuesday.

This may seem menial, but these details are important. When weekend box office results started to come in, "It Comes at Night" was falling well below expectations as it only grabbed $6 million. This was sparked by an extremely negative audience reaction. Opening day audiences gave the movie a "D" CinemaScore and, despite it's 86 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, the Flixter user score is only 44 percent. This strong negative reaction from regular moviegoers didn't have me worried, but it did have me curious as to what it is that has caused such a polarizing difference between critics and regular moviegoers. I began to theorize in my head as to what this movie was really about and my conclusions going in were that this wasn't your typical horror movie and that there was something that was going to happen in this movie that angered casual audiences and pleased critics who often go in with different expectations that are more analytical as compared to casual horror fans that just want to be scared and don't want to have to think much about it. Thus my expectations shifted completely following the weekend, making me glad that I waited. Thus I can say that I wasn't blindsided by this movie at all. In fact, I was able to really love this movie.

While this 86 percent vs. 44 percent ratio is surprising, I did a bit of digging and realized that this is not uncommon at all when it comes to horror films that I consider to be really good. You see, I'm a fan of horror, but I'm a fan of good horror. That sounds like an obvious statement, but nowadays there are a ton of low budget horror films whose only goal is to make money, thus they sacrifice story and acting in favor of jump scares and gore. And the casual audiences eat it up. But not me. Those types of horror movies I find stupid. I like horror movies that have more depth and thought to them, where acting and storytelling are put at the forefront while scares and blood are there only when it's necessary to support the story being told. They might happen quite often, but they're not necessarily the purpose of the film. Three examples of recent horror films that I personally find excellent because they do things the way I like it are "The Witch," "The Babadook" and "It Follows." And get this. When looking at Rotten Tomatoes, all three of these movies have similar critic/audience ratios as "It Comes at Night." "The Witch": 91 percent vs. 56 percent. "The Babadook": 98 percent vs. 72 percent. "It Follows": 97 percent vs. 65 percent. Suddenly everything makes sense.

After analyzing these factors, I conclude that if you go into "It Comes at Night" expecting a cliche horror film where a family gets trapped in a cabin in the woods and some sort of monster comes in and haunts them, thus providing you with a slew of jump scares, a creepy monster and lots of blood and gore, you're going to walk out hating this movie. Because that's not what this movie is. Even though that's kinda what they advertised in the trailers. A bit of a marketing fail, perhaps, that may have attracted the wrong crowd to the theater. But if you subvert your expectations and prepare for something different and deeper, then there's a lot to love about this film. In fact, the three horror movies previously mentioned follow similar formulas. "The Witch," "The Babadook" and "It Follows" are all fairly deep thematically with a rich story and great acting that completely sell what the writers and directors were going for. I suppose casual audiences walked into each of those movies expecting certain things to happen and when those things didn't happen, they got angry and left a bad review online. I suppose everyone is allowed to have their own personal tastes, but it makes me sad when people completely miss the point of these genius horror films.

Up to this point, I've been doing a lot of talking around this film without even diving into any specifics. That's kind of on purpose because this movie is shrouded with a lot of mystery and suspense that I don't want to spoil, so I feel safe making parallel comparisons and I think "The Witch," "The Babadook" and "It Follows" are three similar movies to "It Comes at Night." If you want a brief summary of what this movie is about, this is about a family living out in the middle of nowhere. There's not a lot of exposition in this film as we don't follow our typical movie arc with a fleshed out beginning, middle and end. We're just kind of thrown into that middle section as we are witnessing the after effects of whatever has happened to the world and this family specifically. We have a father, a mother and a teenage son and all three of them have different approaches to dealing with this and I loved following their individual arcs and how each of them reacts when another family comes walking onto their property unannounced. There are a lot of small, character moments scattered throughout between various combinations of characters that paint a very beautiful, symbolic film that has a lot to say about human nature and how we all respond differently.

If you go in expecting a supernatural horror film, you're not going to get it. If you go in expecting a monster movie, you're not going to get it. If you go in expecting a slasher horror, you're not going to get it. This movie is instead a paranoia horror film. What do you do when you don't know what to do? What if you are put into an unfamiliar place that you are not used to dealing with? How do you react with you think something bad is about to happen, but you have no idea what? What if you are put into a scenario with several strangers and you don't know who to trust? These are the themes these movies tackles and it's our main cast of six individuals who completely buy into this movie and their individual roles that sells this movie. First and foremost of the bunch is Joel Edgerton, who can practically do no wrong at this point as some of his recent films include "The Gift," "Black Mass" and "Loving," the latter of which was one of my favorite performances of last year. And I loved his performance in "It Comes at Night." Another fantastic addition to his resume. But not to be forgotten are Christopher Abbott, Carmen Ejogo, Riley Keough, Kelvin Harrison Jr. and even the young Griffin Robert Faulkner. Phenomenal performances!

Yes, unconventional is the word of the day here. But yet when you go into an A24 film, that's something you should come to expect. Other recent movies they've distributed are "Moonlight," "The Lobster," "Swiss Army Man," "Room," "Ex Machina" and the aforementioned "The Witch." They are well-versed in the unconventional. Sometimes it leads to universal praise and Oscar nominations while other times it leads to mixed feelings and controversy. That's the nature of experimental film, though. If you walked out of the movie hating it, I can understand where you are coming from, but I think if you go in with expectations that I've talked about, then I think this is a movie that can be loved, watched and discussed for years to come. If you specifically loved the three horror movies that I have repeatedly referenced, "The Witch," "The Babadook" and "It Follows," and you are confused or disappointed at the negative reaction those movies got from some and you're ready for another unconventional horror film, then I really think you should give "It Comes at Night" a chance. I'm not going to grade it quite as high as "The Witch" and "The Babadook," which are both near perfect horror films in my mind, but this won't be too far behind as I'm giving "It Comes at Night" a 9/10.

The Mummy Review

We live in a day of cinematic universes. Thanks to Marvel, who beautifully set up their cinematic universe of superheros, which has blossomed into $11.7 billion worldwide and counting, every studio is scrambling to come up with their own cinematic universes and movie crossovers to cash in on this new fad. Some time back Universal looked at this and made the decision that everyone wants to see all of their classic monsters back on the big screen. As a brief history lesson, Universal made a grand total of 89 monster movies between 1923 and 1960, which started with "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1923) and "The Phantom of the Opera" (1925) and eventually included classics such as "Dracula" (1931), "Frankenstein" (1931), "The Invisible Man" (1933), "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935), "The Wolf Man" (1941) and "Creature from the Black Lagoon" (1954). And now all of these that I mentioned, as well as several more, will be getting modern remakes in a cinematic universal that Universal has titled Dark Universe. At least that's what they tell us. If audiences decide not to show up to this films, they may have to reconsider. At the moment, though, they seem to be rather bullish with this plan as they've already announced plans for around 10 films.

Kicking things off in this Dark Universe is the latest iteration of "The Mummy." In terms of the number of sequels and remakes, believe it or not, "The Mummy" is right behind "Dracula" and "Frankenstein." While "Dracula" has had at least 30 films made and "Frankenstein" has had at least 20, this 2017 remake of "The Mummy" is the 14th Mummy movie that has been made. That's right. The 1999 Brendan Fraser remake that I've heard many people refer to "the original" is far removed from being the original. You can call that movie No. 11 in our Mummy series. The actual original film was released in 1932, the year after "Dracula" and "Frankenstein." Instead of making a sequel to this original, Universal remade it in 1940, titling it "The Mummy's Hand." They then made four sequels to this 1940 version for a total of six Mummy movies overall in their original Universal Monsters phase. Then the British took the reins as they made a total of four Mummy movies beginning in 1959 as a part of the Hammer Horror Series. It's only after all of this that we can fast forward to 1999 when Stephen Sommers' Mummy trilogy began. And now here we are in 2017 with what is officially the fourth remake of the original 1932 classic and, as I noted, the 14th Mummy movie overall.

Before I saw this latest remake in theaters, I wanted to go back and familiarize myself with this franchise. I didn't watch all 13 movies, but I caught the highlights. Specially I watched the original 1932 movie as well as the first movie in each reboot franchise while reading over the plot synopses of the sequels. Long story short, the only movie I'd consider a great movie is the 1932 version. The movie is simple, short and brilliant with our mummy Imhotep being a fascinating, deep character with a very interesting lore. The 1940 movie switched up the lore quite a bit, named our mummy Kharis, and made a very stupid B-level monster movie. And from what I gather with the four sequels, none of them are any better. Then when the 1959 movie remade the franchise, they chose to do a remake of the 1940 movie instead of the classic 1932 movie, which was frustrated for me as I was watching. Granted they did a much better job at making the movie creepy and intense, but it still wasn't that interesting. And again, apparently the three sequels are pretty bad. Then we get to everyone's favorite 1999 version, which is bigger, louder, weirder and grosser than the previous movies. They also turned the franchise from a horror movie to a dumb, brainless action movie.

After going through all of this, I was suddenly a lot less excited about this movie as it seems that no one can get this franchise right following a fantastic first entry that is now 85 years old. And unfortunately I was right to be nervous because this movie is yet another missed opportunity. However, I will say this is a huge improvement over that 1999 movie. Now if you're one of the people that loves that 1999 movie and didn't know that any previous Mummy movies existed, I encourage you to go actually watch the 1932 movie, then re-watch your beloved 1999 film and tell me yourself what is wrong with the latter movie. It's pretty darn obvious and thus I would be willing to say that nostalgia is the biggest thing holding it up. If you want to claim it as a guilty pleasure, then I'm fine with that. We all have those. But it's a giant mess of a film where few things make any sense. It's style over substance and I prefer substance when it comes to my monster movies. I'm also frustrated with this idea that we are taking old horror films and removing the horror. An action-packed remake of an old horror film is not my idea of intelligent cinema. I would've loved to see a modern horror master take this Mummy franchise and make it into modern horror movie instead of giving us a dumb, brainless action film.

What actually surprised me with this new 2017 Mummy was that it actually did have some substance to it and was more of a streamlined, focused movie. In our 1932 film, we followed a mummy named Imhotep who some archaeologists accidentally uncovered and eventually learned was buried alive for attempting to resurrect his forbidden lover, the Egyptian princess Ankh-es-en-Amon. When these archaeologists read a certain scroll and accidentally bring Imhotep back to life, he sets out to resurrect his lover again so that the two of them can live forever in immortality. Imhotep only harms those who get in his way, with the added drama being that he thinks one of our main female protagonists is his beloved princess reincarnated. This is a lore that I was fascinated with. I felt that if we were to take this lore and build off of it, we could create a fascinating modern remake. Instead all we've received is a bunch of hogwash that not only changes the lore and turns the mummy into a dog (metaphorically speaking) to chase after people, but also over-complicates the lore adding new and weirder elements to what happened to this guy once he was buried or what the consequences of unleashing him are. Sometimes bigger and crazier does not equal better.

This simplicity is what this 2017 Mummy reverted back to in many ways, thus I started this movie with a lot of hope. First off the backstory here is a lot more interesting than any Mummy movie since the original. And it's also not simply a second-rate, uninspiring copy. For one, our mummy is female this time around and is named Ahmanet. She's played by Sofia Boutella from "Kingsman: The Secret Service," "Star Trek Beyond" and the upcoming "Atomic Blonde." If nothing else, I'm sure that at least some would agree with me that Sofia Boutella absolutely nails the role of Ahmanet. When they are showing her backstory or implementing flashbacks and dream sequences throughout the movie, she is successfully cunning and seductive. She's beautiful enough to be able to ensnare people into her trap, but is extremely manipulative and straight-up evil when she has them trapped. And when she's resurrected in the modern-day after the mindless, stupid decisions by Tom Cruise and his friend, she is extremely creepy and rather awesome. In fact, Sofia Boutella did such a great job in this role that I was kinda cheering for her to succeed with whatever plan she had up her sleeve. I cared about her a lot more than Tom Cruise and his damsel-in-distress girlfriend.

Thus comes to our problems with this movie. Everything not having to do with Ahmanet. Now for one, I will say that I was a bit confused as to what Ahmanet's final plan actually was and why she was doing it. Her motivations behind doing this were set-up very well. The betrayal she felt by the people around her was justified well enough for me to buy her delving into this dark, evil magic. It's just that her final plan didn't seem connected very well to that, both in the past when she was stopped and buried alive and in the present when she was trying to finish what she started. Imhotep's backstory and final plan all made complete sense. Ahmanet's was a bit fuzzy. But most of this movie is in the present day with Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe. And man was it dull. First off, there was a ton of set-up and storytelling. After our first introduction to Ahmanet in the opening credits, it took a while for the movie to get back to her and once it did, it took another while to get to her attempting to completing her master plan once she was released. We instead were forced to wander around with Tom Cruise, who plays perhaps one of his least interesting characters to date. And the movie tried to set-up a romance with him and Annabelle Wallis, who was more useless than Tom Cruise.

Then we have Russell Crowe. We actually start the movie with him as he's telling the story of Ahmanet... to no one. Just us as the audience. That was frustrating. The 1932 movie told the backstory of Imhotep at a point in the plot that made sense when our main protagonists were first learning about him. Yes, it was exposition, but it was exposition that was necessary and made sense to the plot. Then in the 1940 movie, they told the backstory in the opening sequences in an effort to get it out of the way. I didn't like that. And every movie since has decided to copy that 1940 formula. But at least with those movies, it was usually someone talking to someone else. This is Russell Crowe talking to no one. Also with Russell Crowe, the movie spent a lot of time with him as he's obviously Universal's Nick Fury. He's there as the glue that is going to attempt to hold and bring this Dark Universe together and thus I think this movie got a little carried away in setting up this cinematic universe instead of simply giving us a stand-alone movie. Thus this movie fell into the recent common trap of spending too much time setting up a universe and not enough time giving us a good movie. This was especially frustrating here because I didn't care about this set-up.

I think the right way to set up a cinematic universe is to give us several solid stand-alone movies and make us care enough about these characters and stories that will make us excited to see them come together. This is exactly what Marvel initially did with their five movies leading up to "The Avengers." Nick Fury existed and he was there to recruit them, but he was very much a small, side-character in the movies as opposed to being a main character that the movie spent half of run time focusing on. I hope this Dark Universe works out. I really do. I really hope that Universal is able to learn from this with their next portion of this saga, which is currently scheduled to be "Bride of Frankenstein" on Valentine's Day in 2019, which will be directed by Bill Condon from "Beauty and the Beast." They need to completely forget about setting up the Dark Universe and just give us a solid "Bride of Frankenstein" remake. If they do that well enough, then maybe more people will jump on board when they bring us "Creature from the Black Lagoon," "The Invisible Man," "Wolf Man" and others. I think DC just struck gold with "Wonder Woman" and I hope that teaches them how to properly set up a cinematic universe. Now I hope Universal figures it out, too.

As regards to the rest of the movie, I don't want to dive into any spoilers, even if you don't care, but I will say that I enjoyed the sequences in the final act when Ahmanet was actually in the movie. But I didn't like Tom Cruise and I didn't like Annabelle Wallis. I was intrigued by Russell Crowe, but I think it was the wrong movie to focus on him. They could've completely cut him out of the movie and we would've missed nothing. Or maybe they have him in for 5-10 minutes at some point. But in the end, the movie wasn't focused on doing a proper remake of "The Mummy" and was instead focused on setting up the Dark Universe, which I found frustrating. Then when they did focus on our Mummy storyline, I really only cared for Ahmanet as a character and no one else. Having a great villain is fantastic, but we need good protagonists and a solid story or else we're just wasting our villain, thus I feel bad because Sofia Boutella did a great job, but it didn't seem that any of the other actors or crew members had her level of commitment. Yes I enjoyed this more than the 1999 remake as well as several other Mummy movies, but 14 movies in and we still haven't had a proper remake or sequel of the original 1932 film. Thus I will give our 2017 remake of "The Mummy" a 6/10.

Wonder Woman Review

In our on-going battle of Marvel vs. DC, Marvel had their turn earlier in the summer with "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" and now DC is up to bat with our first ever film version of "Wonder Woman," directed NOT by Zack Snyder (although my prayers go out to him and his family after the awful tragedy of his daughter's suicide) or David Ayer, but by Patty Jenkins. Thus we have a female-led superhero movie directed by a female. That might be the first time in, like, ever. We haven't even had a female-led superhero at all since 2005's "Catwoman." In fact, I don't think we've ever had a female-led superhero movie that was even good. The only other ones outside "Catwoman" that I can think of are "Elektra" (2004) and "Supergirl" (1984). All three of those were directed by males. And all three are awful movies. I don't know why this has been such a hard thing for Hollywood to do, let alone get right when they've tried. It's not like there's a lack of female characters in the comics. And speaking of Wonder Woman specifically, I don't know why it's taken until 2017 for her to get her own movie at all given that she's been around since 1941 and is one of DC's most iconic heroes. But whatever the reasons for the wait, Wonder Woman's movie is here and it's glorious!

As far as all the politics goes behind all that, I don't like putting labels on myself, but I am 100 percent for females getting an equal opportunity in the work force. Whatever that makes me, then fine. But I also don't like things to be done just for the sake of political correctness because often that means the final result feels hollow and we get lazy attempts at movies such as our female-led "Ghostbusters" from last year. I do want more female-led superhero movies and action movies, but not for the sake of politics, but because female superheroes and action stars are freaking awesome. I don't need movies oozing in so much girl power that they become political propaganda of how awesome females are and how horribly disgusting, lazy, and perverted all guys are. I mean, I know there's been a lot of injustice towards females in Hollywood, but fighting fire with fire or trying to balance out the negative by creating another negative. That's not making the world equal. That's called hypocrisy. I was really hoping that "Wonder Woman" wasn't going to be another political propaganda movie pushing hard extreme feminist values into the superhero genre. Thankfully it's not. The goal here was to make a good movie as opposed to making a political statement.

With that item of business, let's get to our other item of business. I quick recap of the DCEU. As I say in every superhero movie, I think this Marvel vs. DC fight is a load of bull crap. Extreme fanboys on both sides seem to think that they can only like their brand of comics while endlessly trash-talking the opposing side. Me? I like both Marvel and DC and I want both to succeed because I just want good movies. However, if you point a gun to my head and make me pick a side, I jump over to DC because they've made more of an impact on my childhood than Marvel has. Which is why the recent failures of DC has had me upset. Those are my characters and stories that are being thrown in a blender. If we talk about specifics, Zack Snyder started us off in the DCEU by ripping the heart and soul out of Superman, throwing it in a blender and serving it up as the big pile of disgusting, ugly dog crap that was "Man of Steel." Then that same man decided he wanted to shove five movies in one with "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice." Then we have David Ayer's "Suicide Squad" that had panic written all over it with all the studio interference. The end result being a movie with a lot of phenomenal characters and character arcs, but a storyline that ran into a brick wall.

Yes, it's true that I don't hate "Batman v. Superman" and "Suicide Squad" as much as others. I gave "Batman v. Superman" a 6/10 and "Suicide Squad" an 8/10. Perhaps the latter score is a bit high, but I still stand my ground that neither are as awful as "Man of Steel." "Batman v. Superman" had a lot of great individual moments and "Suicide Squad" had a lot of amazing characters. But there was still missed potential with both and so far none of our three DCEU movies have been able to fully capture the heart of why I like the DC superhero characters and stories so much. Enter "Wonder Woman." I was reasonably nervous about this one for a long time. I wanted to be excited. I wanted to jump for joy at all of the trailers that looked so freaking boss. But I wasn't going to let myself play fool to the boy who cried wolf for a fourth time because all previous three movies I've discussed have had phenomenal marketing campaigns. "Man of Steel" looked unbelievably awesome. I was ready for the epic, historic showdown "Batman v. Superman" promised us. I was ready to crown "Suicide Squad" as the best movie of the year. But none of them pulled through on the promises that they gave me. So I forced myself into the cautiously optimistic level with "Wonder Woman."

Then the reviews started pouring in and ALL of them were positive. Well, all the ones I cared about anyways. And the Rotten Tomatoes score managed to stay in the 90's. I exhaled deeply as it now appeared that we were in for a good movie. And I allowed myself to be excited. But I wasn't even prepared for the glory that was awaiting me in that movie theater when the movie started playing before my eyes. We didn't just get a good movie. We got classic DC revived into the modern day. We got the type of movie that I was hoping for with "Man of Steel," "Batman v. Superman" and "Suicide Squad." We got a movie that comfortably stands side by side with Richard Donner's two Superman movies and Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. We got the "Wonder Woman" movie that all of humanity has been hoping and dreaming for when they envisioned DC's third most iconic superhero live on the big screen. We got a movie that was colorful in terms of cinematography and light-hearted in terms of tone while at the same time being emotional and deep thematically. We hit every right note that a true DC movie should hit and as I was witnessing this, it nearly made me burst into tears of joy. Was this really the same DCEU that disappointed me three times in a row now?

As far as the Wonder Woman lore goes, she was a character that I was less familiar with going in due to how neglected she's been when it comes to our live-action adaptations. Thus I was excited to learn of her origins, thus she had the immediate advantage when it comes to origin stories due to my curiosity level. Yes, I have unashamedly been known to be harsh on origin stories. We've had so many of them in the last several years that it's super easy to fall into the trap of being super cliche and boring with an origin story. I wouldn't necessarily stand on the rooftops and declare Wonder Woman's origin story as the most original origin story ever told, but I was fascinating with the lore of the film as it tied in Greek mythology with our modern day world, with Wonder Woman being a part of the Amazons who were created by the gods and Zeus as means to protect the world for the war and hatred that Aries, the god of war, was spreading around the world. Then I liked the journey that we went on with Wonder Woman in discovering what was real and what was story as she's convinced that this World War I has been started by Aries and that if she finds and kills Aries that it will stop all of the fighting and violence. This was a fascinating setup that had me fully invested.

Then oh my freaking gosh were the Amazons so boss. We have a whole freaking island of beauty queens that are trained soldiers. It was like a young man's dream come true and I think we were all jealous of Chris Pine for accidentally stumbling on this protected island and becoming friends with Wonder Woman. Speaking of Wonder Woman, I think Gal Gadot perfectly encapsulated what this character is all about. First and foremost that woman is so incredibly beautiful that she will melt the hearts of all men watching. When she gets her close ups, those eyes and that face will penetrate your soul. But she's much more than a pretty face. She puts on her armor, grabs her sword, lasso and shield and marches out to battle you've completely lost it at how perfect this character is. She has a strong will and she's not going to be told what to do. If she has her mind set on something, you better just roll with it or you're going to be left in the dust. But then as she sets out on this mission, she immediately becomes a fish out of water as she has no idea what the world outside her is like. This is where Chris Pine comes in. He may not have a fancy lasso and shield or these amazing superpowers, but he knows how the world works and it's up to him to teach her about humanity.

All of this not only ensues in a lot of natural humor, but we begin a wonderful character journey with this woman as she now has to figure out who she really is, what she believes in and what her true mission is in life. There are several moments of discovery in this film that had me truly inspired. One example early on is when she decides that she is going to protect and save a certain group of people when Chris Pine and his company are begging her to move on from because they have a bigger mission they need to accomplish. She decides that she's not going to leave these dying people behind, so she removes her robes, revealing herself as the Amazon princess that she is and charges into battle because she cares about everyone. These led to extremely entertaining action sequences that weren't there just so we could have a fun, action-packed movie, but they were there to support the plot and build this character. And that's where the reflections of Richard Donner's Superman hit me hard. Superman loves and cares about everyone. He stands as their savior that they look up to. He's there to protect them and not leave anyone behind. This is exactly the type of person that Wonder Woman became in these moments and it sent me to cloud nine.

There's a lot more that I really want to dive into pertaining to this movie, especially as we move forward to our final sequences, but alas that dives into the spoiler range and I haven't and won't declare this review as a spoiler review. But nevertheless if I speak in generalities, I loved the full arc that this movie presented us. I loved the deep, emotional themes of humanity and love that the movie explored. I loved how this wasn't a movie that declared that woman are better than men, but rather showed what it truly means to be equal. Wonder Woman needed Chris Pine in order to achieve her true potential and Chris Pine needed Wonder Woman in order to achieve his true potential. There's several sequences with the two characters that were excellent. Chris Pine and Gal Gadot both blew it out of the water with their performances and as far as the resolution goes, this very much parallels "Batman Begins" as Bruce Wayne tries to figure out who he is and what he needs to become while being challenged by Liam Neeson's Ra's al Ghul who gives him a true test while he's still trying to shape himself. I won't tell you how this parallels, but it does. Thus I will just leave you with the statement that I loved the final resolution of this movie. It was beautiful.

Sure, I could nit-pick this movie. It's not a perfect movie as few movies are. There are plenty of things that I could nit-pick with each entry in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, even "The Dark Knight," which has become my all-time favorite superhero movie. I can nit-pick Richard Donner's Superman movies as well as every single entry that Marvel has given us in the MCU, but the overall feeling that I had walking out of this movie is that I just experienced as close to a modern-day masterpiece as we may get when it comes to the superhero genre, given how over-saturated the market has become with superhero movies. All of these movies and TV shows these past 10 years have made me seriously contemplate what it is I want out of a superhero movie and "Wonder Woman" met those qualifications. And I'm not just fanboying out about this because I've been plenty harsh on all superhero movies recently, regardless of studio. I was going to use the cliche line that this was the best superhero movie I've seen in a long time, but then I remembered that "Logan" also came out this year and I don't know which one I like better, so I'm giving "Wonder Woman" the same grade, a 9.5/10.

Movie Preview: June 2017

Summer 2017 is one month in the books for Hollywood and overall the box office this summer started out on a really bad limp. Marvel scored big time as "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" has already passed its predecessor's final total as it inches closer to the $400 million mark domestically after standing at around $350 million following its first month. But outside that we have flops across the board. "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword," "Snatched" and "Baywatch" have been straight-up box office bombs while "Alien: Covenant" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" are tallying way below their predecessors. Although with the latter two, overseas totals are making up for their domestic shortcomings, especially with "Pirates 5" as it has already earned nearly 80 percent of its worldwide total at the international box office. Meanwhile, "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul" and "Everything, Everything" both failed to register. Thus not only does this mean that May 2017 has been the second straight May to miss out on the $1 billion mark, but it also missed out on the $900 million mark and is the lowest grossing May since 2006. All of this means that the market is currently wide open, ready for some major hits, so let's see what June has to offer up!

June 2nd - 4th-

While Marvel led things off in May with "Guardians 2," it's now DC's turn to kick off a summer as they are releasing Wonder Woman to the world, which is the fourth movie in the DC Extended Universe. It's safe to say that it's been a bit of a rough road for DC as they attempt to follow in the footsteps of Marvel by getting their big cinematic universe off and running. The response to "Man of Steel," "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice" and "Suicide Squad" have all been mixed at best. Although it's worth noting that, despite less-then-stellar reviews, the box office has still been healthy as the three movies average a domestic total of $315.5 million, which is actually higher than the current average of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which stands at $305.2. Not an apples-to-apples comparison, obviously, but it shows that the DC fan base is still huge and it looks like they're finally going to get an entry in this current universe that will please just about everyone as the current score on Rotten Tomatoes stands at a fantastic 92 percent. The movie is also the first female-led superhero movie that either the MCU or the DCEU have put out and surprisingly the first ever movie in the 76-year history of the character of Wonder Woman. All of these signs put together point to a very strong opening weekend and healthy overall box office run for "Wonder Woman."

"Wonder Woman" isn't the only superhero movie coming out this weekend as DreamWorks Animation is releasing Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie. This is obviously a very different type of superhero movie, thus there won't be much crossover audience as DreamWorks has chosen to completely ignore their adult audience this time around and make a movie specifically for 8-10 year old kids who will be bursting out in laughter over all the juvenile, restrained potty humor of a series focused around two fourth-graders who hypnotize their mean principal and make him run around in his underwear saving the world as the illustrious Captain Underpants. This movie is based on the very popular kids novels by Dav Pilkey, which began in 1997 and now includes 12 books, as well as a small handful of spin-offs, that have sold a total of 70 million copies worldwide. Thus while this movie is specifically targeting young kids, this might actually have a multi-generational appeal as teenagers and young adults who grew up reading the series may also be interesting in getting a healthy dose of nostalgia. The biggest obstacle here will be trying to convince family audiences to see this instead of saving their money for "Cars 3" or "Despicable Me 3."

June 9th - 11th-

Speaking of cinematic universes, Universal has decided that they want to join the party and start their own cinematic universe that they've decided to call Dark Universe. This will be a reboot of their old monster universe and begins this month with the latest iteration of The Mummy. The original Universal Monsters began with "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" in 1923 and "The Phantom of the Opera" in 1925. Universal ended up making a total of 89 monster movies between 1923 and 1960 which are highlighted by "Dracula" in 1931, "Frankenstein" in 1931, "The Mummy" in 1932, "The Invisible Man in 1933, "Bride of Frankenstein" in 1935, "The Wolf Man" in 1941 and "Creature from the Black Lagoon" in 1954. As regards to "The Mummy" franchise, this 2017 remake will be the 14th Mummy movie made. Universal made six of their own during their Universal Monsters phase, which included them rebooting the series in 1940. The British Hammer Horror series made four Mummy movies of their own between 1959 and 1971. Then we have the Stephen Sommers Mummy trilogy that started in 1999. So yes, this will be the fourth time in history that "The Mummy" has been rebooted. Universal would really like it if this works out for them. They do have Tom Cruise on board with this movie, so that's a good sign as he's one of the most bankable Hollywood stars.

This iteration of "They Mummy" isn't actually a horror movie. It's an action/adventure movie. But it does have a horror movie challenging it at the box office with It Comes at Night. Last summer was a very healthy one for horror films with "The Conjuring 2" ($104.5 million), "Don't Breathe" ($89.2 million), "Lights Out" ($67.3 million) and "The Shallows" ($55.1 million) all performing well at the domestic box office. This year hasn't seen a ton of horror films released, but "Get Out" broke out in a huge way with $175.3 million starting in late February. Can "It Comes at Night" continue the positive trend? Early reaction from the Overlook Film Festival that it debuted at back in April is positive and distributor A24 also has a good track record of high quality films that includes "Moonlight," "Ex Machina," "The Witch," "Room" and "Swiss Army Man." What they don't have much of a track record for is breakout box office numbers as they usually play it safe with the limited release, slow roll-out game. They've only opened one movie in more than 2,000 theaters, which was 2014's "The Witch," which opened to $8.8 million and finished with $25.1 million. If those are the numbers it follows, A24 will consider that a win. "Moonlight" is their top film with $27.8 million.

The final movie of the weekend is the dog/war movie Megan Leavy. There's been a lot of movies about and starring dogs in Hollywood, but not a lot of them where the dog is a war hero. But there was one two years ago called "Max" that was also released in June and made a total of $42.7 million after opening to $12.2 million, numbers that Bleecker Street would be absolutely ecstatic if they hit, given that their highest grossing movie is "Eye in the Sky," which made $18.7 million last year. They also haven't opened a movie in more than 452 theaters before, so this isn't exactly a movie where they'll be aiming for the sky. If they get into the double-digit millions, that'll be good enough for them. The movie is based on the true story of Megan Leavy, played by Kate Mara in the film, who was able to save a lot of lives with her combat dog during her deployment in Iraq in the 2000's.

June 16th - 18th-

The third weekend of June will have four wide releases racing for the box office crown and the favorite to win that race will be Pixar with Cars 3. A "Cars" trilogy is probably one that not many asked for and on the surface level might be the most confusing that it now exists given that Pixar is not known churning out endless sequels like many animation studios these days and "Cars" and "Cars 2" are both on the lower end of Pixar's library in terms of box office totals and critic reviews. In fact, when you adjust for ticket price inflation, then only movie that "Cars 2" beats out is the disaster that was "The Good Dinosaur." So why do we have a "Cars 3" when few people liked "Cars 2" and it didn't make much at the box office? Easy. Merchandise sales. In fact, the first "Cars" movie earned approximately $10 billion in merchandise sales. That's the second highest total ever behind only "Star Wars." So yeah, more kids around the world own "Cars" toys than they do "Transformers," "Ninja Turtles" or any superhero movie toys. Moral of the story is that Pixar doesn't need "Cars 3" to be a big box office hit. They're here to make more toys sales. Although they have put together a marketing campaign that has won many people over, so this could be a surprise hit.

With how hard "Snatched" and "Baywatch" failed in May, the market for a breakout adult comedy is still wide open, especially when we get to the third weekend of June, meaning the door will be left wide open for Rough Night. They just have to play their cards right and walk through the door. The movie is about five best friends from college, played by Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer and Zoe Kravitz, who get together after 10 years to have one wild reunion in Miami. But things go horribly wrong when they accidentally kill the male stripper they hire. So in other words, it's "The Hangover" with females. From the writing and directing team best known for the TV show "Broad City," who have yet to work on a feature film until now. But hey, they could be the next breakout filmmakers. And Scarlett Johansson and Kate McKinnon provide enough star power to make a female version of "The Hangover" work. The big kicker will be that if it's funny and has good reviews, people will show up. That's what went wrong with "Snatched" and "Baywatch." If you don't make a good movie, then the chance of people showing up is less likely.

Hoping to cash in on the monstrous success of "Straight Outta Compton" from summer 2015 will be the Tupac Shakur biopic All Eyez on Me. Tupac Shakur, commonly known by his rapper name 2Pac, is one of the most influential and iconic rappers from the 90's. He was one of the many rappers who benefited from the success of N.W.A, a group that revolutionized the rap industry as well as the music industry in general and were the subjects of the aforementioned biopic "Straight Outta Compton." 2Pac is in fact one of the best selling rap or hip-hop artists of all-time having sold over 75 million records worldwide and around 40 million albums. His fourth studio album of which this biopic is named after, "All Eyez on Me," was certified Diamond by the RIAA in 2014. "All Eyez on Me" was 2Pac's final album he released in his lifetime as he was shot and killed on September 13, 1996, at the age of 35, seven months after the album was released. The trailers for this movie claim they are telling the untold true story of 2Pac. Whether or not that's an accurate statement is yet to be seen, but the same crowd that swarmed out to "Straight Outta Compton" should be interested in this, although it would be unfair to expect this movie to equal the $161.2 million "Straight Outta Compton."

Last and probably least for this weekend, we get our yearly shark movie, 47 Meters Down. The positives for this movie are that last year's shark movie, "The Shallows," broke out in a big way and made $55.1 million, opening around this exact same time. That movie starred Blake Lively and this movie stars Mandy Moore, both of whom are fairly likable actresses. The obvious main disadvantage is that moviegoers may not be ready for yet another shark movie this soon after. While "The Shallows" had Blake Lively abandoned on a rock next to a shark, "47 Meters Down" has Mandy Moore cage diving while looking at the ocean life when the cable breaks and sends her plummeting 47 meters down with an angry shark. It was initially meant as a straight to DVD movie by Dimension Films before being sold to Entertainment Studios, who decided to throw it in theaters first. Previous movies distributed theatrically by Entertainment Studios include, well, nothing. Which is another big question mark here. The film is directed by British director Johannes Roberts, who has mainly done a bunch of low-budget horror films that either had limited or no actual theatrical release. So most signs are pointing towards "47 Meters Down" becoming a forgotten summer film.

June 23rd - 25th-

After nine wide releases in the first three weeks of June, four coming in week three, the fourth weekend of June only sees one wide release. And it's actually being released on Wednesday the 21st. That movie is Transformers: The Last Knight. This is the fifth movie in everyone's favorite franchise, one that might never end due to the world continuing to give this franchise money. Despite mostly negative reviews, the four "Transformers" movies have made a total of $3.8 billion worldwide. The last two alone making a combined total of $2.2 billion worldwide, with around three-fourths of that coming from international totals. So the franchise fatigue setting in here in the U.S. doesn't even matter. I don't need to give you a plot synopsis of this fifth film. Something will happen that will give Michael Bay an excuse to give us three hours worth of explosions. Speaking of Michael Bay, while the franchise will continue, this is his last time directing a "Transformers" film. Paramount will be searching for new directors for their future films, which will continue next year with a Bumblebee prequel and the year after with the sixth movie in the regular timeline. After a writers room meeting, they have told us that they have 14 additional story ideas for this franchise. That means as long as the world keeps giving them money, they will keep making these movies.

June 30th - July 2nd-

The final weekend of June, which will be mostly in July, will go back to having four new wide releases that will all compete for moviegoers' attention as the weekend prior to Independence Day, which falls on a Tuesday this year. Thus most celebrations will probably take place this weekend. Leading the charge will be our third major animated movie in five weekends, that of Despicable Me 3. As far as animation goes, Illumination has been on fire. Not only did "Despicable Me 2" and "Minions" both make over $300 million domestically, feeding off the success of the beloved original, but "The Secret Life of Pets" and "Sing" both proved that Illumination can survive without the divisive appearance of the Minions as "The Secret Life of Pets" is now their highest grossing domestic release with $368.3 million, a mere $323,065 more than "Despicable Me 2," and "Sing" outgrossed Disney's "Moana" last holiday season with $270.3 million. And now we're back to the "Despicable Me" franchise, which has focused heavily on Gru and the girls this time around when it comes to the advertising instead of the Minions. A smart idea, probably. Steve Carell will also be voicing Gru's twin brother Dru while Trey Parker will take on villain duties.

If "Rough Night" fails to take advantage of the lack of quality comedies in the marketplace, Will Ferrell should be ready jump in with his latest comedy The House, which co-stars Amy Poehler. The two play a couple who, after spending their daughter's college fund, get the idea from a friend to start an illegal casino in their basement. Thus you can imagine the crazy romp that will ensue after this premise gets underway. As far as bankable Hollywood stars, love him or hate him, Will Ferrell has been one of the most reliable actors in the business. Outside a major bump in the road with "Zoolander 2," which arguably wasn't his fault, Will Ferrell has been on fire. Since 2010, he's starred in a wide variety of box office hits, from family movies like "Megamind," "The LEGO Movie" and "Daddy's Home," to PG-13 comedies like "The Other Guys" and "Anchorman 2," to hard R comedies like "The Campaign" and "Get Hard." All of these movies have made at least $85 million at the box office. With "The House" being the R-rated variety of his comedy, it worth noting that "The Campaign" made $86.9 million while "Get Hard" made $90.4 million. That might be a fair range for "The House."

Getting a head start on the weekend by opening up on Wednesday June 28 is the latest film by popular director Edgar Wright, Baby Driver. Edgar Wright can essentially be called the master of the cult classic. He's directed only four theatrically released films thus far, the highest of which has only made $31.5 million, yet all four are seen by many as masterpieces in comedy. Three of these four films consist of what's known as the Cornetto trilogy: "Shaun of the Dead" (2004), "Hot Fuzz" (2007) and "The World's End" (2013). The fourth film is "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" (2010). In terms of box office, it's definitely worth noting that Edgar Wright is a very popular British filmmaker and not only has he done a lot of work on TV, but all four of these films did quite well in his home country, with "Hot Fuzz" being the biggest as it made $41.2 in the U.K. compared to its U.S. total of $23.6. As pertaining to "Baby Driver," the movie stars Ansel Elgort as the character named Baby who tries to escape the world of crime with his new girlfriend, played by Lily James, but ends up being coerced into a big heist that seems doomed to fail. Early reviews are really high on this film as out of 23 reviews counted on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a perfect 100 percent.

Last and possibly least we may or may not have the release of Amityville: The Awakening. I say may or may not because this movie has bounced around the schedule quite a bit. It was initially scheduled to be released back in 2012, but after five years in production hell, which consisted of many re-writes, re-shoots and postponements, it's finally here and we'll see how many people actually care to see it if it doesn't get postponed again. "The Amityville Horror" franchise began back in 1979 as the original film was a major success as it was part of the wave of 70's and 80's horror that did rather well. It made $86.4 million at the box office, which is the equivalent of $304.4 million today when adjusted for ticket price inflation. The movie was based on the alleged true story of the Lutz family who claimed to experience a series of supernatural events after moving into a house a year after a mass murder was committed. While a novel and terrifying idea back in 1979, the franchise has been beaten to the ground, yet not left alone. This is the 19th movie in the franchise to be released and the fifth to be released in theaters. "Amityville: The Awakening" is not a remake of the 1979 film, but rather a sequel to the 2005 remake with a completely new, fictional story to be told.