Brightburn Review

The evil Superman movie. I had no idea what to expect when I saw this trailer, but I was rather amused. I do know the trailers and the marketing were plastering James Gunn's name all over this as if he wrote and directed this movie. Nope. That's not true. The actual director is a dude by the name of David Yarovesky, whose only previous feature-length directorial effort is a 2014 called "The Hive" that I don't think anyone's heard of. So that was a bit of a red flag for me. Someone producing the movie can mean just about anything, thus you can be a bit deceptive with your marketing pulling off something like that. That's why I loved it when "Deadpool 2" was advertised as "from the studio who brought you '27 Dresses' and 'The Devil Wears Prada'" because that totally made fun of how ridiculous marketing can be. Although with a closer inspection, David Yarovesky played a Goth Ravager in "Guardians of the Galaxy" and the screenplay for "Brightburn" was written by Brian Gunn and Mark Gunn, brother and cousin to James Gunn. So this does appear to be a Gunn family effort putting this together, even if James Gunn himself may have had a smaller role than the other three as simply a producer. So can Gunns and friends pull off a successful evil Superman movie?

For those of you who aren't as crazy into this movie nerdom as me and may not know what I'm talking about when I say "evil Superman movie" or "Brightburn," allow me to elaborate. "Brightburn" is a movie that takes place in Brightburn, Kansas. There's a married couple living out on a farm in more of the outskirts of town who really want children, but haven't been successful at it. One day a little spacecraft crashes outside their farmhouse with a young boy in. As the boy grows up, he learns that he is special. He can fly. He has super speed. He has super strength. He has laser vision. But instead of deciding he needs to protect this Earth, the evil voices in his brain are manipulating him into destroying Earth. So yeah, evil Superman. Some people have asked me if this is a rip-off of Superman where they are blatantly and lazily copying Superman because they don't want to write their own story. To that I say, no, not exactly. This is more of a Superman parody, if you will. They purposely took the story of Superman and flipped it on its head, asking what would the universe look like if Superman was evil. Thus I would say this is a rather clever concept that they came up with.

No, this is not Warner Bros. or DC. And since they have no desire to pay royalties to either, none of the names from the comics are used. But everything directly parallels the story. Brightburn is our fictional town instead of Smallville. Brandon Beyer is the name of the kid instead of Clark Kent. His adopted parents are Kyle and Tori instead of Jonathan and Martha. Things like that. But outside the names of people and places being different, all of the events of Superman's origins are perfectly paralleled. Thus this makes this essentially an Elseworlds type of story if you're familiar with those comics. If you're not familiar with the comics, the Elseworlds stories were non-canonical stories where the writers of stories wrote a whole bunch of "What if..." stories with the DC characters. Thus, as I've explained, "Brightburn" asks the question of "What if Superman were evil?" The answer is that the world would be in a lot of trouble, especially for those that start to make this kid angry. And if there's no one he can cleave to as family or friend, then you might as well start saying your prayers because that means the Apocalypse is upon us. A supervillain origin story where there is no hero of equal strength to counteract this villain spells a lot of trouble for the average citizens that end up stuck in his path.

Yes, this is a horror film. And yes, this is a rather violent and gruesome horror film. When I saw the initial trailers, I wasn't sure exactly where they were going with this in terms of content, but there is no holding back when this kid gets angry. I usually have a pretty good stomach for blood and violence, but there are moments when I even had to look away. To the movie's credit, though, it avoids becoming an all-out slasher flick. I thought they were going to rush through this kid's origins in the first 30 minutes or so and spend the final hour with him killing everyone and everything in his path. But that doesn't happen. This is actually a pretty slow burn. I think we may have gotten halfway through the movie before he got his first kill in. Given that this is only a 90-minute movie, that means we spent a long time building this thing up and I thought that was going to be a problem. I was ready to say that this could've used 20-30 more minutes to flesh things out, but it ended up being fairly evenly paced. This is not a complex plot at all and thus the Gunn family decided they didn't need a full two hours to successfully tell this story. I commend them for that. Most movies and TV shows love milking out every minute they can get, but in this instance they decided that they didn't need to.

That's why I found myself really appreciating this. This is not a horror film that's focused on all of the jump scares, graphic images and blood, while having the story and characters being more of an afterthought. This is a story-based horror film that focuses a lot on the family relationship. We have great performances from Elizabeth Banks and David Denman as two parents who consider it a miracle that a baby boy landed from space since they were wanting a child so badly. This was an answer to a prayer of sorts. And as they raise this kid, they love him as their own and simply tell him that he was adopted. They certainly don't know he has powers and even when they start to figure out that strange things are happening, they refuse to see him as anything but a good kid. When people start suspecting that he's behind certain things that happen or others want him locked up for things he did at school, these parents turn a blind eye to all of that because they refuse to believe that he's bad, even though he did fall out of the sky. I feel this was a very compelling and believable arc. No one wants to believe that their kids are anything but perfect little angels and I think that is an excellent parenting attribute. Seeing the good in your children helps them see the good in themselves.

On the flip side of things, their strong love of this child makes him a rather likable kid. He's not just a being that is pure evil. At least not at first. He knows that his parents love him and that helps him lean towards wanting to be good. But his little spaceship that his parents hid in the barn is manipulating him into doing things that he initially doesn't want to do. The younger actor playing him is Jackson Dunn and I think he has to be given a lot of credit here for successfully pulling of a conflicted young child who is having trouble making sense of it all. Because they played this angle up so much in the movie, it almost makes the trailers spoiler territory. A lot of the advertising is focused on this evil kid chasing people and doing crazy things, but the bulk of that takes place in the middle portion of the film, leaning towards the final act. Yet I'm not going to get too mad at the marketing because the first third of this movie is hard to focus solely on when you're trying to sell a horror film. You don't want to advertise this is a nice family drama, then scar your audience when things start to hit the fan, if you know what I mean. You want to get that horror audience in the seats. But hopefully you'll get the right horror fans in the seats who are willing to be patient because the kills are few and far between.

I think the biggest negative here that I have is that there is an abundant lack of hope in this movie. The family elements of this are excellent and seeing this nice kid devolve into this soulless monster is rather depressing, but given his unstoppable Superman-like powers, when someone unintentionally angers him without realizing who he is or what he is capable of, you know there's zero hope for that individual. Often in a story like this, you'll eventually have the hero swooping in to save the day. But given the unconventional nature of this film, that plot element doesn't exist. And yeah, it's an interesting question to ask, but when it comes to the point of no return, all the energy and life is completely sucked out of this film as there's no other potential outcome outside the fact that the world is screwed. Usually horror films have an element of hope to them, but when you have evil Superman and no kryptonite or Lex Luthor to match up with him, the movie ends up just slowly draining all the life out of you and aren't left with an emotional punch like a similarly-themed movie in "Chronicle." Thus you end up wondering what the overall point in answering this question was. But still, I enjoyed the journey of this film enough that I feel comfortable giving "Brightburn" an 8/10.

Aladdin Review

It's been a rather emotional journey for me in getting to this point. Disney's 1992 "Aladdin" is a very beloved movie from my childhood. It's one that got watched almost on repeat at times thanks to myself and my other siblings. What's happened in the last five years to some current parents with "Frozen" was "Aladdin" in our household. When I did my big ranking of all the Disney animated films a few years back, "Aladdin" came in at No. 3 on that list and we'll talk more about the reasons why in a second, but nevertheless it was a very beloved part of my childhood that Disney has now decided to redo. Because why not? As crazy as it may seem, I was on board. Everything I had heard about the production made it seem like they were trying their hardest to be authentic with this film, both in terms of the casting choices as well as casting people who could sing and dance. Because of that, this seemed like a remake that could work as it sounded like it could be a grand spectacle. I became so confident in this that when I did my yearly preview, I put "Aladdin" in my list of movies I was excited for, whereas both "Dumbo" and "The Lion King" were solidly in the maybe section. "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil" would've been in the bad had I known it was going to come out this year.

Things change when you see trailers, though. At the beginning of the year, all we'd seen from "Aladdin" was that initial teaser that really was just an announcement of the movie. February is where the whirlwind of emotions began as they showed that minute-long "special look" trailer where Blue Will Smith was first shown. That was a thing of nightmares for me and suddenly I became horrified that this whole thing was going to be an epic disaster. Then after letting my simmer on that for too long, the actual official trailer came out and my first reaction was, "Why didn't you lead with this?" Because that made the movie look good again. I didn't want to go back to being excited, but I didn't feel like being a Grinch about, either. I was left in a state of confusion. And said confusion continued till this week. Twitter reaction came out and everyone there seemed pleasantly surprised. Official reviews dropped Wednesday morning and critics were mostly split, leaning slightly positive as the movie is still teetering on that 60 percent mark. I listened to reviews and there were a lot of people with a lot of legit complaints. Dampening my spirit even more was the fact that I couldn't get anyone to come to the theater with me, so I wandered in alone and sat all by myself.

And that's when Disney just hit me with a magical spell that completely overcame me. I had every right to be negative. I knew what people were complaining about. I had no friends with me. And there's things about that animated movie that I knew was impossible for Disney to recapture, regardless of how hard they tried. But yet I was completely enchanted. The theater wasn't this miserable wasteland. It was a paradise. Right away I was captivated by this world they had created. I could see how hard they worked to bring Agrabah to life and for me all their hard work paid off. We immediately went into the city and I felt like they transported me into a live-action version of this city I had grown up loving. It felt more than just a cheap set they built or some sort of stage play that many have compared this to. It felt like a real city, with a great attention to detail that enhanced the experience. I'm talking about all the marts they set up. All of the extras at every corner. The design of the buildings and how they were all presented. Then when we jump into Aladdin and Jasmine out in the city, Aladdin as his normal self and Jasmine in disguise, things felt natural and perfect. There was no period of adjustment needed for me to get used to this place. I was ready to go right away.

There's no need for me to describe the plot of this thing. If you have no idea what the story of "Aladdin" is, then shame on you. Granted, I don't believe any of you exist. At least not when it comes to the audience of people actually reading this review. But if you do, I'm not going to talk you by the hand and guide you through this. We're going to jump right in. Holding this whole thing up is Mena Messoud and Naomi Scott as Aladdin and Jasmine. I don't know what the exact process was in finding these two, but it was inspired casting choice in both cases. I commend them for not going for the Emma Watsons of the world in terms of casting choice, but rather digging deep to find people who fit the roles best. Mena Messoud was in Amazon's recent reboot of "Jack Ryan" while Naomi Scott was the Pink Ranger in the 2017 "Power Rangers" remake. But that's kinda it for both of them when it comes to recognizable roles. They're certainly not selling this on their individual star power, but rather are finding people who fit and are turning them into stars because I think both of them perfectly embody their respective characters, which is absolutely essential when you're making an "Aladdin" movie. Without them, this doesn't work.

Starting off with Mena, he's excellent when you put him in the role of this slippery street person. It's obvious he doesn't like where he is in life, but he's good at it. When we dive into our "One Jump" sequence, you can tell he's having a lot of fun. Because of that, there's a solid likability to him, but also a somber sadness that life hasn't presented him with more. Yet when he was true to what he was, he was able to connect the best with Jasmine because he was being himself and he felt comfortable. That's why I actually like the spin of him being quite uncomfortable as Prince Ali. After he learns this girl was secretly the princess and not the princess's handmaiden, he loses all his confidence, then wishes Genie to make him a prince. In the animated "Aladdin," Aladdin is extremely confident as Prince Ali as if he had done this whole prince thing his whole life. But that doesn't fit with this Aladdin and I like that. It goes a long way in teaching people to be true to themselves. When Aladdin is trying to be someone who he's not, Jasmine just doesn't bite because that's not the person she fell for at the beginning of the movie. It's when Aladdin goes back to being crazy and spontaneous, like flying around on a magic carpet, that he's able to win her over again.

Speaking of Jasmine, yeah Naomi Scott is the star of this movie. I felt that was going to be the case after listening to the soundtrack Tuesday night and I was right. Naomi is absolutely gorgeous and is thus perfect in looking like a princess, but she also does a great job of portraying someone who feels a strong level of discomfort at the role she's been thrown into and is thus at her best when she's in disguise with Aladdin. At the same time, though, being out in the city is where she starts to gain a strong, pure love for the people of her city, thus you immediately buy into the idea that she's the one who's going to eventually run the show as the leader of Agrabah. In terms of Disney princesses holding up to modern scrutiny, Disney's animated Jasmine is one who I think holds up pretty well. She's no damsel in distress by any means, nor is she one who completely relies on a prince to sweep her off her feet. "Standing around deciding my future? I am not a prize to be won!" That's a classic line right there in the 1992 film that shows how strong of a character she is. I really love how Disney took that and ran with it in 2019. I think Guy Ritchie and co. have created a very strong female character who has the potential to be very empowering towards young girls.

Granted, as an adult, white male myself, I'm not in the exact position to be declaring this. I think said statement will mean more coming from a female, but I have sneaking suspicion that this is a sentiment that will be shared. Because, yeah, this movie does go in slightly different directions. It's not just a carbon copy of the animated movie. There's more development of Aladdin and Jasmine's relationship towards the beginning and a whole heck of a lot more for Jasmine to do in the movie. Yes, Aladdin still plays a key role in stopping Jafar and saving Agrabah. He doesn't get sidelined by any means. But they don't throw Jasmine in a giant hourglass or handcuffed in slave girl outfit to Jafar. They give her a whole lot to do, to the point where it's almost her story more than Aladdin's. At the very least, they're on equal grounds here and I think that's one of the major things that separates this movie from the animated film, helping it to stand on its own as a great romance story with two people coming together after growing up in very different circumstances. It's your classic Romeo and Juliette story, but executed quite well, especially with how powerful of a female character Jasmine is and how well the two of them work together to propel the story forward.

Speaking of the movie standing on its own from the original, this is where we need to discuss the elephant in the room. And no, I'm not speaking about Abu, who is thankfully only an elephant for the parade sequence and is quickly back to being a monkey afterwards. But no, I'm talking about Will Smith as Genie. When it comes to the animated film, I've always loved Aladdin and Jasmine's story arc. I liked the fun and goofy nature of the film as well as the great spectacle with all the musical numbers. But what elevates the movie to being my No. 3 Disney animated film is the performance of Robin Williams as Genie. Not only is he energetic and fun, but the movie is very much a reflection of Robin Williams' life. On the outside, he's this extremely energetic human being who is perfect at entertaining everyone around him, but deep down inside he had a lot of demons, which ultimately led him to taking his own life. In reflection of that, Genie was also a super entertaining character, but when Aladdin asked him what he wanted, it gets emotional as you can tell he's hiding a lot of depressing feelings about being trapped as a Genie. Connect the dots between the two and it gets extremely emotional when you rewatch the sequence of Aladdin letting Genie go free.

How in the frack do you attempt to replicate that in the live-action film? No matter how good of a job you do with the movie, there is absolutely no way you can repeat that because there's only one Robin Williams. With his Genie being deeply connected to his personal life, it's an impossible feat to duplicate it. So what do you do? Well, the answer is that you go in a completely new direction. You give the reigns to Will Smith and tell him to be Will Smith. And that's why his Genie works. Yeah, Blue Will Smith is kinda weird, but you get used that look. And even if you don't, he spends most of his time disguised as a normal human being as to blend into Agrabah. In both forms, he feels relaxed and confident. Will Smith is not trying to be Robin Williams. He's being Will Smith. The Will Smith we all loved in the 90's and early 2000's. He's the Fresh Prince. He's the movie star we loved from the likes of "Independence Day" and "Men in Black." He's the dating expert from "Hitch." And his story arc in this "Aladdin" is not a carbon copy of the animated movie. It's very much true to Will Smith and thus very different. Because of this, this is the best we've seen Will Smith in years. He's going to make the whole internet, myself included, eat their words after we turned him into a meme.

So yeah, Aladdin, Jasmine, and Genie are the main three characters that this movie needed to nail in order for this movie to work. In each case, the new character is able to stand in his or her own while also doing justice to the original animated film. Together they power this movie forward into a very fun and delightful film. The other elements around them? I already talked about the design and authenticity. I spoke in length about the music itself on my Facebook. I'll add here that, even though I'm still not a huge fan of Will Smith's singing, context helps a ton as "Friend Like Me" and "Prince Ali" are great sequences that help disguise the subpar vocals. The other songs are great. "One Jump" is a fun sequence. "A Whole New World" melts your heart. The new song "Speechless" is gorgeous and I think should get nominated for best original song. That's all I need to say about the music here. Jasmine's dad as Sultan is quite different, bit he fits well. And I was totally fine with Jafar. He has a snake-like menace to him that makes him manipulative and sinister. Much different than him being an old, creepy man trying to seduce a much younger Jasmine. But for the context of this new movie, I think it works well and probably fits better into 2019 than the animated Jafar would've.

If I had to sit and think of negatives, I think there are some things that are thrown in more out of obligation than anything else. And even though the movie is more than 30 minutes longer than the animated film, it felt a lot more rushed, this because they spent a lot more time developing the characters and story in the first two acts. This after they montaged through the typical opening to "Aladdin" with a longer version of "Arabian Nights." What they ended up sacrificing was most of Jafar's evil plan. Instead of him terrorizing all of Agrabah for the majority of the third act, it was more of a tiny, in-palace scuffle, which kinda took a bit of emotional weight out of the ending. But even those complaints are more nitpicks than serious issues I had. Given that this is more than just a carbon copy of the original, I think it has a decent chance of standing on its own as a solid companion piece to the original instead of feeling like a cheap cash grab. On Memorial Day weekend, if you have a desire to take the family out to a movie, this is an excellent as all of the kids in the audience seemed to be loving themselves. My theater even gave it a nice round of applause when the credits started rolling. So if you're on the fence here, I'd say give it a chance. My grade for "Aladdin" is a solid 8/10. 

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum Review

The John Wick franchise has come a long way in such a short time period. I remember doing my October 2014 movie review, watching the trailer for this "John Wick" movie and being completely unimpressed. I thought it was just going to be another one of those mindless action movies that comes and goes without anyone realizing it exists. I certainly love myself a good action movie, but there's a lot of small budget action movies from no name directors that just don't know how to action very well. There's bland characters with generic stories that have decently entertaining action sequences, but with the way many of them are shot and edited, there's really a lack of understand of what makes a good action sequence. I thought "John Wick" was going to be another one of those, especially since the two directors, Chad Stahelski and David Leach, had never even directed a movie before. Why are we supposed to trust them? I don't even think I was planning on seeing it until the reviews started telling me otherwise. So I gave it a chance, and yeah. I, along with the rest of the world, was stunned. Not only was it a great movie, but it set the new gold standard as to how to properly make an action film. And it completely rejuvenated Keanu Reeves' career.

Fast forward three years and "John Wick: Chapter 3" is looking at a $60 million opening weekend, which will be on pace with the $61.2 million opening of last year's "Mission: Impossible - Fallout." For context, "John Wick" in October 2014 opened to just $14.4 million. Positive word of mouth helped it hold well as it tripled that opening weekend, earning a domestic total of $43 million. But not just that, it gained a huge followed post-release as word of mouth continued after its theatrical run. That buzz helped "John Wick: Chapter 2" double the first movie's opening by making $30.4 million on its opening weekend in February 2017. It also tripled that opening weekend with its domestic total, making $92 million overall. And now goodwill from those first two movies, as well as good reviews on its own, and "John Wick: Chapter 3" is again looking to double the opening weekend of its predecessor. Time will tell if it will also triple that opening weekend total. If it does, that's a $180 million domestic total, turning this into a powerhouse franchise. Now there's a good chance that this one is more frontloaded than the first two movies, but I'd say at this point that a $150 million total is the floor for this movie. With a $20 million production budget, that's a huge win.

Now enough with the numbers and onto the movie. The movie's subtitle "Parabellum" is actually a rather descriptive subtitle. I had no idea what that meant and the marketing didn't really tell me. So I did a quick Google search, and outside learning that there are a lot of firearms with the name Parabellum (Parabellum MG14 and Pistol Parabellum to name just two), Parabellum is Latin for "prepare for war," which makes a lot of sense and is probably where said firearms got their name. Specifically, there's a Latin phase "si vis pacem, para bellum" that means "if you want peace, prepare for war." I wagered a bet with myself that said phrase is probably where they got this movie's subtitle. And I was dead on because they use that exact phrase in this movie. When they did, I was beaming with excitement. The reason why this is such a descriptive title requires "Chapter 2" spoilers, so if you haven't seen that movie, turn away now. But yeah, "Chapter 2" leaves us off on a cliffhanger. John Wick killed Santino D'Antonio on Continental grounds, causing hotel manager Winston to label John Wick as "excommunicado," meaning he's lost all access to the hotel. The bounty on John Wick has also been doubled to $14 million. But he gives John Wick a one-hour head start to run.

So run John Wick does. That's how the second movie ends and that's also how the third movie starts. He's running in order to formulate a plan on how he's going to get himself out of this predicament and he has to act fast because the whole city is about to turn on him so they can collect the bounty of $14 million. What I really loved about "Chapter 2" was that it took the first movie's basic, simple premise and beautifully expanded on it. Don't get me wrong, I love the first movie. In fact, I don't know which one I love more. but "Chapter 2" is where they created the universe. We learn that there's this huge underground network that expands worldwide. One of my friends told me that it felt like the world of Harry Potter, but with assassins instead of witches and wizards. I think that's pretty accurate. And I love it. This is much more than John Wick getting revenge on some moron that murdered his dog, which was the one remaining memory from his wife who has recently passed away. This goes a whole lot deeper. John Wick was a part of this huge organization of assassins and all he wanted to do was get out and live in peace. But said organization didn't let him. Now John Wick has found himself stuck in a deep hole that he can't get out of.

The things I love about "Chapter 2" immediately spill over into "Chapter 3" because this is essentially the same movie. It's almost as if Chad Stahelski shot both movies back to back. That's not what happened, of course, because they needed to make sure that the second movie made money before they jumped into the third one. But after the first one became a resounding success in terms of people's reaction to it, I'm sure Stahelski immediately immersed himself into this universe along with his writing team in order to create this universe and come up with an arc of movies that will go who knows how long. Given that this is set to be the highest opening weekend for any Lionsgate-distributed film not a part of "The Hunger Games" franchise, I'm guessing that Lionsgate will give them the green light to take this as long as they want. And with this universe that has been set up in "Chapter 2," there's an endless amount of possibilities here. As long as a talented, committed team continues to be on board with this franchise, I'm totally down for it because I have not been disappointed yet. All three movies have been fantastic. The endless, high-octane, stylistic action sequences will cause any fan of action films to salivate at this masterwork that's presented.

I think the term "committed" is really what makes this work. After the first movie was co-directed by Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, Leitch stepped aside and let Stahelski man the ship on his own. I don't think there was any disagreement or ill will there. I just think it's a situation where Leitch recognized that this is Stahelski's baby and is giving him complete creative control over the franchise. Leitch has then gone on to direct "Atomic Blonde" and "Deadpool 2," while also having "Hobbs and Shaw" later this summer. So Hollywood has definitely recognized the strength and power of "John Wick" and thus have completely trusted these two men. But while "Leitch" has already been a part of a couple of different franchises, Stahelski has not budged from the world of John Wick. He's been rumored to be attached to several upcoming movies, but so far the three John Wick movies are the only movies he's worked on in the last five years and I'm sure that has nothing to do with the lack of opportunities, but rather his commitment to this specific franchise. Both sequels aren't just lazily thrown together sequels to feed off the first movie's success. They're deliberately planned, carefully constructed films where you can tell that there was a lot of work put into.

I don't want to get too deep into the specifics of "Chapter 3" in terms of plot or the action sequences that take place. Part of the surprise with this is the fun of finding out where this journey takes you and what action sequences Stahelski has up his sleeve next. But the biggest difference here as compared to the first two movies is that there is no need for a plot to be set up. Not that said idea is a bad thing. But the finale of "Chapter 2" was the set up for "Chapter 3." Thus we start the movie on the edge of our seats. John Wick is running somewhere and has one hour to accomplish whatever plans he wants to before the whole city jumps on him. And you can see everyone around him nervously anticipating the start time here so that they can have their chance at the $14 million. Thus the movie throws you right into the fire, causing you in turn to be extremely nervous. Then the clock strikes 6 and all Hell breaks loose. Strap yourselves in, boys and girls, because we're about to go for a wild ride. It's like one of those roller coasters where, instead of letting you slowly climb the hill, you go around a quick turn, stop, then get launched into the air. Everyone who is a fan of the first two films is certain to feel like they're in Heaven as this movie does not miss a beat in regards to the stylistic action.

I will say, though, that the pacing of the movie is slightly different than the second film. I noticed in rewatching "Chapter 2" the other night that the spacing between major action sequences is pretty equal. You'll get a big action sequences, followed by some down time that allows you to breathe, then you get launched into another big action sequence. The action sequences and the downtime are all about even in terms of the length of time, making it a perfectly balanced action film that gives you plenty of action sequences to salivate over, but enough down time to help you catch your breath while also building the world of the movie and helping the characters progress. "Chapter 3" is not quite as balanced, which is why I would put it a hair below "Chapter 2" in terms of quality, but not by a whole. After that initial launch, there's a rather lengthy period of downtime with John Wick going from place to place as we get introduced to various side characters that he tries to get him to help him out. And it gets a bit long and not all of the side characters are all that interesting. But then we finally get thrown into another action sequence and said action sequence is almost exhausting. I was fully captivated as it was extremely entertaining, but I will admit that I could've benefited slightly from an earlier break from this.

But still, that slight unbalance is really the only thing I have in form of a complaint and even that is more of a minor critique if I'm trying to properly rank these movies. I like "Chapter 2" slightly more than "Chapter 3." And I don't know how the first movie fits in because I didn't rewatch it this week. I bought "Chapter 2" on Black Friday last year, thinking that I had already owned the first movie. I got home and realized that I didn't, which was a bit upsetting. I've been meaning to buy the first movie, but I haven't gotten around to it yet, which is why it didn't get a rewatch. So I won't comment on it at the moment in terms of how it fits into the series. But they're all extremely close. And all three are boosted by some of the best action that you'll see in any action movie. A lot of action movies try to cheat with a whole lot of cuts or shaky camera that will disguise the actors' inability to perform the stunts written on the screenplay. But not these movies. And like in the first two movies, Keanu Reeves owns this film and you can just see that he put a lot of work into this film because there is no cheating in regards to the camerawork and editing. Just a whole lot of awe-inspiring sequences with quite a bit of creativity thrown into it in order to spice things up and keep things fresh.

If these John Wick films are not your cup of tea, then this is not the sequel that's going to convert you. But if you're a fan of intense, well-made, well-directed, perfectly-crafted action films, then you better give John Wick a chance. Chances are if you do fit into this category, you have already seen the first two movies and I'm essentially preaching to the choir here. You were already planning on seeing the third movie and you're going to love it, just like you did the first two. Based on what the movie is doing right now at the box office, there's also a good chance that you already did see it. So there's no need for me to do any persuading here. Instead, let's talk and geek out about John Wick. Let me know what your favorite action sequences were in this movie. Who were your favorite characters and what were your favorite moments? But obviously make sure to have some respect and talk to me in person or send me a message if you want to get super specific. I mean, this is not a situation like "Avengers: Endgame" where spoilers might ruin the experience, but still. Other John Wick fans who haven't yet gotten around to seeing this will be benefited by the element of surprise because there's plenty of them. My grade for "John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum" is a 9/10.

Tolkien Review

Did any of you realize this movie came out this past weekend? Based on the box office numbers, I'd be willing to be that the answer for many is a resounding no. The movie only made $2.2 million from 1,495 theaters for a per theater average of just $1,472. Without diving too deep into the numbers, let's just say that anytime a movie opens into the $1,000 range in per theater average, that's not good. Usually you'd like at least $4,000-5,000, especially for a movie about someone as popular as J.R.R. Tolkien, a man who is obviously one of the most influential authors to ever live. That means opening in 1,495 theaters, this should've made at least $5-7 million, not a ninth place finish with $2.2 million. I think the problem here is that the marketing for this movie was flat out terrible. Outside initial buzz when the trailer was finally released a couple of months ago, I don't think the awareness here was very high. A big part of that problem is that Fox Searchlight was initially planning on a limited release, slow roll out plan for this movie, using word of mouth to build buzz. But Disney, who now owns Fox Searchlight, panicked and threw it into 1,400 theaters almost last second, probably because they knew they had a stinker on their hands so they tried to salvage as much as they could.

This turn of events was one of many red flags that went up for me regarding this movie. I mean, I didn't even include this movie in my May movie preview because I only cover wide releases in that segment and two weeks ago this was not set for a wide release. If we're backing things up a bit, the movie did get some buzz back in February when the initial teaser was released, followed by a lot of buzz when the full trailer came out in March. I knew a lot of my friends that were really excited. But I didn't jump on that train. Yeah, the trailer looked good and a movie about Tolkien sounded like a great idea, but I immediately had a whole lot of questions. The biggest one was why is this movie coming out in May? That might seem like a silly question to have, but Fox Searchlight is one of the most prominent studios for independent films. In this decade alone, a movie of there's has taken home the trophy for best picture at the Oscars three times ("The Shape of Water," "Birdman," "12 Years a Slave"), which is the most of any studio. And very rarely does a year go by where at least one of their movies is not in the running. So they know this game just as good, if not better than anyone. Yet they chose to release "Tolkien" in May instead of giving it an awards push.

Maybe that's a silly thing to be worried about, but a well-made biopic of J.R.R. Tolkien is an easy pick for a big awards contender. If they were confident that they had something great on their hands, they would've put it through the festival rounds, then given it an awards-friendly release date towards the end of the year. But they didn't. Because they have to make money during other times of the year, too, so they pick the movies they know won't be big contenders and give those release dates earlier in the year. And hey, if they're not confident that this movie is good enough to win any awards, why not throw it in the summer season and attempt to attract the huge Middle Earth fan base? It makes sense financially, but it still had me worried. So then in an attempt to figure out why Fox Searchlight wasn't confident about this, I checked out the director here. Dome Karukoski. Never heard of him? Exactly. He's a Finnish filmmaker who's made close to nothing that anyone's heard of. Even in checking out the smaller, foreign films he has made, none of them have very high marks. So that gave me even less confidence. Thus the signs all seemed to be pointing towards this not being a good film.

There's plenty of other things that I could get into. Like the Tolkien Estate wanting absolutely nothing to do with this project. Or the fact that Fox Searchlight doesn't release religious films, which I think needed to be a huge part of this movie for it to work in my books, but I think it's time to start discussing the movie itself. Long story short, I was not the least bit surprised when I saw the movie get a 51 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 48 on Metacritic. For clarification, those aren't bad reviews. I hate it when people look at a 50 percent score and say that the critics hated the movie. That's not what it means. It means they were split. In this case, half of the critics liked it and half of them didn't. But mixed reviews is not an encouraging sign here, but given everything I just stated, I was not the least bit surprised. However, I didn't want to go into the movie having hated it before I even watched it, even though my expectations were rock bottom. And based on all the red flags, I felt like I wasn't in the proper mindset to give this movie a fair chance and I became angry at myself because of that. So I tried. And I tried hard. I ignored all of this and went in to watch a movie as if I hadn't heard anything about it.

My goodness, though, did this movie not do me any favors. Given that this is about the man who created Middle Earth, perhaps a Middle Earth comparison here is appropriate. I felt like Gollum when he's arguing with himself. When the movie was boring the tar out of me, the Gollum part of my mind was screaming to be front and center, yelling things like, "You knew this was going to be bad! So give in and tear it to pieces. Look for the negative! Make this experience worse!" But then the Smeagol part of my mind took over and said things like, "No! That's not fair. Thousands of people put their heart and soul into making this movie work. The director was touched by Tolkien and wanted to tell history and the lead actors are trying their hardest to make something people can be proud of!" This debate went back and forth for the whole film. The Gollum part of my mind kept looking for the bad, but the Smeagol part of my mind kept forcing myself to look for the good. It was exhausting. The end credits rolled after this nearly two hour film, then I drove home and just crashed into my giant love sac. I couldn't even properly express any coherent thoughts to my roommates when they asked me how it was. So I determined that I needed to sit on it for a day or two.

That was a bad idea. Because when the dust settled in my mind, all the thoughts just disappeared. They evaporated from existence. I quickly learned that this is a movie that I'm going to completely forget ever existed. And perhaps all of this is the problem. This movie should be an Oscar contender. It should be welcomed by the Tolkien Estate. It should be made by a great director. It should hit the festival circuits. It should be released at the end of the year. It should have a high score on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. And most of all, I shouldn't have to spend the whole movie debating in my mind as to whether or not this is good or not. It should be a magical experience where I can come home and shout to the rooftops that everyone should go see this movie. This is fracking J.R.R. Tolkien for crying out loud. The man who wrote "The Lord of the Rings." Like everyone else who has lived on this planet since "The Hobbit" was published in 1937, followed by "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy in the 1950's, I love these books. I love this story. Not only are these stories on their own extraordinary, but the world of fiction has not been the same since as their influence is far reaching. A movie about this man's life shouldn't be anything less than stellar.

However, unlike Tolkien's stories themselves, this movie has no idea what it wants to be. The movie has no focus. It has no direction. It has no purpose. You'll learn more about Tolkien himself by reading the Wikipedia article about his life than by watching this movie. I mean, the best this movie has to offer is an endless barrage of instructions on how to pronounce his last name. I mean, it's phenomenal how often that comes up. It's Tol-KEEN. Not Tol-KINE. Not Tol-KIN. Tol-KEEN. That's the only thing I really learned from this. Admittedly I have probably been on the Tol-KIN route for most of my life. Like the word "token," but with an an "L." I apologize for making that mistake. It won't happen again. Outside that, well, yeah there's not much here. The majority of this movie is focused on how he met his wife and the relationship he had with a group of friends who really gave him something to live for after his mother's passing orphaned him. That's this movie. And oh yeah, he went to Oxford. He loved languages. He fought in a war. The director claims there was things in there about religion, but I didn't see it. And he eventually wrote a book series that people liked. But all of that is beside the point. This is a movie about his wife and friends, with everything else being more of an afterthought.

I think that there is the disappointing thing. There's so much potential in a story like this, yet all the interesting things are thrown to the side so that we can witness a romance drama between Nicholas Hoult and Lily Collins. And to their credit, the two of them are phenomenal. Nicholas Hoult is trying his absolute best to bring this man to life. And it mostly works until his religious guardian tells him that he's not allowed to make his own decisions until he turns 21. Yeah, Nicholas Hoult turns 30 at the end of this year. And he definitely looks that old, too. I say that because 30 is my age. Lily Collins is also 30 years old. She turned 30 back in March. Like Taylor Swift, we were all born in 1989. When you make people born in our year portray teenagers, it doesn't work. Wikipedia informs me that Tolkien met his wife when he was 16 years old, she being three years his senior. They were married in 1916, when he was 24. He fought in the war starting in 1915, when he was 23. Most of this movie is prior to those two events. Nicholas Hoult looks none of these ages. So if the goal is to tell the story of early Tolkien, we have some miscasting going on. But that's the least of my problems here. Despite being the wrong ages, these two performances were one of the bright spots.

Ultimately, though, that makes me feel a bit bad for them. With a proper screenplay and proper direction, we're looking at Oscar nominations for these two. They'd at least be in the conversation. But alas, they're doing their absolute best in a movie that has no idea what it wants to be. I'm no screenplay writer, but this doesn't seem like that hard of a task. I immediately am thinking to a movie called "The Man Who Invented Christmas," which is about Charles Dickens writing "A Christmas Carol." That movie showcases the exact influences on him writing that story. In fact, his characters are in the movie themselves. It shows how it happened. Do something similar to that and you have a great movie here. Figure out the main influences for "The Lord of the Rings" and fashion a story that directly focuses on those influences. The war was a big one. That was an afterthought here. I mean, there was one scene where he's on the battlefield and the battlefield becomes like a battle from "The Lord of the Rings." That was cool. It lasted like five seconds, though. His Catholic faith was another huge influence. All of that was completely M.I.A. from this movie. How Tolkien met his wife is not a movie I really cared to see when you tell me there is a movie about his life.

I get it, though. The fellowship. The group of friends he had formed a strong bond that was obviously like the fellowship from "The Fellowship of the Ring." But the movie refused to even use the word fellowship until the last minute of the movie. And even then, the stories revolving around this group of friends felt random and scattered. There's no real focus. Just a bunch of scenes of them living life intertwined with the how Tolkien met his wife story arc. It wasn't that interesting. There was no narrative structure to this movie. Just random sequences of events loosely tied together to form this thing we called a movie. The cinematography was great. The score was beautiful. And as I've said, all the acting was phenomenal. But there's no movie to this movie. The plot doesn't really happen. I mean, technically it does, but it's scattered and all over the place. I had a really long day of work before I saw this and I was hoping that this movie would be my reward for the end of the day, but instead it was perfect background noise to help me fall asleep. The only reason I stayed awake is because I didn't pay to go take a nap in the theater. And I can't write a review for a movie I ended up sleeping through. But man did I really want to throw in the towel and just fall asleep.

When all is said and done, I have to zero in on one thing that I believe to be the root of the problem. This movie has no direction. And when the movie has no direction, that means you hired the wrong director. So now we've come full circle to my initial fears. When I tried to figure out why Fox Searchlight was releasing this in May instead of during awards season, I looked up the director and panicked. But hey, no name directors come out of thin air to make great masterpieces, so maybe this could be this man's big break? Nope. He was the wrong man for the job. And now it's unfortunate because this may have been our one chance to get a Tolkien biopic done. Yes, Hollywood is super busy remaking and redoing everything. But it's not often that Hollywood takes a second shot at a biopic. It happened with Steve Jobs and said second attempt was miles better, but that's the only example I can think of. That means this here might be our one Tolkien biopic. And they dropped the ball. That sucks. There may be good elements in this movie. You can tell that a lot of people tried to make this good. But in examining the movie as a whole, it doesn't work. It's just going to fall by the wayside as a movie that no one will remember ever existed. Thus I'm giving "Tolkien" a 5/10.

Detective Pikachu Review

As a child of the 90's, the Pokémon craze was quite the wild one. Given that I was in Elementary School when it hit its height here in the United States, I was very much swept into it. I collected and traded Pokémon cards. In fact, I still have that collection with me in my apartment. I spent many hours of my life playing the Pokémon games, even though I technically have not spent one second of my life playing on the actual Gameboy itself. We downloaded emulators and roms onto the computer and played them that way. But I remember that my friends and I could sit at the computer and just play away without even talking to each other. I think I have that original generation of games (Blue, Red and Yellow) practically memorized. Gen 2 is fun, too, but nothing beats the nostalgia of the OG. And, of course, I faithfully watched the anime every Saturday morning. I mean, if you don't remember what it was like being devastated when Ash let Butterfree go, I don't know how you can truly understand Pokémon. Even though I eventually grew older, I never fully grew out of that phase. Pokémon is, and will forever be, ingrained in my heart and soul. So of course I'm going to pumped at the idea of them finally making a live-action Pokémon movie.

It may sound crazy, but a live-action Pokémon movie has secretly been a dream of mine since I was a little kid. I always thought it would be really cool to see what the all the Pokémon would look like in live-action form. Did I ever think it was going to happen? No, not really. And I certainly didn't anticipate it being "Detective Pikachu" that would be the first live-action Pokémon movie. If we were going to do a live-action Pokémon movie, I always thought it would be more in line with the anime or the original Gameboy games. Admittedly, though, I'm not up to par on my modern Pokémon. While I stick to my statement of never really growing out of my Pokémon phase, Pokémon kinda moved on without me. I never made it past Gen 3 in the games. Not until the last few months, anyways, when I started playing Gen 4 for the first time. For context, Gen 8 comes out on the Switch later this year, so that's how far behind I am. Along those lines, I don't think I ever got passed the second season of the anime and I haven't collected a new Pokémon card since Elementary School. I also never played Pokémon Go, but that's more because my phone wasn't compatible with it. So "Detective Pikachu" certainly wasn't on my radar until they announced the movie.

In my defense, though, "Detective Pikachu" is really new. It was released in Japan in February 2016, but not worldwide until last year, March 2018. From what I hear and read about, the game is a lot different than your typical Pokémon game. Instead of focusing on catching wild Pokémon, training them, battling trainers, then eventually beating the Pokémon League, "Detective Pikachu" is much more of an adventure, mystery game focused on story. While all the other Pokémon games certainly have a story, people don't play them for the Team Rocket story arcs or whatever. It's all about catching Pokémon and battling. And actually it's mostly the same with the anime. The fun with the anime was Ash making it to the next gym battle or discovering new Pokémon. The Team Rocket stuff was more of an entertaining side thing. The fact that the "Detective Pikachu" game is more focused on the story of Tim Goodman and a talking Pikachu finding Harry Goodman, Tim's father and Pikachu's owner, is probably why the choice was made to start with that game in terms of the live-action movies. If we're going to continue to try and make these video game movies work, it makes the most sense to find games that are story-based and adapt those instead of pulling stories out of thin air.

Along those lines, there might be some discussion as to whether this counts as a video game movie or if it's more along the lines of our recent trend of live-action anime adaptations ("Ghost in the Shell," "Alita: Battle Angel"). The real answer is that it's kinda both. It's like if you're debating if that "Old Town Road" song is rap or country. The answer is... yes. However, just like I would say "Old Town Road" is more rap than country, "Detective Pikachu" is more of a video game adaptation than an anime adaptation, especially since the anime in question was adapted from the video games to begin with. Because, yeah, the Gameboy games were released in Japan in 1996 followed by the anime premiering in Japan in 1997. That's why this works better than most video game adaptations. It already has worked. They took a game and turned it into a successful TV show over 20 years ago. Then they've taken said TV show and have already made a lot of different movies based on it, most of them being connected to the TV show. So a live-action movie is an easy next step. Maybe that's the key to success here with these video game movies. Find something that already has worked. Or find something wherein a movie adaptation is a logical step forward.

Also, the other reason why this is mainly a video game adaptation in my mind is that the story of this movie comes straight from said "Detective Pikachu" game. Again, I have not played the game, but I as just reading through the plot of the game on Wikipedia, and yep. It's the exact same. So let's dive into this movie. "Detective Pikachu" in a section of the Pokémon world where Pokémon and humans live in harmony with each other, rather than Pokémon being like wild animals that humans catch and train in order to fight against each other. We call this place Ryme City. In Ryme City we have a young adult named Tim Goodman, played by Justice Smith, who once had a dream to be a Pokémon trainer, but has since abandoned that dream and has become an insurance salesman. One day he gets a call that his dad, Harry Goodman, is presumed dead after a bad car accident where the car toppled over the edge of a bridge. So Tim travels to Ryme City, where his dad lived, to look through his apartment. That's where he finds a Pikachu that he can miraculously talk to. The Pikachu, voiced by Ryan Reynolds, informs Tim that he is a detective and is certain that Harry, Pikachu's former partner, is alive. But since Pikachu has lost his memory, the two need to work together to find him.

For me I thought this plot worked well enough. It's not necessarily this deep, impactful, twisty story, but Justice Smith as Tim Goodman is a likable protagonist and the father/son drama in the movie is emotional enough to get you hooked. Without the movie needing to dive into flashbacks, Justice Smith sells the emotion. He's obviously sad at the news that his dad has passed away, but there was a disconnect between him and his dad as his dad cared more about his work and his Pokémon stuff than he did raising a son, so there's some mixed emotions there. I'd say this is rather easily Justice Smith's best performance, although I barely remember him from "Paper Towns" and I found him extremely annoying in "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom," so there wasn't a high bar to jump over there. But if I was going to care about this movie, I needed to care about him. And I did. So that was a good start. And I also thought his lady friend, a young journalism intern who is hungry for the big scoop, was a fun character to partner with him. She's played by Kathryn Newton, who's been in a lot of smaller roles, but I personally know as having played Claire Novak from "Supernatural." I think the thing with her is that she was having a lot of fun and I found that infectious.

But, of course, who really makes this movie work is our title character. Ryan Reynolds' Pikachu. As strange as it may be to hear Deadpool playing Pikachu, for me it works. And it makes sense in context of the film given that, in the game, the voice for Pikachu also comes out of left field, sounding nothing like what you would think Pikachu sounds like. I mean, the normal Pikachu is voiced by a Japanese girl named Ikue Otani, who was 32 years old when the anime initially debuted in 1997 and has voiced Pikachu in pretty much everything since, including this movie. At now 54 years old, she's still got that Pikachu voice down. But yeah, she sounds nothing like Ryan Reynolds. However, Ryan Reynolds is able to disappear into this role in a way and perfectly encapsulate Pikachu. Even though he sounds like Ryan Reynolds, never once did it feel forced. It didn't sound like Deadpool voicing Pikachu. The personalities felt different. And on that note, Ryan Reynolds was on fire the whole movie. There was never a dull moment when he was on the screen, which just happened to be most of the movie. And it sounded like he had a blast voicing this character. If the actors are having a good time, then that often spills over into the audience.

But above all, what really just had me on Cloud Nine during this entire movie was the world itself. While the plot is good enough and the characters are written and acted well, there's a lot of things that you could nitpick at. You could point at the mustache-twirling villains and the predictable way in which the story goes. You could say this doesn't hit the emotional heights or that it doesn't dive super deep. And you wouldn't necessarily be wrong. But the thing that helped me overlook all of that was the way in which they brought all the Pokémon to life. Being that Ryme City is a place in which Pokémon live in harmony with humans, Pokémon are everywhere it is was a ton of fun looking at every frame of the movie and discovering all the Pokémon. It was great seeing how they all looked and how their personalities integrated into the city. The more you know about every Pokémon, the more fantastic this experience becomes. Thus this becomes very similar to last year's "Ready Player One" as this movie is loaded with references and Easter eggs at every turn. The more references you know, the funner it is. "Detective Pikachu" doesn't rely on this as a crutch, but rather it uses this to enhance every frame of the movie to give fans a richly rewarding experience.

Thus in a weird way, "Detective Pikachu" ends up being a lot like "Avengers: Endgame." No, it's not as good as "Endgame," but "Endgame" was a movie that rewarded fans of the MCU for remaining loyal for the last 22 films. I think the people who got rewarded the most were the people who had been with them the whole way. People who were only half interested in the franchise or had skipped a good portion of the movies were the people who weren't able to fully appreciate what "Endgame" accomplished as a big thank you letter to everyone who had stuck with them. In like manner, "Detective Pikachu" is not out to win any new fans. It spends no time taking people by the hand and teaching them what these things called Pokémon are. Rather, the movie banks on the fact that loyal Pokémon fans from the last 20+ years are going to be the ones who turn up and those specific fans are the ones that the movie is out to reward. And they do a dang good job at it. This is a movie where I didn't pay attention to any reviews, positive or negative, because I didn't care. This was a movie made for me because I've been a fan for 20 years. And if you've been a fan of Pokémon for a good portion of your life, then you also need to see this movie. I'm going to give "Detective Pikachu" an 8/10.

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile Review

This is a very difficult review to write. I've started writing this review several times over the last few days, but kept starting over because I got stumped. Things didn't feel right. So I'm just going to jump into this and plow through so that I don't have to spend all week writing this review. For me, talking about Ted Bundy is much different than talking about your average serial killer. And it's much more than him being one of the most notorious serial killers in United States history. I mean, Charles Manson will also be a subject of conversation later this year with Taraninto's new film "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," but I'll have a much different angle on that. Ted Bundy is unique to me because my hometown in Utah was a part of his hunting grounds, if that's the right word. In fact, I know a lot of people who either knew or knew of Debra Kent, the teenage girl who was kidnapped by Bundy from Viewmont High School in Bountiful, Utah back in November 1974. So yeah, this gets personal. And I know that I'm not the only one of my friends who has similar connections to Bundy, so I want to make sure that I'm as respectful as I can be to my friends who rightfully want nothing to do with Bundy and think it's awful that he's getting this much attention in 2019.

The rather valid argument here is that Bundy was so egotistical, among many other things, that he probably would've loved that he was getting this much attention. So why in the world are we giving it to him? I certainly don't disagree that the idea of that is quite awful. At the same time, though, I think that there is a lot that can be learned from Ted Bundy's story. But not just that, I think studying the psychology behind serial killers is something that can be very beneficial to society. If I'm making this even a more general statement, studying why criminals do what they do can go a long way to making the world a better place by learning how to prevent crimes, learning how to get criminals the help they need and learning how to best protect innocent people from said criminals. Zeroing back in on Ted Bundy, I think that last point is very key here. Ted Bundy didn't look like or act like your average serial killer. On the inside, he was a monster. He had no soul. But on the outside, he looked nice, charming and attractive. And he did a very good job at blending into society. I think that can go a long way to teaching us to not let our guard down just because someone looks normal. Dangerous criminals don't often look dangerous, which is important remember.

Now if this movie and the documentary back in January were made for the sake of entertainment value or to get money by cashing in on a trend, I would completely agree that said motives would be completely despicable. But that's not the case here. Joe Berlinger directed both this movie and the January documentary titled "Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes" and his goal here is purely educational. At the end of the movie, we hear audio of a quote that I believe comes straight from Bundy himself that says, "Murderers do not come out in the dark with long teeth and saliva dripping off their chin. People don't realize that there are killers among them. People they liked, loved, lived with and admired could the next day turn out to be the most demonic people imaginable." That quote is the theme here that Berlinger is trying to get across with both of these projects. It's a warning tale to society to make sure you be careful about those around you. Even here in Mormonville, Utah, bad things can happen. I know a lot of people who are good at letting their guard down because they think this a perfectly safe place to live. To that I often like to point out that Ted Bundy happened to Utah back in the 70's, so you should never let your guard down.

Driving that point home is the way in which the narrative of this movie is told. This is a very different experience from the documentary. The documentary follows your typical formula by discussing the crimes he committed along with the way he acted in front of others side by side. This movie focuses almost solely on the latter. We don't see Zac Efron, who plays Ted Bundy, committing any murders or kidnapping any girls until one flashback at the end of the movie when he finally confesses. That actually threw me for a loop. I wasn't expecting a narration like that. I knew we were going to focus on the facade that he put on for the rest of the world, but I thought that was going to be intermixed with scenes of kidnapping so that audiences would know right away that this man was a monster who was extremely cunning and manipulative. But nope. Instead this is a movie that follows a romance between him and his girlfriend Liz Kendall, played by Lily Collins, a brief time in Utah with him at Law School, then a whole bunch of courtroom drama and prison escapes, making the second half of this movie feel a lot like the Netflix docuseries "Making a Murderer." We see a whole lot of news stories and accusations of what's been going on, but no scenes of crimes committed and a lot of denial from Bundy.

At first I wasn't sure if I was a big fan of this approach. It took this from what could've been a very dark and disturbing movie about how twisted and messed up Ted Bundy was into a movie that made him look charming and normal and almost instilled doubt into the user. But then as I thought about it, the more I appreciated that take because it put you into the moment and tells the story of Ted Bundy from the viewpoint of Liz Kendall and everyone else around him. In 2019 we look back at this whole saga and everyone agrees that the man is a monster. But in the moment, that wasn't a surefire thing. I mean, when Ted Bundy moved to Utah and became a law student at the University of Utah, he was also baptized as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That used to be a nugget of information that wasn't widely known that I enjoyed sharing with people because my Mom and I have had conversations about him over the years, but the documentary touches on that quite a bit. I also learned from the documentary that when the girl in Salt Lake came out and accused him of attacking her and trying to kidnap her, a lot of people who knew him personally came out in support of his innocence. No way the Ted Bundy they knew could do that.

Then as we get later into the movie, the courtroom drama is really fascinating because it became the first televised trial in the United States. The movie portrays a lot of young girls attending the trail, swooning after Ted Bundy, and a lot of people doing interviews afterwards claiming how he looked like a normal guy who isn't capable of committing the crimes he was accused of. And lest you think that was a work of fiction in the movie, that is 100 percent accurate to how it happened. Bundy eventually confessed to killing all those girls, but not until a few days before he was put to death in 1989, 10 to 15 years after all of this. Police were then able to confirm his confessions by finding a lot of the bodies exactly where Bundy claimed he hid them, doing DNA testing and all of that to confirm the bodies were the same girls. Somewhere around 30 murders were able to be directly connected to Bundy with many others assumed to also be done by Bundy, but no one knew about all of that in the moment. He was able to maintain his composure while using his charm, quick wit and strong intellect to convince a lot of people that he was innocent and that the real killer was still out there. He even acted as his own lawyer in Florida, putting together a solid case for himself.

That's why the casting of Zac Efron as Ted Bundy is a really interesting one. While I look at Zac Efron's face and am not convinced that it's Ted Bundy's face, Efron shares a lot of similar positive qualities with Bundy. He has a lot of charm, good looks and smart wit. He's one of the big heartthrobs of this generation. He's able to get you on his side and root for him, just like Ted Bundy was able to do during his trial. Efron has a lot of charm and charisma. He often smiles and winks at the camera in a subtle way that will melt your heart. But when he does so, it's because he's emulating Bundy. Due to the fact that this trial was a huge public thing that was televised, we have a lot of footage of Bundy, how he acted during the trial and how he approached the media. A lot of those scenes are directly replicated in this movie and they show them in the end credits. And that's when you really buy into how great Efron does in portraying Bundy. In my dark, sick, twisted way, I would've liked to see a bit more dark Efron because when we do get that in the end, that's bone-chilling and thus I kinda wanted to see how great Efron could do being crazy psychotic Efron for long periods of time. The evil look he gave at the end after confessing to Liz makes me think Efron could've nailed that. It would've been interesting to see.

But maybe it's good that we didn't show much of that because there's no need to portray the young girls getting killed. And we certainly don't need to dive deep into the specifics of what he did to them after he killed them. I've read about all that and thus I was hoping that they would avoid that like the plague and I'm glad they did. There's already enough drama surrounding this movie's existence that I can empathize with. No need to dig up old wounds even more by having family members and friends witness Bundy killing these people in a movie. But all of that aside, perhaps a proper wish for me is to hope this opens the door for Efron even more because I would love to see him in more dramatic roles. And on that note, I do have to give praise to the rest of the cast. Lily Collins does an excellent job at portraying his girlfriend, the troubled Liz Kendall who stuck with him a lot longer than she probably should've. I honestly think Lily Collins is a Hollywood treasure and I would love to see her get more roles. We also had Haley Joel Osment come out of hiding to play Liz's new boyfriend while John Malkovich and Jim Parsons made the courtroom drama in the second half of the film rather entertaining. Overall it was a great cast with lots of great acting.

Overall, if you want nothing to do with Ted Bundy and you think it's awful that he got a documentary and a movie in the same year, I don't blame you. You can go ahead and skip this and I won't be upset one bit. But I think that there is a lot that can be learned from Ted Bundy, thus if you're curious to know more about who Bundy was and why he was such a notorious serial killer, I'd highly recommend you check out both of these films as companion pieces. I'd say you should watch the documentary first so that you can get the history and context about Bundy, then watch the movie so that you can experience this unique narrative that drives home the idea that serial killers often don't look like serial killers. They look like normal people living normal lives. The idea that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover is a metaphor that goes both ways. We shouldn't just blindly assume that someone is a good person just because they look and act like one. We should always be careful and vigilant so that we can remain safe. Overall I would say that the documentary is better, which makes sense since director Joe Berlinger's strengths come as a documentarian, but I also think he did a soldi job with this film. I'll give "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile" and 8/10.

Movie Preview: May 2019

As was expected, this past April was a huge month at the box office, becoming the second straight April to cross $1 billion at the domestic box office, which is also the first month of 2019 to do so. Although it should be noted that the reason for April's success was mostly all due to this little movie called "Avengers: Endgame" making a staggering $427 million during the final five days of the month. That accounted for 41 percent of the month's overall business, meaning if you take that movie away, April actually wasn't that strong. "Shazam!" performed below expectations at just $132 million. March holdovers "Dumbo" and "Captain Marvel" contributed an extra $61 million each, while a trio of horror movies, "Pet Sematary," "The Curse of La Llorona" and "Us," the latter also being a March film, added about $40-50 million a piece. And that was it. Not a whole lot of strong contributions from anything else. But now we flip the page to May, which is the official start of the summer movie season, even though it feels like that began in March. But nevertheless, it's a crowded month ahead, which is great for moviegoers, but slightly problematic for box office numbers. Too many movies means they could all cannibalize each other, so let's dive in and try to make sense of it all.

May 3rd - 5th-

Three new wide releases enter the market this weekend attempting to counter-program "Avengers: Endgame," and we'll get to all of them, but the biggest story this weekend will pertain to what "Endgame" does in its second weekend. After opening to an Earth-shattering $357 million this past weekend, there really isn't a precedent here as to what it'll do in its second weekend. The best one can do is check out the previous Avengers movies and make a guess as to which one it'll follow closest. The easiest comparison might be to "Avengers: Infinity War," which fell 55.5 percent in weekend two. A drop like that would five "Endgame" a second weekend of $159 million. The best case scenario is that it follows closer to "The Avengers" in 2012, which only fell 50.3 percent. A total like that would see "Endgame" take in about $178 million. Avenue three would have this opening closer to "Avengers: Age of Ultron," which fell a slightly steeper 59.4 percent. While "Endgame" was received quite well and reports are that repeat viewings are higher than "Infinity War," the unique urgency to see this as fast as possible in order to avoid spoilers could result in a steeper fall, which following "Age of Ultron" would equal a $145 million second weekend, which is still quite excellent.

With that large range of $145-178 million for "Endgame," a total on the low end of that spectrum would still mean it would beat out the second place finisher by at least $125 million and that's if Long Shot hits the higher end of pre-release expectations. You could probably throw a dart at the wall in guessing which of these three new movies will actually land in second place, but I'm going with "Long Shot" because of the star power of Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron. As the poster of the movie itself explains, the movie is about an unlikely, but not impossible relationship. Charlize Theron plays a woman who is the current Secretary of State and is running for the presidency while Seth Rogen is an average journalist. The other plot twist on this is that Charlize Theron was Seth Rogen's babysitter and thus his first crush. Age-wise, this could check out as Theron is six years older than Rogen in real life. If he was 10 and she was 16, that would work. As far as a Seth Rogen comedy goes, he's been a consistent draw over the years, but it's been since "Neighbors" in 2014 that he's had one that's really broke out, so he might have to settle for the $10-15 million range for opening weekend and hope for good word of mouth to carry this through May.

The second contender for the runner-up spot is some counter-programming on the complete opposite side of the spectrum from "Long Shot" and that's the animated film Uglydolls. This is the first animated film that STX has released and it does have the edge on the other two in terms of theater count, but with "Detective Pikachu," "Aladdin," "The Secret Life of Pets" and "Toy Story 4" all right around the corner, most parents might choose to save their money for those events while waiting for DVD or streaming for "Uglydolls." The story here is a classic underdog tale, or underdoll tale as the poster claims. This universe has a system where the perfect dolls are made for kids while the ones that are deformed get thrown down to Uglyville, where all the ugly dolls are perfectly content and happy. However, at least a few of them wonder off to the perfect world in an attempt to fit in there. One big draw is the large cast that includes Kelly Clarkson, Nick Jonas, Janelle Monae, Blake Shelton, Pitbull, Bebe Rexha and Charli XCX. This obviously suggests singing is going to happen, which could very well entertain smaller children if the songs manage to be catchy enough. Best case scenario here seems to be the $15.8 million that "Wonder Park" opened to back in March.

The third wide release of the weekend is the Screen Gems thriller The Intruder. A few years back, Screen Gems, a branch of Sony, was actually pretty good at making some good money with these low budget thrillers. Movies like "No Good Deed" and "The Perfect Guy" did rather well as both of those opened in the mid $20 million range even with poor reviews. If you look at those two movies, "The Intruder" has a very similar plot. A new couple played by Michael Ealy (who starred in "The Perfect Guy") and Meagan Good move into a new home, but the previous owner, played by Dennis Quaid, is not ready to let his property go. When I was looking at this movie a couple weeks ago, instead of looking at those older Screen Gems movies, I chose to look at some more recent horror/thrillers like "The Possession of Hannah Grace," "Greta," "The Prodigy" and "Miss Bala," all of which opened in the $4-6 million. Thus I pegged the movie at that and predicted on my own that it would make $10-15 million total. Turns out as we head into the weekend, there's enough buzz here that it might make $10-15 million opening weekend instead, putting it more in line with last year's "Slender Man," which opened to $11.8 million, or "Proud Mary," which opened to $9.9 million.

May 10th - 12th-

The second weekend of May is where things get quite interesting. Again looking at the trajectories of the three previous Avengers movies, the range for "Endgame" in its third weekend is $72-96 million, which is the exact range that Detective Pikachu is looking at. Out of all the movies to be opening this summer, "Detective Pikachu" has been one of the more buzzier titles, this stemming from an excellent marketing campaign that got very positive reactions to the trailers. Combine that with the multi-generational appeal that Pokémon provides as it's both popular with the current younger crowd as well as the crowd that grew up with it when the games and shows were first released in the 90's. The appeal has never died down since, thus the Pokémon fan base is quite large. Giving said fan base a live-action film that many have been dreaming of while making said movie look quite appealing might make this one of the biggest hits of the entire summer. The specific angle here is the "Detective Pikachu" game, which was released for the 3DS in Japan in 2016 and worldwide in 2018. It follows Pikachu as a detective, which in the movie version has him voiced by Ryan Reynolds. If the stars align, this could even see an opening weekend north of $100 million.

Coming in far below both "Endgame" and "Detective Pikachu" this weekend will be the Rebel Wilson and Anne Hathaway led comedy The Hustle. This is a remake of the 1988 film "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," which in turn was a remake of the 1964 film "Bedtime Stories." The two main stars of "Bedtime Story" are Marlon Brando and David Niven, while "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" has Steve Martin and Michael Caine step into those roles. Both of those movies have two men competing to con a rich woman out of a large sum of money, $25,000 and $50,000 respectively. "The Hustle" sees the gender roles reversed as it's Rebel Wilson and Anne Hathaway as the two attempting to con the "dirty rotten men" out of their money. Again, the high level of competition will be a running theme this month, as well as throughout the whole summer. On that note, "The Hustle" will be competing with last weekend's "Long Shot" for the comedy spotlight. With "The Hustle" being a lighter PG-13 while "Long Shot" being a heavier R, it's possible that the target audiences might not overall quite as much, but it's still a concern. Earlier this year, Rebel Wilson opened "Isn't It Romantic" to $14.2 million while she opened "How to Be Single" in 2016 to $17.9 million. That could be the range here.

Not to be forgotten about this weekend is yet another comedy, this one being Poms. Now on paper it seems like a bad idea to have two comedies opening on the same weekend, but "Poms" should be perfectly fine as it targets a complete different crowded, the senior crowd. Led by Diane Keaton, Jackie Weaver, Pam Grier, Celia Weston and Rhea Perlman, this group of older women form a cheerleading squad at their retirement community, proving that you're never too old to live a little. The direct comparison here is to last year's surprise summer hit "Book Club," which also starred Dianne Keaton and shares producer Alex Saks. "Book Club" only opened to $13.6 million, but it held remarkably well, winding up with a total of $68.5 million. The reason there is that the senior crowd aren't necessarily ones to run out and see movies on opening weekend. If word gets out that "Poms" is another comedy worth seeing, that word of mouth could help carry this movie throughout the summer. Thus an opening around $10 million might be expected, but this could hold on really well. Yes, it is quite the crowded summer, but there's not a lot targeted to this specific audience, thus this could be a win for STX, whose goal is to release a lot of mid-range movies for audiences. 

May 17th - 19th-

Whichever movie between "Endgame" and "Detective Pikachu" wins the previous weekend will probably be looking at another weekend at No. 1 this weekend. If it's "Endgame," the range this weekend is $41-63 million, which  that's a tad bit high for John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum, which will be looking at a strong third place finish. "John Wick" is a movie that came out of nowhere in October 2014 to be a surprise. It didn't have a ton of pre-release buzz, thus only opened to $14.4 million, but strong word of mouth propelled it to $43 million total. Adult males especially gravitated towards its stylistic action as new directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch showcased their expertise with action as they were previously known for their work as stunt coordinators, most notably for "The Matrix" trilogy. "John Wick: Chapter 2" expanded the "John Wick" lore, which was initially a simple action film about John Wick getting revenge on the people who killed his dog. "Chapter 2" fed off good will from the first combined with great reviews of its own and doubled the first movie's financial total, opening to $30.4 million and making $92 million overall. Now "Parabellum" looks to hit things home with an opening weekend expected in the mid to high $30 million range.

The next two movies this weekend will both be looking at an opening in the low teens. Either one could wind up ahead as they jockey for a spot in the top five. First we'll touch on A Dog's Journey. If you've seen the trailers for this movie and you feel like you've just seen a movie like this advertised, it's because "A Dog's Way Home" just came out in January. Both movies, along with the 2016 film "A Dog's Purpose," originate from books written by W. Bruce Cameron. While "A Dog's Way Home" is more of a spin-off that deals with similar ideas, yet is not directly connected to "A Dog's Purpose," this month's "A Dog's Journey" is a direct sequel to "A Dog's Purpose" and thus will bring back both Josh Gad and Dennis Quaid to reprise their roles, with Gad as the voice of the dog Bailey and Quaid playing said dog's owner Ethan. This time around, instead of Bailey reincarnating repeatedly until he finds his way back to Ethan, he reincarnates to go take care of Ethan's granddaughter CJ. Thus the cycle continues. Why Hollywood felt like we needed three of these movies is a conversation for another day, but "A Dog's Purpose" opened to $18.2 million while "A Dog's Way Home" opened to $11.2 million. It seems logical to assume "A Dog's Journey" ends up closer to the latter.

The other movie of the weekend adds another romance drama to mix with The Sun is Also a Star. Like most of these, this is also based on a best-selling novel, which means there's potential to bring in a pre-established audience here. For the movie's cast, the casting directors reached into the TV world to bring in Yara Shahidi from "Black-ish" and Charles Melton from "Riverdale" as our main couple Natasha and Daniel. The premise of this movie sees Natasha not believing in love, but Daniel tells her that if she gives him a day, he believes that he can change her mind. She gives him and hour and he accepts the challenge. Things eventually get more complicated as Natasha's family is facing deportation. Romance dramas like this can open all over the place, from either barely registering or to becoming a surprise hit. The kicker here is that this is Warner Bros. distributing, thus it might be getting a bigger push than some of the others from smaller studios. Last year Warner Bros. was responsible for the mega-hit "Crazy Rich Asians." This won't hit that level, but Warner Bros. have also found success with "Everything, Everything" ($11.7 million opening) and "Me Before You" ($18.7 million opening). An opening in line with one of those two seems likely.

May 24th - 27th-

Regardless of what happens with the duel between "Endgame" and "Detective Pikachu," a new box office winner will be crowned this weekend. If Disney manages to play their cards right, they could be passing the baton off to themselves as Aladdin is set to dominate over Memorial Day weekend. "Aladdin" follows a long string of live-action Disney remakes and is the second of four major remakes in 2019 alone as it follows "Dumbo" and precedes "The Lion King" and "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil." The original animated "Aladdin" was released in 1992 and was the highest grossing film that year, making $217 million, which adjusts to $472 million with 2019 ticket prices. It was a part of the Disney renaissance that began with "The Little Mermaid" in 1989 and is still considered one of Disney's most beloved classics. That means this has all the potential in the world if it's received well, but that's the problem here. Unlike some of these other Disney remakes, it's not been all rainbows and butterflies here. In fact, things got extremely toxic back in February when they first revealed Blue Will Smith as Genie. Reaction to the ensuing trailers and TV spots have been a bit more positive, but the success of this movie is going to rely solely on the reviews, making it bit hard to predict at this point. 

It's going to be a busy Memorial Day weekend. In addition to everything else in the market already, three more films are going to be added and will fight for a spot in the top 10, potentially led by the horror film Brightburn. The premise here is what has caught people's attention as this is essentially like evil Superman. This alien kid with superpowers fall from the sky and gets taken in by a couple who raise him as their own. But then when he figures out his powers, instead of using them for good to save the world, he goes super crazy and evil. The advertising has also heavily pushed James Gunn, director of the "Guardians of the Galaxy" films, as being attached to this project. Sometimes marketing like that can be deceiving. James Gunn is not the director here. That would be David Yarovesky, whose only other previous feature directorial effort is a 2014 movie called "The Hive" that no one has heard of. James Gunn is the producer, though, and his brother and cousin, Brian Gunn and Max Gunn, wrote the screenplay. So this is a Gunn family effort, which could boost awareness. If this has enough buzz and excitement leading up to the release, an opening in line with last month's "Pet Sematary" ($24.5 million) and "The Curse of La Llorona" ($26.3 million) could be in play.

May already has a plethora of comedies for people to pick from, with "Long Shot," "The Hustle" and "Poms" vying for audiences hoping for a good laugh. Another one is added to the mix with Booksmart, the directorial debut of actress Olivia Wilde. This is a coming-of-age comedy as two high school girls who have previously spent most of their time studying decide that they need to put down their books and go live a little. Now there are some recognizable names in this, like Lisa Kudrow, Will Forte, Jason Sudeikis and Billie Lourde, but our two main girls leading the way are Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein, who are fairly unknown at this point. Thus the lack of star power in the lead roles could hurt this movie initially. It might not be the type of movie that people rush out and see, but often comedies are hard to predict at the box office. There's usually one or two that become huge during the summer season. The reason why this one could be a potential breakout film is that it debuted at South by Southwest in March and took home a perfect 100 percent score from Rotten Tomatoes after 37 reviews. A well-reviewed comedy is the obvious key to success and if word of mouth gets out that this is worth seeing, this could see long legs throughout the summer.

The final movie of  Memorial Day weekend actually sees us getting a double dose of Disney with Fox's release of Ad Astra. With Disney now owning Fox, that means we're going to be seeing a lot of Disney this summer. In addition to "Endgame," "Aladdin" and "Ad Astra," Disney will also be responsible for the distribution of "Dark Phoenix," "Toy Story 4," "Stuber," "The Lion King," "New Mutants" (theoretically) and "Artemis Fowl." So yeah, lot's of Disney. And no "Spider-Man: Far from Home" on that list because, remember, that's still Sony. Anyways, "Ad Astra" is a sci-fi film that doesn't seem to be getting much of any buzz at the moment, but it does star Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland and Ruth Negga and is about an astronaut played by Brad Pitt who travels to the outer edges of the solar system to find his missing father. There's also apparently more mysteries involved in the plot to unravel that could threaten Earth's survival. And the director here is James Gray, who directed the well-received movies "The Immigrant" and "The Lost City of Z." So on paper this should work. It's just that with the lack of buzz and the heavy competition, this could end up like fellow 2019 sci-fi film "Replicas," which could only muster a $2.4 million opening. 

May 31st - June 2nd-

If, in theory, "Aladdin" were able get a second weekend on top this weekend, assuming "Endgame" beats out "Detective Pikachu," Disney would again have the opportunity to pass the baton off to themselves with the June 7 release of "Dark Phoenix." But that's not going to happen because the final day of May sees the release of Godzilla: King of the Monsters. "Dark Phoenix" will probably get beat out by "The Secret Life of Pets 2," anyways, but that's a story for next month. Onto Godzilla, this could be a force to be reckoned with. The 2014 "Godzilla" opened to a massive $93.2 million. Granted, it was extremely frontloaded as it finished with $200.7 million and had mixed reaction from audiences. But 2017's "Kong: Skull Island" also did well, opening to $61 million, making $168 million overall. Not only are the two set to face off next March with "Godzilla vs. Kong," but "King of the Monsters" also has three of Godzilla's most popular foes, Mothra, Rodan and King Ghidora. Even though the market is crowded, the marketing campaign here has been aggressive and excitement has been building as the release of the movie gets closer. It would make sense that this at least matches the $61 million opening of "Kong: Skull Island." It could even hit a bit higher if reviews are positive.

Godzilla does have some interesting competition this weekend in the form of Rocketman. If Godzilla suffers under the pressure of so much competition, which is a definite possibility, "Rocketman" could sneak in a win at the box office as it looks to feed off the success of fellow musical biopic "Bohemian Rhapsody." Despite mixed critical reaction, "Bohemian Rhapsody" opened huge to $51 million and held very well throughout the season, finishing with $217 million domestically. It also earned five Oscar nominations, including best picture, and won four of those, which was everything but best picture. And if Rami Malek can win best actor for lip-syncing Freddie Mercury, we have to believe that Taron Egerton is in play next year for actually singing Elton John, which he proved he could do in the movie "Sing." Because, yeah, that's what this is. An Elton John biopic with Taron Egerton in the lead role. Granted, this is probably getting released in the wrong half of the year to get real Oscar buzz, but Oscars or not, musical movies have been on a roll lately, and with little competition this summer in that specific realm, this feels like one of the more guaranteed hits. It should be able to at least hit the $34.9 million opening of last summer's "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again."

The final movie of the month is also not one to ignore and that is the thriller Ma. This is led by Octavia Spencer, who is usually one of the more likable actresses in the business, known for her roles is movies such as "Hidden Figures," "The Help," "The Shape of Water" and "Fruitvale Station." However, "Ma" has her going in a completely different direction, from nice and friendly to crazy and psychotic. Initially, though, all seems well as she befriends a bunch of high school kids who think they've scored the jackpot as she lets them party and do whatever in her home. Thus she gets the nickname Ma. But as it turns out, Ma is not very nice and all of these kids are in a lot of trouble. Jason Blum is on as producer here and he has a excellent track record with his Blumhouse production company in producing a lot of successful horrors and thrillers, with the "Insidious," "Paranormal Activity" and "The Purge" franchises, as well as a whole lot of other individual movies like "Get Out," "Split" and the recent reboot/sequel of "Halloween."  The actual director here is Tate Taylor, who is most well known for fellow Octavia Spencer movie "The Help." If "Ma" is received well, an opening close to the thriller "Don't Breathe" ($26.4 million), which has a similar premise, seems realistic.