The Other Side of Heaven 2: Fire of Faith Review

Today we veer away from the mainstream market to dive into the local Utah market with "The Other Side of Heaven 2," which comes just over 17 years after the original film, which had its initial release in December 2001. This is a movie that has been advertised here locally for a long time. I don't know the exact date, but I feel that the initial word got out early last year. I want to say that there was something about it during the commercials of April 2018 General Conference, but I could be wrong there. All I can figure out for sure is that the initial teaser was released in October 2018 while Wikipedia claims it was announced in February 2018. Either way, they got the word out early for this sequel and we've had posters hanging in my local theater for several months at least. And it's finally here! Now when it was first announced, most of the social media reaction was very ecstatic. I, on the other hand, was like, "Wait... what?" I wasn't quite sure what the purpose of a sequel to "The Other Side of Heaven" was, especially one coming out this long after the original movie. This is often the type of belated sequel that doesn't work out so well, but I decided to keep my mouth shut and let people be excited instead of stirring up controversy. I figured I'd just wait and see.

The history behind "The Other Side of Heaven" is an interesting one. It tells the story of Elder John H. Groberg, who is a fairly popularly figure in Latter-day Saint circles. He served in the First Quorum of the Seventy from 1976 to 2005 before being given emeritus status by President Hinckley in October 2005. In that time, he spoke a lot about his experiences as a missionary in Tonga and even wrote a book about it titled "In the Eye of the Storm." Deseret Book was initially hesitant to sell the rights to that book for a movie because they were nervous about how the Church would be portrayed in the movie, which was not made or endorsed by the Church. But they eventually did because the idea that the film's main producer, as well as other crew members, were members. That book became "The Other Side of Heaven," was was theatrically distributed by Excel Entertainment Group, who has produced films like "God's Army," "Saints and Soldiers," "The Work and the Glory," "17 Miracles," "Meet the Mormons" and other Church-themed films. Walt Disney took care of the DVD release, which is why you see their logo on the DVD cover if you own it. So yeah, "The Other Side of Heaven" is a Disney film, which is kinda funny. I often forget about that.

As far as my opinion on "The Other Side of Heaven," despite it being hugely popular among Latter-day Saints, it's not really a movie I've gravitated towards. I love Elder Groberg's story, but it has more of an impact when listening to him speak about it and relating that to the gospel. In movie form it feels very episodic, which is not always a narrative I gravitate towards. There's not really a strong beginning, middle and end. It's just a string of Elder Groberg's missionary experiences attached together. Sure, the individual parts are moving and rather intense at times, but the movie as a whole feels a tad bit disconnected. And in hindsight I find it rather amusing seeing Anne Hathaway playing a good Latter-day Saint girl given that she plays the girlfriend of Elder Groberg. At the time that certainly made sense. She was an unknown actress when she was cast and the movie came out four months after fellow Disney film "The Princess Diaries," which was her huge breakout role. She did a fine job. It's just kinda funny seeing her in that role. Overall, I still enjoy "The Other Side of Heaven." It's perfectly fine. And I like it way more than critics did as it has a 29 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. But it's still not one that jumps out to me as a favorite faith-based film.

In regards to this sequel, Disney is playing no part in this movie's release. That fact had me a bit nervous at first. Usually the biggest trouble you get with belated sequels is when a smaller production company is doing a sequel to a bigger studio film. But a closer investigation revealed that Mitch Davis, the original director of "The Other Side of Heaven," has returned to direct the sequel. Also returning for this film is Christopher Gorham, the actor who played Elder Groberg. So there's continuity there. Obviously Anne Hathaway isn't returning. In the 17 years between films, she became an Academy Award winning actress. Thus whether or not she wanted to return was probably not even the question here. I imagine they would've killed their whole budget in doing so because she's too expensive for a local film like this. But her replacement, a lady by the name of Natalie Medlock, does a great job. And replacing Disney is BYUtv. Actually, Box Office Mojo claims that ArtAffects is the distributor here, but BYUtv is the first logo you see when the opening credits role. All the other production companies come after. So I like to say that they replaced Disney with BYU. That's a valid replacement, right? Although maybe we should give director Mitch Davis the real credit.

Now onto the movie itself. The other question I had initially was what story is there left to tell. I was well aware of Elder Groberg's story as a missionary in Tonga, but I wasn't aware of stories that happened later in his life. Although I alleviated my own concerns when I did some quick research and learned that Elder Groberg went back to Tonga about 10 years later with his wife and kids to serve as the mission president of that mission. That's probably the story they're going for here. As it turns out, that's the exact story. The story is taken from the book "The Fire of Faith," which Elder Groberg published in 1996, two years after his initial book "In the Eye of the Story." In reading over the description of "The Fire of Faith" on Amazon, there's a lot more stories he tells about his experiences as a mission president and beyond, but "The Other Side of Heaven 2" takes certain selections from that book in order to make their movie. Suddenly everything makes sense and I can finally be content with the idea of a second movie. In fact, the gap between movies is perfect given that Christopher Gorham is returning to play Elder Groberg. No need to use makeup to have him look older or recast, like they would've had to do if they made this a few years after the first one.

Even though I alleviated my concerns with all of this quick research, I was still curious as to what they were going to do with this movie in order to make a movie about a mission president interesting. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that a mission president does on a day-to-day basis that doesn't necessarily lend itself as well to a movie when compared to the stories of a missionary. For those reasons, Elder Groberg's part in this movie isn't the most interesting one. Sure, there's a sequence with his family traveling on a boat in a storm that gets rather intense. It was a nice reunion when he returned to his original island for five minutes of the movie. When his wife gets pregnant and has a son, there's some interesting drama there when the son gets sick and there's not enough medical attention on the island. There's stories like that and others with Elder Groberg. All of his kids are also adorable. I love the family interactions. All the actors, both Christopher Gorham and Natalie Medlock, as well as their kids, do a great job. Having a young Thomas S. Monson as the presiding apostle over Elder Groberg was fun and Russell Dixon seemed like he enjoyed portrayed President Monson. But if I'm being honest, there's just not as much here to make this as interesting.

However, making up for the lack of material in regards to Elder Groberg's mission president experience is an excellent story about a Tongan family on one of the islands. This is where I really want to list off character names and give credit to the actors who portrayed them, but I'm presented with the unfortunate conundrum that this is a small enough film that IMDb doesn't have the full cast listing updated, nor is there a separate Wikipedia page for this film. Maybe said information will be updated later, but this is the opening day of this release that I'm typing this. Combined with that, my dumb American brain has a tough time remembering Polynesian names well enough to spell them off the top of my head, nor am I good at remembering new actors' names after only seeing their name once in the credits, so I'm not going to try to embarrass myself. But nevertheless there's a story arc with a father who is a preacher wherein one of his sons wants to join the Church. He does so against his father's wishes and the father then disowns him. Said son then ends up as a missionary under Elder Groberg. Intertwined along the way is a rather gripping and emotional story between father and son as well as father and Elder Groberg that carried the emotional weight in the film with some powerful themes.

Beware that this movie is PG-13. And for good reason. I went into the early bird matinee showing expecting to be the only one in the theater, but was surprised to find the theater mostly full. In the theater were a lot of parents taking their kids to see this. I'm not exactly sure how those specific kids reacted to the movie, but I don't really recommend this is a film for the whole family. I don't want to spoil exactly what happens in certain scenes, but it gets very intense. The original film is only rated PG and I'd say that's a pretty heavy PG. Thus I was thinking that this would be more of a light PG-13, but it's a pretty deserving PG-13. No language or any of that. It's an acceptable Christian film. But the island can be unforgiving at times and the ocean is a monster. There's also some human beings that aren't very nice or accepting towards the missionaries and other members of the Church. The movie isn't full of brutal sequences like that, but when they do happen, the movie doesn't really hold back. It's effective in adding the emotional depth to the movie, but keep your small kids away from this. My recommendation is to make this a date night film. After seeing that, if you think your kids are tough enough to handle it, buy the DVD later. It'll be at Deseret Book before too long.

The final thing that I'll say here is that when I was reading over the negative reviews from critics about the first film, the biggest theme there was that they didn't like that film because it was religious propaganda. Maybe they were expecting something different because Disney was a part of that film's production, but I facepalmed hard at that. Duh! This is a faith-based film about a missionary. If you're not a Latter-day Saint or you're not religious at all, why are you seeing "The Other Side of Heaven" or "The Other Side of Heaven 2"? Neither one are the movie that will push you over the edge and have you calling the missionaries to get baptized. For better or for worse, this is a movie directed specifically at a Latter-day Saint audience and people from that audience who loved the first movie are going to love this sequel. If you're not religious, this isn't for you. But if you are, then see this when you get the chance. I'm not saying you have to run out and see this in theaters, but it's a solid option as a worthy sequel. Perhaps I'm a bit harsh on the narrative structure of both movies and I'm more harsh on the fact that Elder Groberg's story in this sequel isn't as interesting, but I still walked out with an overall positive feeling, thus I will give "The Other Side of Heaven 2: Fire of Faith" a 7/10. 

Anna Review

I think I was the only person on Earth excited for this movie. Based off of box office totals this past weekend, I also think I was only one of 10 people who made the trip out to see it. Truth be told, I didn't know of its existence until I was going through my summer movie predictions in late April. I stumbled upon this "Anna" movie and was like, "What is this?" I looked it up, watched a trailer, and immediately became very intrigued. It was a female-led action film directed by Luc Besson. Sure, not everything this guy touches turns to gold, as evidenced by the atrocious mess that was "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets," but he did direct "Léon: The Professional" in 1994, which is No. 30 on IMDb's top 250. He also directed "The Fifth Element" in 1997 and, more recently, "Lucy" in 2014. In addition to that, he's also stood as producer of franchises like "Taken" and "The Transporter," so this guy seems to know his way around action films. Given that I was one of the people who actually enjoyed "Lucy," I was excited to see his take on another female-led action movie named after the first name of its lead protagonist. My other option from this past weekend's openers after seeing "Toy Story 4" was "Child's Play." Since I've never seen any of those movies, this seemed like a better idea.

Speaking of my summer predictions regarding "Anna," I felt fairly confident that this could pull off $45 million domestically. Perhaps it could snag an opening weekend of $15-18 million and hold on well enough through the summer to hit that $45 million mark. I came upon that number after looking at other recent female-led action films like "Atomic Blonde" ($51.7 million) and "Red Sparrow" ($46.9 million). Even the first "John Wick" movie came out of nowhere to do $43 million. Obviously "Anna" wasn't going to perform like "Lucy," which OPENED to $43.9 million and made $126.7 million total, to go along with $463.4 million worldwide. But certainly with a decent enough advertising campaign the movie could match "Atomic Blonde" and "Red Sparrow," right? But that's the funny thing about early predictions. There's a lot of factors that go into a movie's box office total that are sometimes hard to know of that far in advance. In the case of "Anna," I had no idea back in April that they would decide to NOT advertise this film. Like, seriously. I knew of it because I researched all the summer films. I didn't see hardly any trailers or commercials for this leading up to its release. No wonder it only opened to $3.6 million and will be lucky to get to $10 million total.

That means all of your reactions to me posting this review will probably be a lot like my reaction back in April: "A review of 'Anna'? What is this?" So, OK, fine. I'll explain to you what this is. In doing so, there's apparently another Luc Besson movie that I need to bring up that's the best comparison. I got this from glancing over the IMDb reviews and that is the 1990 film "La Femme Nikita." That movie was remade in Hong Kong in 1991 with "Black Cat" and had an American remake in 1993 (because Luc Besson's original is in French and Americans are allergic to subtitles) called "Point of No Return." The movie has also had two TV shows inspired by it, the first in 1997 also titled "La Femme Nikita," with the second being the 2010 CW show simply titled "Nikita." I've not seen any of these Nikita movies or shows. Sorry. But I was glancing over the plot of the original film and I started laughing. Luc Besson essentially has just remade his own film with "Anna." In this movie, Anna has a bit of a messed up life. After a chase with the police following her friends attempting a robbery, she's recruited by the KGB and trained to be an undercover assassin. And if you've seen "La Femme Nikita," apparently that's the exact same premise.

OK, take away points for the lack of creativity if you want. But given that I didn't know any of this until after I saw the movie, it obviously didn't effect my viewing experience. Even if I had been well aware of "La Femme Nikita," I'm not so sure my opinion would've been changed anyways. I mean, even if I haven't seen that exact spy thriller, I have seen plenty of them to know that "Anna" wasn't the most original idea. I didn't exactly need it to be, though. I just wanted an entertaining action film. And although it wasn't quite as entertaining as I hoped it would be, it was entertaining enough. I suppose my problem is that after seeing "John Wick: Chapter 3," I now want every action movie to be as fast paced and energetic as a John Wick movie. That franchise has become the gold standard of what an action movie should be. Whenever an action movie doesn't hit that mark, part of me becomes disappointed because John Wick has spoiled me. Fair or not, that's become the reality. We've also had a lot of female-led action movies recently and I really want one of them to become the female John Wick. "Atomic Blonde" didn't do it for me. "Red Sparrow" I skipped because of too much sexuality. "Anna" ALMOST gets there, but is held back by Luc Besson since he wrote and directed this.

I think my biggest problem with this movie is that it was part action/spy thriller and part modelling movie. After Anna is recruited into the KGB, this is part of her disguise. They pretty her up and get her recruited by a major French modelling company where she excels at. She does her modelling by day, living "happily" with her girlfriend, while doing her assassin stuff by night. Sasha Luss, who plays Anna, does a fantastic job at modelling, which makes sense since she is a Russian model by trade. In fact, this is only her second acting gig, the first being a minor role in Luc Besson's "Valerian." So Besson essentially cast a Russian model as the lead role in his latest action film and allowed her to spend half of the film modelling. Even when she was doing her action stuff, it felt like she was modelling at the same time with all of her outfits as well as all the romance scenes with her three love interests in the film. I just wanted a little less modelling and a little more action. Obviously she's pleasant to look at, but that's not why I go into an action film. In her action scenes, I was pleasantly surprised at how good of job she did, especially given that this was her first time playing lead role in a film. She has an acting career if she wants it. I just wanted to see more action sequences with her.

Also in terms of the action, the movie is a lot more story based than I was expecting. When I call this an action/spy thriller, it focuses heavily on the spy stuff and less on the action stuff. There's only a few major action sequences, which are extremely entertaining, while the rest of it is all spy stuff. At its core, the movie is actually about a battle between the KGB and the CIA. Things happen at the beginning of the movie that sets the stage for said battle, then both the KGB and CIA try to secretly recruit Anna as their scapegoat to get at the other. So she ends up being a sort of double agent for both, while not knowing who to actually trust and mostly just wanting to get herself out of this sticky mess. I found this all to be a lot more compelling than I was expecting to. I was partially annoyed that I wasn't getting very much action scenes, but then I found myself caught up in this twisted web that was the plot. Adding to the twisted nature is that Luc Besson chose to jump all over the place with his narrative structure. He would take you on one journey, which ended with some dramatic moment that comes out of left field, then immediately rewinds to the point of the plot where he explains what just happened. I started to get frustrated at that, but it made for a compelling movie.

Again, Sasha Luss does a great job of holding her own in the film. She sells it as a cold-blooded action star who is willing to go shoot whoever the KGB tells her to shoot, but also adds enough emotion to her character for you to feel bad for the situation she's in. However, she's also buoyed up by a great supporting cast. I'll start by calling out a more minor role played by Lera Lova, a fellow model in her first acting role who plays Anna's girlfriend. I felt really bad for her because she thinks she's living this perfect life with the perfect modeling career and a wonderful, pretty girlfriend. She has no idea that said girlfriend is actually an assassin for the KGB who is using her to appear normal. In addition to these two new actresses, we have a lot of veterans in this film. Cillian Murphy is on the U.S. side of things with the CIA while Luke Evans and Helen Mirren play the main Russian characters in the KGB, helping Anna out there. The three of them are fantastic in their roles, making this CIA vs. KGB thing work quite well. All three of them had excellent chemistry with Anna as either a lover or a mentor. The fact that they were all convincing left a lot of doubt in my brain as to what was going to happen in this film, making this a fun and slightly unpredictable film.

So yeah, if you're coming off a huge high with something like "John Wick: Chapter 3" and you need a quick action fix, "Anna" is a solid choice. It wasn't quite the film I wanted it to be. There was too much modelling and not enough action. The majority of the action that did happen was Anna walking around shooting people, which also wasn't quite as entertaining as it could've been. There were two scenes that did remind me of a "John Wick" action sequence with Anna having to fight off a whole room full of people coming at her. Those were excellent and Sasha Luss proved that she could pull it off. It made me want to see her and John Wick come together in a movie. But given that one of those sequences was the main focus of the trailer, it just made me thirsty for more instead of feeling satisfied at what I got, which is not quite the feeling I want coming out of an action movie. But still, as I said earlier, this is entertaining enough. And it has great acting and a compelling enough story to hold it together. Given the aforementioned box office totals for this film, this is the type of film most of you are going to find in a year or two on Netflix or whatever. I think that's the perfect setting for this as it will do a good job of distracting you for two hours. My grade for "Anna" is a 7/10.

Toy Story 4 Review

When it came to the idea of a "Toy Story 4," I think I was one of the more cynical people around. I did not want it. Pixar had completed what I thought was the perfect trilogy, culminating in "Toy Story 3" rather easily being my favorite Pixar movie, with "Toy Story" right behind it in second place. I technically thought that "Toy Story 2" was the worst of the trilogy, but putting that label on it sounds about as unfair as picking a worst "Lord of the Rings" movie because "Toy Story 2" is still a really good movie, even though it winds up in more of the middle range of my Pixar rankings. I liked calling it the third best of the trilogy. So bringing this franchise back for a fourth movie after they had already perfectly finished it seemed motivated by money alone, given that "Toy Story 3" made $415 million domestically and $1.067 billion worldwide, both of which were highs for Pixar before the likes of "Finding Dory" and "Incredibles 2" came around. Given that I don't think Pixar is at their best when they revisit franchises, I thought this movie was destined to simply exist as a subpar Pixar film made solely for a quick cash grab. With how much I love the previous three films, I was not ready for the franchise to be tainted like this. Why can't Hollywood just leave things alone?

However, I was willing to let the marketing campaign for this movie to win me over. I took them a while, but they finally released a teaser trailer... with them all spinning in a circle. Clearly they were banking on name brand alone to sell this. When they finally released the official trailer, we had a movie about Bonnie making a new toy out of a spork she named called Forky, said Forky getting lost, then Woody and the gang tracking him down in a carnival setting? In other words, it looked like it was cut and pasted from "Toy Story 2," but with them chasing down Forky instead of Woody. I was not convinced. Yeah, Bo Peep was back, but what was her role? And we have a whole bunch of new toys we meet at the carnival played for humor, but it didn't seem like there was any substance here. I wanted to be won over, but every ensuing trailer or TV spot just made me more cynical about this whole thing. The best thing someone told me was that whatever happens with this new movie, the Andy trilogy will always stand as one of the best trilogies, even if the Bonnie movies are only average. I decided I would accept that. This new movie can still exist. Even if we get more of them, I decided to not let it tarnish my beloved Andy trilogy. So come what may, I suppose.

Yet after all of this, you can imagine my surprise when the reviews came in just as positive as the first three movies, at least in terms of the Rotten Tomatoes score. As of Sunday evening with 299 reviews counted, it stands at a 98 percent, with a 95 percent audience score. Even some of the trusted YouTube critics I follow, who also admitted to be highly skeptical, revealed that they were won over. I honestly didn't know what to think of this. I was never excited for this and the marketing gave me no reason to be. Part of me wanted to still be cynical about this, but that was probably just me being stubborn. I tried to figure out how to be excited, but that sensation of excitement never came. Even when I was walking into the theater with my ticket purchased, the feeling of joyful anticipation for a new movie one has been looking forward to never came over me. This was just another movie I was seeing. More than anything, I was curious as to what was going to happen to me when the movie started playing. And, well, I'm here now to report that it took me no time at all for the Pixar magic to completely change my grumpy, cynical heart. The opening scene of this movie is gut-wrenching. From that moment on, Pixar grabs you by the heartstrings and never lets go.

In looking back at this whole experience, I've decided that the marketing of this movie wasn't very good. Granted, it scored huge at the box office this weekend with $120.9 million domestically, which is the highest in the Toy Story franchise and fourth highest animated opening of all-time. Sure, it didn't hit the heights of "Incredibles 2" ($182 million) or "Finding Dory" ($135 million). But its opening is still nothing to scoff at. Plus it has no real direct competition until "The Lion King," which opens July 19, meaning it should hold great. This all means that they did something right with their marketing. But in terms of them portraying what this movie is about, they completely hid the core of their film. The movie I thought I was going to get was nothing like the one I was treated to. On one hand, you can praise Pixar's marketing team for not giving anything away. But on the other hand, I would've liked for them to give me something that suggests what this movie is. Had I been given an idea about this movie's actual plot, I could've spent more of movie time being excited for this instead putting out so much negative energy. Because of this, I've made the decision to spend my review telling you what this movie is actually about.

With that comes a bit of a warning. Although this will not be a spoiler review as I will not dive into the resolutions or super deep into the plot, a warning here has to be made. If you were already on board with this movie and you would rather not be informed about the details that I think Pixar foolishly hid, then feel free to exit this review, watch the movie, then come back to see what I have said about this. If you need a bit more convincing or you're not overly concerned about me diving into the plot, then let's continue. At this movie's emotional core, this is a again a story about Woody. Over the course of the last three movies, Woody has come a long way. At first he was Andy's favorite toy and rather proud of it. He become rather bitter and angry when Buzz came in and seemingly took his place. But after 17 years with Andy that included lots of drama and character growth, Woody is willing to do whatever it takes to make Bonnie happy. Yet he's finding it to be a harder transition than he was expecting. Bonnie prefers other toys. During Bonnie's first day of kindergarten orientation, she creates Forky, yet when Forky comes alive in Bonnie's room, he wants to escape. Woody puts it upon himself to make sure Forky stays with Bonnie because that's his one thing he has left.

You pitch that idea and that adds a lot more depth. This is not just a movie about the toys finding Forky. It's about Woody losing his sense of purpose and grasping at anything he can to feel useful. Forky is just a tool to help progress this plot. He's not the central focus. Although he is actually a hilariously adorable character. He's constantly running towards the trash because that's where he thinks he belongs and I found that amusing. In one instance while Bonnie and her parents are out traveling with all the toys, Forky successfully escapes and so Woody leaves everyone to go find him. And that's where he runs into Bo Peep, who is as equally important in this movie as Woody. In fact, this is a movie about Woody and Bo Peep. We learn that Bo Peep has become a lost toy without an owner and she's perfectly fine with that. She's discovered her sense of purpose beyond a child's room and has a new gang of toys she's with. Woody is so enamored with the fact that he's finally found her and Bo is so happy to see Woody that she agrees to help him with his silly quest, but yet Woody just can't fathom who she has become. There seems to be an irreconcilable difference between the two of them is bound to keep them apart simply because a difference in philosophy.

This dynamic between these two characters is something that I found fascinating. I don't see any problem with focusing on that during their marketing. If we knew that this is a movie about Woody and Bo Peep, not a movie about Forky, I would've certainly been a lot more excited about this and I'm sure plenty of other people would be, too. Because, yeah, as strange as it sounds typing this up, "Toy Story 4" is practically a romantic drama between two toys, done in perfectly acceptable G-rated fashion that will not be one bit awkward for younger kids. The only thing you have to worry about with young kids is the movie's villains, that being the Gabby Gabby doll and her army of Slappy dolls that look like they got taken straight from "Goosebumps." These are the characters they run into in the antique store and they're legitimately terrifying. In fact, it's to the point where I question this movie's G rating. This should've been PG, and a fairly heavy PG at that. Although as I think about it, "Toy Story 3" was also pretty intense at moments with Lotso and that creepy baby doll. If your kids got through that just fine, they'll handle "Toy Story 4." If that was too much for them, then you might have to be careful with this one, too. You may have to make this a parents night out.

Back to Woody and Bo Peep, though, I thought their relationship was charming and believable. I mean, we had it set up in a comedic way in the first couple of movies, but when everyone threw a fit that Bo Peep wasn't in the third movie, perhaps Pixar took note of that and made sure to feature her front and center in this fourth movie. That was a brilliant plan. But this time, their relationship isn't just a comedic, silly means. It's real. And it sounds strange to say that toys can fall in love, but they experienced just about every other emotion in the first three movies, so why not? And when you can create a romance drama out of a Toy Story movie and not make it seem weird, but rather have it feel natural, I think that's genius. But more than being just an emotional movie about these two toys' relationship, this does what a good Toy Story movie is supposed to do. It uses toys to teach us a good life's lesson. And this is where I'm actually going to be careful because I don't want to actually give the resolution away, but this movie cuts deep. Granted, it doesn't cut quite as deep as "Toy Story 3" (in fairness, few movies do), but I still left this movie with teary eyes. I'm not one to actually have tears flowing down my face, but this movie got to me.

When I was driving home from this movie, the thought crossed my mind that perhaps this is a movie worthy of a perfect score. Spoiler alert, I'm not going to give it one. But the fact that the thought crossed my mind says a lot. I think the biggest reason why I'm not going to is because the movie is very tangential. We have our main plot that I've dove into, but we also have a whole bunch of subplots. Granted, I actually enjoyed a lot of these subplots. But having all of them means that there was a whole lot to balance and the final result isn't the most focused film in the franchise. A lot of our original characters from the first three movies, outside Woody, Buzz, Bo Peep and Jessie, get sidelined for the most part. They have their cameo moments, but I think the previous films do a better job of giving them equal weight. However, they are sidelined in favor of a whole host of new toys. Key and Peele voice a stuffed duck and a rabbit from a carnival. Keanu Reeves voices toy stuntman Duke Caboom. Ally Maki voices a mini Bo Peep sidekick named Giggle McDimples. Those are our main crop of new toys and they're all hilarious. And of course we have Tony Hale as Forky and Christina Hendricks as Gabby Gabby, which I've previously mentioned. All of these characters were great.

In short, I went into this movie very skeptic. "Toy Story 3" wrapped up the trilogy so perfectly that I didn't like the idea of "Toy Story 4." I was willing to let the advertising convince me to become excited, but it never did. Yet in perhaps the most pleasant surprise of the year, "Toy Story 4" ended up becoming the conclusion to this franchise that I didn't know I needed. No, this isn't a situation like the Bourne trilogy where the first three movies are their own trilogy while the fourth and fifth movies branch off and do their own thing. "Toy Story 4" is directly connected to the first three films and thus this is no longer a trilogy, but a quadrilogy wherein all four films are pretty close together in overall quality. How does "Toy Story 4" fit into my Pixar rankings? Oh man, I have no idea. These days I need like six months to figure these things out. There's just become so many great Pixar films that becoming a top 10 Pixar film is an honor and cracking top five might be impossible. I will say that "Toy Story 3" and "Toy Story" are my top two Pixar films and "Toy Story 4" won't break that up, but when I split Pixar into four tiers, "Toy Story 4" will definitely be somewhere in the top tier. And if they decide to do a "Toy Story 5," I've learned my lesson. Bring it on! My grade for "Toy Story 4" is a 9/10. 

Men in Black International Review

This year for cinema has been and will continue to be the year of final chapters. "Avengers: Endgame" was the final chapter in the Infinity Gauntlet story arc. "Dark Phoenix" was the final chapter of the main timeline for Fox's X-Men franchise. At the end of the year, "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" will be the final chapter of the Star Wars' main saga. And now this past weekend, "Men in Black International" became the final Men in Black movie. Granted, when it comes to Men in Black, this was certainly not the intention for Sony. In fact, the intention was the exact opposite. "International" was trying to reboot the saga by making a spin-off sequel in a different area of the world. But when your seven-years-later reboot ends up being a complete non-starter in just about all aspects, that's the end. Sony can try to make a fifth film if they want, but the world has spoken and said, "We don't care about this franchise." As a studio, that's when you cut your losses and move onto the next project. Because, yeah, this franchise feels dead at this point. Now I'm not going to say "International" is as bad as that 24 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes seems to suggest, but I'm also not going to say this movie is worth it because it's a fairly lifeless piece of cinema that just kinda exists.

Before I dive into the movie itself, I want to take a second to explore what went wrong here. The original "Men in Black" back in 1997 was the second highest grossing film of that year, behind only the behemoth that was "Titanic." Five years later, "Men in Black II" also did fairly well as the eighth highest grossing film of 2002. Even "MIB 3" in 2012 did fairly well given that it was sandwiched directly between "The Avengers" and "The Dark Knight Rises" that summer. All three of these movies opened in the $50 million range. Adjusted for ticket price inflation, that equates to an opening of $100.2 million for "Men in Black," $80.8 million for "Men in Black II" and $61.8 million for "MIB 3." If we look at final domestic totals when adjusted for ticket price inflation, "Men in Black" did $492.1 million ($250.7 million unadjusted), "Men in Black II" did $295.3 million ($190.4 million unadjusted) and "MIB 3" did $199.2 million ($179.0 million unadjusted). So for "Men in Black International" to open to $30.0 million, that hurts. As far as final totals go, even if "International" winds up with a similar multiplier as "MIB 3," it's looking at a final total of $96.1 million. Realistically, though, a final total in the $65-75 million range seems more likely, given the competition coming up and the muted reaction.

With a $110 million budget for "International," it could manage to sneak in a profit depending on how it does, uh... internationally, but this is not a win for Sony. They're just lucky they didn't spend quite as much as the respective studios for "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" or "Dark Phoenix" did. Now what went wrong here? Well, the first thing we have to look at here is how strong the fan base really is for Men in Black in 2019. Yes, the first movie is seen as a classic by many, but the second and third films, despite performing well at the box office, weren't exactly the most positively received movies. For any franchise, if you make two low quality sequels in a row after making a first film that people loved, they're not going to be quite as excited for your fourth movie, especially if there's 10 years between the second and third movie and seven years between the third and the fourth movie. The next problem here is the switch in cast. Sure, Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson are huge stars right now, but I'm willing to be the lack of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones turned off a lot of fans. Combine all of these factors together and throw the movie into an extremely crowded June, add in poor reviews and only so-so word of mouth, and you've got yourself a financial disaster.

If you're not a fan of my personal box office analysis there, well I'm sorry. I find it fun to talk about and with a movie as empty as this one, that's pretty much the only thing there is to talk about. Now when I said earlier that I don't think this movie is quite as bad as the 24 percent Rotten Tomatoes score seems to suggest, allow me to elaborate on that. With the way the black and white system for Rotten Tomatoes works, a 24 percent means that means that 76 percent of Rotten Tomatoes certified critics who reviewed this movie gave it a negative review. That doesn't mean all of them thought it was the worst movie of the year. In fact, all 76 percent of them could've said this movie is slightly below average and that would've given it an exact same score as a movie wherein 76 percent of critics said it was the worst movie ever made. So you have to learn to read between the lines there. Personally I haven't heard a whole ton of hate surrounding this movie. I've just heard a lot of people claiming that there's not much substance. In that case, I agree. This is a watchable film. Compared to "Dark Phoenix," it's practically a masterpiece. I just had a hard to connecting to it in very many ways, thus it ends up as a movie that's serviceable as background noise at best.

If I'm getting into specifics, this is the point of the review where I'm supposed to compare it directly to the first three films, explaining what those movies did right or wrong and applying it to this one. Truth be told, I've never seen the second or third movie. I have seen the first movie. In fact, I own it. It's a great movie. But it's been a while since I've actually thrown it in and watched it. Now I could've done my homework and re-watched the first movie while watching the second and third movie as well, but given that this was a spin-off with new characters, I didn't necessarily have a huge motivation to do so. Even though I do like and own the first movie, I don't have as strong of an emotional connection to this franchise as a whole compared to what some people do. So I decided that I would go into "International" without catching up on anything and see what happens. I loved Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson in "Thor: Ragnarok." At the very least I was hoping that they would carry the movie and make it a fun adventure with their already strong on-screen chemistry. We even had Liam Neeson in the movie as the MIB London director. With director F. Gary Gray ("The Fate of the Furious," "Straight Outta Compton"), this should've at least been competent.

While I'm confident in my deep dive into what went wrong for the movie financially, I'm at a complete loss as to why the quality of the film is so low. You have a good director. You have great lead stars all trying their best. You have a spin-off film that opens up a whole new section of this universe, giving you the creative freedom to do whatever it is that you want. Yet the final result is just nothing. That leads me to the screenplay, which was written by the duo of Matt Holloway and Art Marcum. Those two haven't done a whole lot, but they were partially responsible for the screenplay of "Iron Man." They also wrote "Transformers: The Last Knight," which is a significant stain on their record, but in their defense that was one of the more inoffensive Michael Bay Transformers movies. And Michael Bay was the big problem there, not the screenplay. So if I told you the writers of "Iron Man" teamed up with the director of "Straight Outta Compton" and "The Fate of the Furious" to make a Men in Black movie that starred Liam Neeson, Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, that should be enough to get you excited, right? But I guess this is a situation where a lot of talent collaborated to make a lot of nothing. Sometimes that happens.

As one might expect from Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, both of them do a great job in this film. Chris Hemsworth is having a lot of fun as the more experienced agent. He was also given the freedom to be his usual, goofy self, which you saw showcased heavily in "Thor: Ragnarok." If you listen to off screen interviews with him, he's genuinely a hilarious guy, so I always love seeing him in movie roles where he's given the freedom to relax and be himself. That helped the movie. With Tessa Thompson, she does her absolute best at being the strong female character in the film. She had an experience when she was young where this is what she wanted. She ends up finding their secret organization. She ends up playing a key role in completing this mission. And it works. In a franchise titled MEN in Black, a woman coming in and being co-lead works in a very natural way. They don't try to force progressive themes down your throat. They even make fun of the fact that the name is outdated, but 22 years into the franchise you can't re-brand the name. Not without it feeling weird. They humorously play it off and the self-awareness of that was acceptable in my books. So yeah, overall these two lead characters are great on their own and work great as a team.

I guess the thing that fails here is the mission that they go on. These boring, silent aliens are up to no good. They're trying to track down this extremely dangerous weapon for their big alien organization called the Hive so that they can destroy the world. If that sounds generic, it's because it is. None of these aliens are interesting. The journey to stop them isn't fun and exciting. The threat posed doesn't make you feel like there's really any sense of danger. It just feels like when this screenplay was written, for some reason they decided to settle with the most basic alien plot they could come up with. Even though the director has done great movies, he wasn't able to take this screenplay and do anything interesting with it. I suppose they probably thought they were being somewhat clever when they added in the side plot of their being someone in MIB London that was a secret mole, but given how few characters in this organization that we were actually introduced to, you know exactly who it is the second that plot element is suggested. So yeah, this whole thing is just bland and lacking any energy at all, which is really baffling. Even though they tried, there's nothing Chris Hemsworth or Tessa Thompson could do to save this. My grade for "Men in Black International" is a 6/10.

Christopher Nolan Ranked

Following the release of "Dunkirk" in July 2017, I was sparked with the desire to rank Christopher Nolan's films. I had been so negative towards Nolan with his recent few films that I wanted to throw in some positivity to the mix. I didn't like the idea that I was being labeled as a Nolan hater. Perhaps that was a title I kinda deserved after railing hard in my "Dunkirk" review on Nolan fanboys who worship the ground he walks on and will never accept the fact that he's capable of making anything less than a masterpiece. While I stand by my statements there of being annoyed with said fans who have that mindset, the man has also made some of my all-time favorite films, which is why I wanted to figure out a way to throw in some positive vibes towards Nolan. When I was brainstorming how to do that, I somehow noticed that "Dunkirk" was his 10th movie. That's perfect timing for a ranking of his films because 10 is the magic number when it comes to these lists. Since making that decision to do this, I've put a lot of time and effort into figuring out exactly how I would rank these movies. After what ended up being two years of this, I decided that the announcement of his 11th film, titled "Tenet," coming in Summer 2020, was as good of a time as any to get this out. So here we are.

10- Dunkirk

In order to get to the good movies that I'm excited to praise, especially since I haven't talked about many of them on this blog, we have to first wade through a few of the more disappointing entries from Nolan. Given how harsh I was on "Dunkirk" in 2017, it should come as no surprise that this is on the bottom of the list. It's the easiest decision I had to make when putting this list together. A Nolan film about the battle of Dunkirk was one that sounded really interesting. I ended up doing myself a disservice by purposely not researching this event because I wanted the movie to teach me about what happened. As it turns out, Nolan made this movie with the expectation that his audience knew all of those details because this gave zero historical context. Instead, it was a war movie that showcased what it was like to be an average Joe soldier during these events. And that was a fascinating concept that worked really well... for about 20 minutes. After that, the lack of a central protagonist to follow, the lack of a story arc, and the lack of historical context made for a really boring movie that I had a hard time attaching myself to. In a strange turn of events, Hollywood ended up giving me the "Dunkirk" movie I wanted later that year. It's called "Darkest Hour" and I loved it.

9- Interstellar

Perhaps the most impressive thing about "Interstellar," in my opinion, is that Nolan managed to create arguably one of the most divisive movies ever. By that I mean that this wasn't just a polarizing film with a lot of love and a lot of hate. It was that plus about every opinion in between. Like, seriously. Put five random people in a room and I can almost guarantee that they will have five drastically different opinions. I find that astounding. As far as my personal opinion, I often have to remind myself that I really enjoyed this movie for about two-thirds of it. I have found it real easy to just rant about how awful it is and throw the whole thing in the trash. But no, I thought the first two acts of the film were excellent and had a lot of solid emotion. It's when Matt Damon shows up that the movie falls off a cliff. It's certainly not Matt Damon's fault. I actually loved his character so much that I would've preferred we follow him instead. But then he basically committed suicide and our main characters went into a black hole. When they went into said black hole, so did the quality of the movie. I don't have room in this paragraph to elaborate on all of the details, but I can touch on them later if you want me to. Short version is that Nolan tried to make this a modern "2001: A Space Odyssey" and failed.

8- The Dark Knight Rises

"The Dark Knight Rises" was probably one of the most anticipated movies in the history of... ever. Following "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight," the hype behind this final chapter was insane and I totally got caught up in that. If you go dig through the archives of this blog and find my initial thoughts, I believe I praised this to the high heavens and included it as one of my top movies of 2012. But in the seven years since, my opinion of this movie has slowly faded downwards. I re-watched the entire Dark Knight trilogy two weeks ago and "The Dark Knight Rises" had a hard time capturing my attention. Now I don't want to call this a bad movie, but I will say that this is a movie where Bane tricks the entire police force of Gotham into one tunnel and then reigns in anarchy while Batman doesn't really show up in his own movie until the third act. He's depressed Bruce Wayne for the first act and trapped in a pit for the second act. There's also so many plot holes in the narrative that the excuse of "because I'm Batman" isn't quite good enough to resolve all of them for me. In researching this movie's production, Nolan didn't initially want to make this movie, thus in hindsight this almost feels more like a contractual obligation rather than a thoughtfully planned out finale.

7- The Prestige

Magic is a fascinating thing. The appeal of it is witnessing what appears to be a feat pulled off that is physically impossible. In reality it's mostly just misdirection or a slight of hand. The reason why it's often said that a magician never reveals his tricks is that when you realize what the magician actually did, it often becomes less impressive. Thus is the case for me with "The Prestige." It's one of Nolan's more crazy and twisted films, thus it takes you on a bizarre journey that's rather dark and emotional, but when the movie reveals its secrets, it's really not that impressive. It's a movie that I've tried my hardest to love over the years as I've wanted to understand why everyone thinks this is so great, but a re-watch last week forced me to resign those feelings and finally admit to myself that I think this is an extremely overrated film. If you untwist the movie, the plot isn't that engaging. The motivations of our two main characters are really hard for me to understand and certain decisions made seem so baffling and unrealistic, which is hard for me considering how dark and grounded in reality the tone of the movie is. On that note, the fantasy/sci-fi elements stick out like a sore thumb. I know I'm going to hear it from the angry masses on this one, but so be it. It's not bad by any means. It's just overrated.

6- Following

If there's one Nolan film you haven't seen, I'm willing to bet that this is the one. This was his very first film. And it's not one that broke out or got people's attention. It was a very small film that only made $48,482 domestically and just over $240,000 worldwide. Yet it was also only made for a very minuscule $6,000. So yeah, not many people saw this initially. It's one that people have come back to once they were introduced to Nolan with some of his later films. Yet even then, when comparing IMDb votes or reviews counted on Rotten Tomatoes, this is arguably one that not many people have seen. If you are one who hasn't seen it, I'd strongly recommend you find a copy somehow and give it a watch. The movie is far from perfect. It feels very raw and unrefined, like Nolan was experimenting with his craft, but didn't quite have things nailed down. But it's fascinating to see the movie that set the groundwork for everything he would do later in his career. It was released in 1999, but it's a black and white neo-noir thriller that feels like it was made in the 70's. It's about a guy who likes following people in a very "Rear Window" sort of way, yet that gets him into quite a bit of trouble. It's a little more broken and twisted than it needs to be for this genre, but it's still a fun watch.

5- Insomnia

This is the point of this list where the quality skyrockets. While the first five are various levels of disappointing or not super impressive, the final five on this list are Nolan's masterpieces. And we begin the high praise with the curious case of "Insomnia," which is ranked by both IMDb users and the Rotten Tomatoes audience section as Nolan's worst film. My personal theory as to why that's the case is that this is Nolan's most normal film. Usually when you put on a Nolan film, you expect a twisted plot or an unconventional narrative structure with perhaps some super dark themes. This does not follow that. It's a normal crime thriller and that's why I think a lot of hardcore Nolan fans just don't connect to this normal movie. But when judged not as a Nolan film, but as a crime thriller, this is one of the best there is from that genre. Al Pacino goes up to a town in Alaska to solve a murder case when he ends up playing this mind game with Robin Williams, who also takes advantage of Pacino's lack of sleep due to it not getting dark in Alaska. It's a powerfully acted, intense thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat for the entire run time. Given how much I love crime thrillers, this one really speaks to me as a movie from that genre that simply does everything right. 

4- Batman Begins

And this is where Nolan became a household name. Yes, he had his fans after "Memento" and "Insomnia," but giving him the keys to the car for the Batman franchise not only completely revived the Batman franchise that was pretty much dead after "Batman and Robin," but it helped pioneer the modern superhero era and put DC Comics back on the board. Batman himself is often portrayed as a very troubled, conflicted character, which is why Nolan taking over the franchise was a match made in heaven with his dark, gritty, realistic style. It's a movie that transcends the superhero genre by being an excellent character study on someone who has experienced a traumatic past, yet is able to face his fears and use all of his awful experiences to his advantage by becoming the best version of himself. Unlike some other origin stories, you're not just sitting around waiting for Bruce Wayne to become Batman so you can see some entertaining action sequences. You become deeply invested in his journey thanks to some profound themes and beautiful story arcs. The action is just the frosting on the cake. That's why the movie in my eyes is the gold standard for origin stories. It's probably the best pure Batman movie given that "The Dark Knight" is more of a Joker movie.

3- Memento

When it comes to movies with non-linear narratives or twisted themes I often like to ask myself what the movie would look like if it was untwisted and linear. Along with that, the other thing I like to do is ask why the movie decided to go with an unconventional structure so I can fall in love with the movie itself rather than just being entertained by a gimmick. When it comes to "Memento," this is a non-linear, twisted narrative that absolutely blows my mind. If we untwist "Memento," what we have is a dark, crime thriller about a man trying to figure out who killed his wife after suffering a traumatic accident that left him with no short term memory. All he has to help him are notes that he left himself. So yeah, if told in a linear way, this is still a great movie. But the movie is actually told backwards, starting from the end and progressing towards the beginning. What makes this much more than a gimmick is that this puts the audience into the shoes of this man who has lost his short term memory. We wake up with him having no idea what's going on. Like him, all we have to go by is the notes he's left. Thus as the movie progresses, we slowly learn what's going on as he is learning what's going on. It's one of the most creative and brilliant movies I've seen. 

2- The Dark Knight

It feels gross to have a list where "The Dark Knight" is eligible and not have it at No. 1. Like "Batman Begins" before it, it's a movie that transcends the superhero genre as it becomes an intense psychological thriller that stands on its own as one of the greatest films ever made, not just the best comic book or superhero movie. The themes here are so deep and the character arcs so fascinating, all this held up by one of the greatest performances ever in a comic book film with Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker. Did Heath Ledger win the Oscar because he died prior to the film's release? Probably. I mean, the Academy hates this genre and didn't even nominate it for best picture despite it being head and shoulders above the competition in terms of quality. Despite that, Heath Ledger certainly deserved that win. There's also a lot of performances around him that are nearly equally as good. Now my personal experience with this movie is too long to include in one short paragraph, but the very short version is that I didn't immediately gravitate towards this when I first watched it. But as my love for films grew, so did my love for this movie. There's only one small nitpick that caused me to put this at No. 2. Rachel. I didn't like what they did with her character. 

1- Inception

And then there was one. It was honestly a tough choice between this and "The Dark Knight." Once I had the idea to create this list, I spent weeks and months stressing over which one I was going to put at No. 1. "Inception" won out by the very slightest of margins. It's a movie that has become deeply ingrained into our culture. And for great reason. I don't put this at No. 1 just because of the cultural significance. It blew my mind the very first time I saw it and continues to this day to be one of the most entertaining and rewatchable films. After my second theatrical viewing, my friends and I sat down at a Taco Bell and spent hours talking about the movie, mainly just talking about what the heck we just watched. When I rewatched it last week, I was glued to the screen and couldn't turn away. And it's a movie that can still be talked about and discussed without having a clear consensus on what everything means. Because of that, it's a gift that keeps on giving. Each viewing is a new experience. I mean, have you ever heard the wedding ring theory? Exactly. And when it comes to Nolan's films, this feels like the accumulation of everything he worked towards. He spent years honing his craft and in 2010 he finally created his perfect masterpiece that gives you everything you expect from him.

Dark Phoenix Review

The X-Men franchise has been quite the rocky ride for me. I'm excited to get into the very specific details of that in the near future when I rank all of the X-Men movies. While I've seen a lot of people doing that right now, you're going to have to wait a bit for my list because I'm going to give "The New Mutants" a chance to come out first. At the very least I'll wait until we have official word on what Disney is planning on doing with that. But nevertheless, with the X-Men franchise, I've not been as madly in love with some of the earlier films that I'm supposed to love and I don't hate some of the middle films that I'm supposed to hate. In regards to the more recent films, "Logan" was a masterpiece, "Days of Future Past" was a lot of fun, the Deadpool movies are a romp, but "Apocalypse" felt very empty. It had some good character introductions, but overall it was yet another one of those movies where the big baddie decides to destroy the world and the heroes have to stop him. I was bored with the concept and unimpressed with the execution. Yet this is where we pick up from in this increasingly confusing timeline? Yikes! Forgive me for not being excited. In fact, it was "Apocalypse," not "Origins Wolverine" or "The Last Stand," that was my least favorite X-Men movie.

Note the word "was" in that last sentence, though. Past tense. Because "Apocalypse" is no longer my least favorite. That title now belongs to "Dark Phoenix." Truth be told, I was never on board with this movie. After the boring and lifeless "Apocalypse," the next big idea is to do the Dark Phoenix saga... AGAIN? And we're letting the guy who helped write "The Last Stand" come and direct "Dark Phoenix" in his feature-length directorial debut? And this is a... good idea? OK, fine. I like a good redemption arc. James Mangold directed "The Wolverine," and despite less than stellar reaction to that, Fox let him come back to do "Logan," where he became a household name. And in defense of Simon Kinberg, he's been a writer and producer on most of the X-Men movies, good and bad, so it's not like "The Last Stand" was the only thing he did. And as I've said, I like "The Last Stand" more than the internet tells me that I should. But still. Repeating the exact same story arc did not seem like the right direction to take this new franchise. We just spent the last three movies setting up this new generation of X-Men characters. Lets be unique and creative. Do something different. Especially because these are great actors involved that deserve something better.

So yeah, problem one here is the concept of this movie. I didn't like it. Then we have the production nightmare. This movie was supposed to come out November 2018. But then the postponed it to February 2019. When they released their very first trailer, with the date saying February 2019, the very next day the switched the release date again. This time to the current date in June. Right in the middle of the busiest part of the summer. Because that was a good idea. Reshoots were one reason to postpone it. Another reason was to let "Alita: Battle Angel" have the February release date so that it didn't have to compete with the likes of "Bumblebee" and "Aquaman" in December. In the midst of all this drama, the deal with Disney buying Fox becomes official, which sucks even more life out of the project because everyone knows Disney is just going to throw everything in the trash and start over. So why care? To add to this, I wasn't even impressed with any of the trailers. It looked like there was nothing here. All this said, is anyone surprised that this opened to a franchise low $32 million and might make less money overall domestically than many X-Men movies did in their opening weekend? Not good for a movie with a $200 million price tag with its production budget alone.

In regards to my opinion of the movie after finally seeing it, I'd say this is a situation where I was right from day one. It's exactly what I thought it was going to be. Now you may say that I was never willing to give this movie a chance. And you might have a point there. In my defense, though, the movie never gave me a reason for me to be excited. Also, just over two weeks ago, I went into "Aladdin" in a very bitter mood ready to nitpick at everything and found myself completely swept off my feet with the Disney magic. So even though I was never excited for "Dark Phoenix" and never really had the idea in my mind that this could be good, especially with the Rotten Tomatoes score in the cellar at 22 percent, I drove to the theater, I purchased a ticket to see this and I sat down in my screening. I even endured all the people around me loudly chomping on their popcorn and rustling their candy wrappers. Thus I gave this movie a chance. It had every opportunity to prove me wrong. I could've been like the food critic in "Ratatouille" when he tastes the meal at the end that unexpectedly causes him to rave about this place. But that did not happen. This angry, bitter critic begrudgingly walked into this theater and was treated to a plate of smelly cow manure.

I almost don't even know where to begin with this. When the whole thing feels like a giant mess, it's sometimes hard to hone in on just a few things that you think were wrong. So let's start with what I think might be the root of the problem. The idea behind this. In terms of the Dark Phoenix saga, the most interesting element is that Jean Grey slowly becomes more powerful and begins to lose control. The gradual rise to her becoming this evil, dark presence due to circumstances beyond her control makes for a fascinating character, especially with her previously being one of the more likable heroes. But that's not the route they go in this "Dark Phoenix" movie, not even after they started setting that up in "Apocalypse." Instead, the group of them flies to space after a team of astronauts get into serious trouble with a wreck in space. In the midst of this rescue mission, Jean Grey sucks up a solar flare and instantaneously becomes a Super Saiyan version of herself that she can't control. That's what you call the writers not being patient enough to properly set up this character. Then after some random bursts of power, she becomes upset with Charles Xavier because it turns out he purposely scrambled her memories to make her forget about her childhood trauma. I mean... what?

If Simon Kinberg was trying to redeem himself for "The Last Stand," this was a really strange way of going about it. Now it's been several years since I've seen "The Last Stand." I'll re-watch it soon before I do my rankings. But from what I can recall, any issues the movie had didn't stem from Jean Grey herself. They did a solid job setting up her character in the first two movies, which resulted in a good deal of emotional investment in her when she went rogue in the third film. But the way they took this here in "Dark Phoenix" just didn't lend itself to any emotional investment. Sophie Turner's Jean Grey was introduced in "Apocalypse," a movie that didn't carry any emotional weight, then immediately she's thrown into becoming Dark Phoenix because Simon Kinberg wanted to happen rather than it being a natural progression for her character. If they HAD to redo this specific story arc, I think it would've made more sense for them to give it more time rather than rushing right into it so soon after introducing their new Jean Grey. It makes me feel bad for Sophie Turner because she's a great young actress and this could've been a huge boost for her career, but despite her best efforts, they threw her character right into the trash can, giving her absolutely nothing to work with.

So yeah, when the core of your movie is a complete non-starter, it's really hard to care about anything that happens as things go along. Unfortunately these poor writing choices bled into every other part of the movie as well. For as much as I hate on "Apocalypse," I do remember my one praise was that they set up some interesting new X-Men characters, or rather some old characters with new actors playing them. But then they gave none of them anything to do in this sequel. And our returning characters from "First Class" and "Days of Future Past" also felt like they were just there for a paycheck. I briefly touched on Charles Xavier, but let me expand. He's supposed to be this great leader and perfect mentor. But choices he makes in this movie, in the present and via flashbacks, do not fit with his character at all. And maybe "Apocalypse" set up something that I forgot about, but I also had a hard time figuring out why Beast and Mystique were so against him in this movie even before they learned what he did to Jean Grey. I love Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult, and I loved their character in previous movies, but they just felt completely useless and unlikable in this movie. It also doesn't help that J-Law seems to have given up on this character years ago.

Moving on to our newer characters, I honestly forgot that Ty Sheridan's Cyclops was already in love with Jean Grey at this point. Yeah, I know that's how it's supposed to be with these two, but I guess their romance in "Apocalypse" wasn't convincing enough for me to remember and they certainly have no chemistry in this movie. I do remember Storm was a villain turned hero in "Apocalypse." They gave her something to do in that movie, even though it felt a bit weird. In this movie, she's there to create some ice in a few sequences. Other than that, she's mostly forgotten about. Nightcrawler was also one who I forgot was introduced. He has a few more things to do than Storm, namely teleport people from place to place, but he also wasn't super interesting. We also bring back Quicksilver and Magneto, both of whom have been great in this new saga of X-Men movies. Quicksilver doesn't really get his moment to do his thing, though, which means they threw him in the trash. And Magneto is in this movie because of something that feels more like a contractual obligation. Fassbender does fantastic at playing him, as always, but he just didn't have much of an imposing presence. Thus none of the X-Men characters were very interesting in this movie.

And yeah, plot. That happens in this movie. Kind of. There wasn't really a strong cohesive story in this. Jean Grey sucks in the solar flare, spends a good portion of the middle section of the movie whining and complaining, then she just kinda shows up in places and plot happens with occasional action sequences that felt like they were also just happening. I was so bored and confused with the plot that either I dozed off in a few scenes or my mind was completely somewhere else. When I got back in focus, we were somewhere else in this thing they called a plot. I had to read Wikipedia page to connect a few dots. When I did, I got a solid sense that I didn't actually miss anything of importance because nothing in this movie is very useful. And speaking of not being very useful, Jessica Chastain is in this movie as this new character. But her and her croonies are the most annoying distraction in a movie that was already lacking focus. They served absolutely no purpose in the film as they really were only there as filler because apparently Simon Kinberg really wasn't having a lot of creative juices flow during his writing sessions as he felt the need to have a useless group of side characters provide unnecessary distractions in an already pointless film.

That's all I got here. It honestly does make me sad that Fox's X-Men franchise whimpers away like a dog with his tail between his legs. Even if "The New Mutants" ends up being a thing, that was always going to be its own separate spin-off thing. "Dark Phoenix" is the final film in this specific timeline. Instead of being a fitting conclusion for all of these characters, the whole thing makes me shake my head in disappointment. I want X-Men to work. When the movies are at their peak, they have some of the best characters and most interesting story arcs in all of comics. But Fox just never really had a grasp on what to do here and it feels like everyone on board here went into this final film knowing that Disney was about to take over, so there wasn't much motivation to even try. And their epic failure in driving this franchise into the ground is Disney's win. Had Fox been successful, Disney would have a tough choice in how to move forward. But with how badly "Dark Phoenix" has failed on every level, after the already disappointing "Apocalypse," Disney's decision has been made for them. Throw it in the trash and start over because continuing this story from where "Dark Phoenix" has left off would be cinematic suicide. It's that bad right now.  My grade for "Dark Phoenix" is a 4/10.

The Secret Life of Pets 2 Review

It's "Dark Phoenix" vs. "The Secret Life of Pets 2" at the box office this weekend and I'm throwing a bit of an audible at people by getting my review of the kids movie out first rather than jumping into our latest superhero movie from the extremely inconsistent X-Men franchise. Now when it comes to predicting box office totals, I've learned to trust in Illumination. They've been extremely consistent in putting out big hits even when no one expects it. They've now made nine movies prior to "The Secret Life of Pets 2," with the average domestic total of those nine being $272 million. Looking specifically at their most recent six, that average goes up to $313 million, with the lowest grossing of the bunch being "Despicable Me 3" with $264 million. That consistent stream of success is pretty much unparalleled at the moment. Yeah, Pixar has their movies like "Incredibles 2" and "Finding Dory" that make all the money in the world, but then they have misses like "The Good Dinosaur" and "Cars 3" mixed in to balance things out to the point that the average of their last six films only barely beats Illumination with $323 million. Meanwhile, Walt Disney Animation Studios' last six films average out to $267 million, which is significantly lower than the Illumination average.

I bring these numbers up for two reasons. First, I find the box office numbers fascinating and I find it interesting that Illumination is keeping up with Disney and Pixar financially, while even doing better in certain aspects. Maybe there are a few of you out there that would be interested, too. Second, out of all the success that Illumination has had, especially with their "Despicable Me" franchise, their biggest film domestically is "The Secret Life of Pets," which beat out "Despicable Me 2" by a mere $323,065. Worldwide "Minions" is their biggest film by a long shot as that made $1.159 billion, but here domestically I think it's crazy how huge "The Secret Life of Pets" was. When I reviewed that movie, I told people to skip it in theaters and save it for DVD because there were a lot better options for families at the time. Apparently no listened to me. Now as for the financial prospects for this sequel, Universal may have picked an awful release date for their latest Illumination film as it's sandwiched directly between "Aladdin" and "Toy Story 4," the former of which is outperforming expectations by a long shot, while the latter of which broke Fandango pre-sale records for an animated film. Thus if "The Secret Life of Pets 2" breaks Illumination's streak of success... good.

In regards to "The Secret Life of Pets," I referenced my review of it in the previous paragraph of it simply because I just barely went back and re-read that review. Because I couldn't remember the specifics of why I didn't like it. That's a problem in my book. I watched it. I didn't like it. I reviewed it. Then it completely left my mind as this thing that's only useful to distract your kids when you need it to. So I had to remind myself before going into the second one that I didn't like it because it was such a huge rip-off of "Toy Story" that I was rather annoyed. Yeah, sure, your 5-year-old isn't going to care about that. But I did. And it was more than just a rip-off in concept, being a movie about what your pets do when you're gone. The whole plot was nearly beat for beat to "Toy Story," but with pets instead of kids. Thus while the movie was technically an original film in terms of it not being a sequel or based off previous material, it was one of the most unoriginal and lazy films I've seen. So I obviously didn't have much hope for this sequel, but maybe they could pull it off? Their advertising campaign was fairly clever as they released a whole bunch of character trailers that were pretty funny. And a movie about pets should be cute enough to give a pass, so maybe this could be a better than the first?

My biggest problem going in, though, is that I had no idea what the plot of this movie was going to be. Yeah, the little two to three minute gags with all the various characters were pretty funny. I was especially amused by the idea of Harrison Ford as a grumpy old farm dog. But what was this movie? How are they going to connect everything they've been selling into a cohesive plot? Because certainly they weren't going to release a giant pile of nothing, right? Animal gags are funny, but only to a certain extent. I need there to be a movie to go along with my movie or else I would just stay home and watch cat videos on YouTube for free. I just assumed that they were hiding the plot because they thought focusing on funny animal gags would be a good way to sell their movie. Given how huge the first movie was, focusing heavily on all the likable characters might not be such a bad idea. But yet as I sat there in a Friday afternoon matinee show, purposely buying a ticket at a time where there might be plenty of kids there with me so that I can gauge their reaction, I became rather shocked as I slowly started to witness that there was no movie to this movie. All of those character trailers that I didn't think had much plot were the plot. I kept waiting for the movie to begin. But it never did.

Because of this, I almost don't know what to say here. So let me tell you all the directions this does go. Our main dog Max narrates the intro, telling us that his owner got married and have a child. He hates kids, but he learns to love HIS kid. One day, the five of them (three humans and two pets - the other dog being Duke, the Buzz Lightyear of the first movie), go on a trip to an uncle's place, who owns a ranch out in the middle of nowhere. Before the trip, Max leaves his favorite toy with an energetic female dog named Gidget, who later loses it in an apartment full of creepy cats owned by the resident old cat lady. So Gidget gets help from her other cat friend who teaches her how to be a cat. In the meantime, Snowball the bunny, voiced by Kevin Hart, thinks he's a superhero because his owner dresses him up like a superhero. While Gidget is training to be a cat, another cat named Daisy comes in to find Snowball because there is an evil circus dude who has trapped a baby tiger. Daisy and Snowball go off to save the tiger. And of course we jump back plenty of times to Max and Duke's adventures with all the new animals on the ranch. All these storylines eventually connect together, but until then it's just a bunch of random happenings to all of the pets with no real focus.

To the first movie's credit, even though the storyline was a huge rip-off of "Toy Story" ripoff, at least it had a story. There's a cohesive direction that the plot takes that your kids can follow and enjoy for some harmless fun. Because, again, they're not going to care about an unoriginal plot. But the fact that this sequel had nothing to it made it so that there was nothing for me to latch onto and care about. There wasn't even much of a message to this movie outside a forced on bit at the end with Max telling us that life takes us in many unexpected directions and we have to be ready for it. Thus I was sitting here watching this movie and the biggest thing that came to me was what am I doing here? Why did I go see this movie? I had to argue with myself a bit, reminded myself that reviewing movies is what I do. And sometimes I enjoy watching all the kids movies so that I can give recommendations to my siblings as to which movies their kids would love the most. But outside that, would anyone care if I skipped this one? If I would've walked out of the theater and not reviewed this movie, would there be anyone disappointed that I didn't write a review for "The Secret Life of Pets 2"? Now that the deed is done and the review is being written, is anyone even going to read this?

I suppose I could come up with a few more reasons as to why watching this thing was worth my time. I need more candidates for my worst of the year list in January. I do like ranking movies from the major animation studios. I've done so with Pixar and Disney. I'm planning on ranking DreamWorks and Studio Ghibili sometime soon. So maybe once Illumination has a big enough catalog of films and I've ranked all the others, I might do so with them? But yeah, mostly this is me grasping at straws. I guess deep down I was hoping for a cute movie about pets because the concept is good enough. But given that I didn't enjoy the first movie, I'm not at all surprised that I didn't enjoy the second movie. There's just nothing to this. There's good voice work. Good characters. Some individual moments that were funny. Harrison Ford was a romp. But as a movie, there's not much of a movie to this movie. If your kids loved the first movie, they'll be entertained by this sequel. And a gag-filled movie with an ADD plot can be beneficial in distracting kids when you need it. But if you're going to spend money for a family trip to the theater, go see "Aladdin," "Toy Story 4" or "The Lion King." Let Disney take all your money. Save this one for DVD or Netflix. My grade for "The Secret Life of Pets 2" is a 5/10.