Suicide Squad Review

My most anticipated movie of the year has finally arrived! And it has arrived with an onslaught of horrific reviews that almost crushed me. As I type this, it currently holds a 27 percent on everyone's favorite review aggregator site, Rotten Tomatoes. For the record, I am a fan of Rotten Tomatoes. I think it's a great site that gives an honest consensus of professional critics around the web. As someone who loves reviewing movies, I would love to become big enough one day for my opinion to be added to the many great critics whose opinions get considered on that site. I laugh at this petition that Suicide Squad fans have started to take down the site due to bad reviews. It's not the site's fault. Let's point the finger of blame at the right source. That said, even though I like looking at Rotten Tomatoes, there are a lot of times where I disagree with the consensus. Take this summer for example. Now You See Me 2: 33 percent. Ninja Turtles 2: 38 percent. The Legend of Tarzan: 35 percent. Nerve: 57 percent. Jason Bourne: 57 percent. That's five "rotten" movies that I personally gave good reviews to. Let's add another one why don't we? Because, yes, I enjoyed Suicide Squad. So allow me to defend this DC success that's been unfairly trashed.

Before I get into Suicide Squad, though, I think it's important for me to remind you of my position on these DC and Marvel superhero films. First of all I will reiterate that this Marvel vs. DC war is really dumb. I hate the idea that people think you need to choose one or the other. Why can't I like both? But if you put a gun to my head and force me to pick either Marvel or DC, I will first argue with your logic because I don't think I should be forced to pick one, and then before you pull the trigger, I will pick DC. That might shock some, but it's true. I've been more attached to the characters and stories from the DC comics growing up than I have the Marvel comics. Batman and Superman are two major reasons behind that. I love the first two Christopher Reeve superman movies. I enjoy most of the Batman movies. The Dark Knight trilogy specifically is phenomenal. But I also grew up watching a lot of DC cartoons on TV with Batman, Superman, Batman Beyond, Justice League, etc. Outside Spider-Man, Marvel didn't have as big of an impact on my childhood and it was DC that ruled my life for many, many years. Obviously it's been a different story as of recently. When we specifically compare the Marvel Cinematic Universe to the DC Cinematic Universe, it's been Marvel that has dominated. But DC's ruled TV, so it's not like they're completely out of the game.

Let's talk about that DC Cinematic Universe real quick. They've only had two movies so far, but it's been a rough start. I absolutely hated Man of Steel with an angry, fiery passion. But it's not because I'm a DC hater. It's because I'm a DC lover and I hated the way they portrayed Superman in that movie and I thought the movie itself was also pretty cruddy. I also wasn't a fan of Batman v. Superman either. But it's not because I'm a DC hater. In this instance it was because they tried to do way too much. They shoved at least three movie's worth of content into that one movie because they didn't want to spend several years trying to catch up to Marvel. In the process, they only gave us eight minutes of Batman fighting Superman, which was the freaking title of the movie. And that ended because their mothers have the same name and thus they were besties ever since. I do hear the Ultimate Edition of the movie improves the movie, but I've not been able to get my hands on a copy and I don't want to pay the money to buy it just to see, so I can't judge. What I will say about Batman v. Superman is that I loved the individual elements of the movie and it gave me hope for the future of the DC Cinematic Universe.

Note the director of both these movies. Zack Snyder. I've concluded a while ago that perhaps it's not a DC problem we have or a Warner Bros. problem. Maybe it's a Zack Snyder problem. I'm sure the man is an amazing individual, but I just haven't really enjoyed his movies. I've been waiting for him to prove otherwise, but he has yet to do so. The first benefit of Suicide Squad is that it is not Zack Snyder. It's David Ayer. He's a director I do like. Two years ago he made a fantastic movie called Fury that I think is really underrated. He also directed End of Watch and wrote and co-produced Training Day, two movies I haven't seen but have heard great things. So I was excited to see what he could bring to the table as a writer and director of Suicide Squad. They also had an excellent marketing campaign with several phenomenal trailers that had me stoked. Not to mention a great cast with some of my favorite actors, including, but not limited to, Margot Robbie, Jared Leto, and Will Smith playing Harley Quinn, Joker, and Deadshot. No way they can go wrong, right? Well, apparently some people think they went very wrong. But I'm not going that route. I'm going against the grain because I was thoroughly entertained with this movie. This isn't perfect, but there's a lot of things they did right.

I love myself a good villain. Recently I've been very particular with my villains because this is something that Marvel can't get right. If you are one that thinks Marvel can do no wrong right now, this is the exact question I'm going to probe you with. They've had a handful of decent villains, but they've also had a ton of forgettable villains and not too many truly great villains. So what makes a good villain? In my opinion a good villain is more than just someone who looks and/or sounds scary. They need to have a good backstory. They should be relatable. They need to have good motivations for what they are doing. It's nice if they actually have a good plan. Looking and/or sounding ominous is good frosting on the cake, but that's actually not a requirement for me. Some of the best villains are ones that look like normal human beings because they are often most relatable. It's also preferable if the villain isn't the type of villain that's been done a hundred times before or has a plan that's hasn't been attempted a hundred times before. But with good acting and good writing, that can sometimes be forgiven. If you analyze these qualifications, most of Marvel's villains fail. Loki may be the only one that passes the test. Suicide Squad has seven characters that at least pass the majority of these qualifications.

This is what I liked most about this movie. The idea of the suicide squad has always been one that I've loved. A team of villains organized by the slightly crazy Amanda Waller to fight another villain for the "good guys" is a fantastic premise. They did this on the TV show Arrow back when it was actually a good show and it's been done other times before that and it's a lot of fun. In many ways I like it better than having a team of heroes because you aren't sure who exactly you're supposed to be rooting for and you honestly don't know if one or more than one of them are going to betray the others. Because, after all, they are "bad guys." It's what they do! How do you get a team of villains to actually do what you want them to do? In this case you insert some sort of explosive device into their necks and threaten to blow them up if they don't do what you ask. And you give them incentives like freedom or reduced prison time if they cooperate. This is the premise here. I don't want to dive too deeply into the specifics of the plot because I respect the movie-going process and the trailers, despite there being like a hundred of them, did a good job of not spoiling the plot or the ending. But I loved this team. I loved the uncertainty with several of the characters. And I was entertained by the action.

Let's talk about the specifics with these villains. Headlining everything right now is Harley Quinn and the Joker. And for good reason. I love these two! Probably my favorite type of villain is one that is psychologically messed up for whatever reason, which is the case with both of them. We get more backstory for Harley Quinn and less backstory for the Joker, but the Joker is so insane that he makes up for us not knowing a ton about him. These two are the perfect on-screen psychotic couple. So much crazy chemistry between them. Margot Robbie is every bit as good as she's been hyped up to be and Jared Leto puts to rest any concerns there were of bringing this character back after Heath Ledger's legendary performance in The Dark Knight. It is worth noting that this is not the Joker's movie. He may not show up as much as you may like him to. But as long as you realize his role in this is most likely a tease for something coming up, then you should be fine. I would really love our solo Batman movie to focus on the Joker as the villain. I know it's been done a hundred times before, but Ben Affleck's Batman needs to face off against Jared Leto's Joker in an epic showdown. An official rumor is that we are getting a Harley Quinn spin-off movie and I'm 100 percent down for that, especially after Margot Robbie's performance in this movie.

We do have plenty of other villains to talk about. And I hope you are fine with me talking a lot about villains in a villain-centered movie. In addition to Harley Quinn and the Joker, our other great villain here is Will Smith's Deadshot. He's a crazy guy that's killed a lot of people, but he also has a daughter who loves him and he loves her. This father/daughter relationship is done so well. When I talk about motivation and backstory, it doesn't get much better than this. On top of that, Will Smith is such a boss as Deadshot and brings so much charisma to the character, much like he does in almost every other role he takes on. There's a reason he's one of the best a-list actors in the business right now. After these three, we have Jai Courtney's Captain Boomerang, Mr. Eko's Killer Croc, Jay Hernandez's Diablo, and Cara Delevingne's Enchantress. These four aren't on the same elite level as Harley Quinn, Joker, and Deadshot, but I'd say all of them are good villains for their own reasons. Yes, if you didn't catch it, Jai Courtney was boss. That may be a first. If you are confused about Mr. Eko, that's the actor's character in the TV show LOST. Please don't make me type the name Adewale Akinnuoye-Agabje twice. Mr. Eko is much easier. Out of these four, I think I liked Cara Delevingne most, but Jay Hernandez was close behind and the other two weren't bad either.

I won't spoil who the big villain is that our team is fighting. That was spoiled for me and it made me mad. But I actually enjoyed this villain for reasons I'm not getting into. Our officially suicide squad team is Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Boomerang, Diablo, and Killer Croc. The others are in the movie doing other things. And given that they are technically all villains, anything can happen. So if you have no idea who the main villain is, that's a good thing. Our main "good guys" in this movie are Amanda Waller played by Viola Davis, Rick Flag played by Joel Kinnaman, and Katana played by Karen Fukuhara. Out of these three, Amanda Waller is the most interesting of the bunch. She's the mastermind behind all of this and she's pretty dang good at being intimidating. And there's some things that her character does that make you question her motivates and make you wonder if she's really that much better than our main "bad guys." I liked that. The only true, pure good person in this movie is Katana. She's more of a side character, but she's fighting alongside our team and is super boss. But being that they spent so much time introducing her in Arrow only to literally do nothing with her, I'm glad they had her on in this movie fighting with the team because she's boss!

Concerns with the movie? Yes, I have them. But for me they are more nit-picky than major concerns. We did spend a lot of time setting up our team. But I enjoyed all of these set-ups. It's not like Batman v. Superman where we had over an hour of set-up because the movie tried to be three movies in one. This was more focused. Amanda Waller has an idea to get a team of villains together to solve a problem. They organize that team and go out to solve the problem, with a few obstacles along the way. That's a more focused movie. And it was an entertaining one with a whole ton of fun action sequences and great characters. The action wasn't super over-the-top and frustrating like in Man of Steel and it wasn't super rushed like our Batman and Superman fight in Batman v. Superman. There were moments in the movie where the editing felt off or a specific scene felt tacked on. I know there was a lot of re-shoots and I'm wondering if that may have been part of the problem. The soundtrack was also a bit too much at times. And you could argue that our main villain was a bit cliche. I want to dive into that last point, but I won't. There was no huge twist or jaw-dropping moment. You can call this a run-of-the-mill superhero movie, but it was one that I really enjoyed.

Yes, this is a long review. But it needed to be because I really enjoyed this movie and given that it's been getting so much crap from critics and others, I needed to make a stance. I look at the three movies from DC's cinematic universe and I see a lot of progress. Man of Steel was a disaster. Batman v. Superman was a little better, but overall another misstep. Suicide Squad was much better than both of those two, which proves that we are going in the right direction. I liked the lighter tone of this movie. There was plenty of humor in it as well as a lot of scenes that were simply fun and entertaining. DC started this universe thinking that they needed to do everything dark and depressing, which I wasn't a huge fan of in this instance, so I'm glad we got a movie that was simply light-hearted and fun. I loved our team dynamic. I counted ten good characters in this movie, at least three of which I could elevate to great. Most of these characters had great character moments and believable arcs. I love how this team gelled as a group and I really want to see most of them back in some form or another in this DC universe. No, this was not as phenomenal as I was initially anticipating it would be, but this is still a lot better than some are giving it credit for. I'm going to give Suicide Squad an 8/10.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople Review

It's been a summer stuffed full of attempted blockbusters, sequels, remakes, action movies, and all that fun stuff that summer offers. If I were to describe this particular summer in one word, that word would be underwhelming. There were so many movies that looked intriguing that just failed. And there were quite a few box office flops because of that. After all of this exposure to all of these huge films, many of which were disappointing, I was ready for something small and refreshing. So I took a trip out to a local indie movie theater that I love and was prepared to enjoy myself. I had several options, but I decided to check out one of the best-reviewed indie movies year, that being Hunt for the Wilderpeople. I didn't know much about this outside the fact that it boasted a 99 percent on Rotten Tomatoes out of 122 reviews. That's 121 positive reviews and only one negative review. Granted, Rotten Tomatoes isn't the end all, say all. Just this past month I enjoyed several movies that Rotten Tomatoes has labeled as rotten and wasn't a fan of a couple that were officially certified fresh. But when I see the big 99 in front of a movie on the site, that gets my attention and is enough to get me to the theaters. And do you know what? There's a reason why this has such a high score. It's rather fantastic!

So what is this movie exactly? Well, first off it's the fourth feature-length movie by director Taiki Waititi, who previously directed Eagle vs. Shark, Boy, and What We Do in the Shadows. If you've never heard of any of those, Marvel has tapped him to direct Thor: Ragnarok, which will hit theaters at the end of next year. Hunt for the Wilderpeople stars Jurassic Park's Sam Neill (Dr. Alan Grant) and essentially introduces us to 14-year-old Julian Dennison. Sam Neill plays a grumpy old man who is married to this loving lady who would probably be everyone's best friend. They live out in the country in New Zealand and decide to take in a foster kid named Ricky, who is a troubled kid that has been in and out of foster care due to him being abandoned by his mother and thus has committed all sorts of crimes because he really hasn't had a proper upbringing. Despite this, he connects very well with this lady and for the first time in his life feels at home. Due to a certain turn of events that I won't spoil, Ricky finds himself on a journey in the wilderness of New Zealand (they call it the bush) with Sam Neill's character, whose name is Hec. Thinking the situation is different than what it really is, a national manhunt is sent out to find these two as they wander through the bush.

As this movie was getting into the thick of things, I tried to think of what it reminded me of. Then it hit me. Chubby, eccentric kid wandering around the wilderness with a grumpy old man who has a surprising amount of depth to him under his rough surface? Up! This movie reminded me a quite a bit of Pixar's Up! Obviously Ricky is the exact opposite of a boy scout, but their personalities are the same and the old man in both movies are also quite similar. The specific plots are also very different and there's no talking animals in Hunt for the Wilderpeople, but the general premise is similar. And this movie is also similar in terms of humor, drama, and heart. So I think the Up comparison is a rather good one. And I of course mean that in a very positive way. If you liked Up then perhaps this is a movie worth checking out. Then maybe you'll scream at me and call me the craziest man on earth for coming up with the Up comparison because I literally came up with that on my own without hearing about it from any other person or critic. So maybe I'm just crazy. But if it gets your curiosity piqued, then it was worth it because regardless of how crazy I am, this is a phenomenal little film worth your attention.

Immediately in this you gain a strong attachment towards this kid. You feel bad for him because of his upbringing. You feel bad that the child protective services are so negative towards him. You jump for joy when he seems to finally fit in with a family. You feel for him when certain things happen early on in the movie. You're rooting for him as he goes on this adventure in the wilderness and you really hope things will work out. Major props to this kid Julian Dennison. Also major props to Sam Neill, who gives a phenomenal performance as the old man. He seems gruff and bitter on the outside, especially at the beginning, but you soon come to learn that there are many layers to this man that make a very well written character that you're also rooting for especially when several certain things happen to him. The chemistry between the kid and the old man is great. They start out the movie hating each other and are both quite annoyed that they are stuck with each other in the woods. There's a lot of honest tension due to things that happen early on. Then as they are forced to deal with each other, they create a believable bond and slowly work towards being good friends that are exactly what they other needed. At the heart of this movie is a phenomenal character piece with two characters that experience beautiful character arcs and it's just charming and wonderful to watch.

There's also a huge range of emotions in this movie. The movie is a comedy, a drama, and an adventure movie all in one. As far as comedy goes, I think we all love to laugh, but I'm picky with my modern-day comedies because a lot of them don't make me laugh. The humor is often tasteless, empty, or forced. Then sometimes the movies focus too much on the comedy and not enough on the story and the acting. In this case, though, Hunt for the Wilderpeople finds that balance. There's not a ton of gut-busting laughter, but there's a lot of good laughs and tons of chuckles throughout. And it was actually funny. And well-timed. And not forced. The focus also isn't on the comedy itself, which makes for a better comedy in my opinion. The focus here is on the drama. As I've explained, there's a good amount of drama throughout between our two main characters and what both are dealing with and how they're going to make it out of the sticky situation they find themselves in. There's several tense moments and lots of fun adventure. Some of the scenes get a little crazy towards the end, but I found it more fun as opposed to over-the-top. Is it pretty easy to guess how things are going to turn out? Sure. I wouldn't call this the most unpredictable movie. But they find a very good balance between all of these elements and thus they totally sell this premise.

In the end, if you are interested in taking a break from the huge summer blockbusters and want to settle down for a nice indie movies, I suggest you find this movie and give it a shot. People are always clamoring for original movies and are growing tired of all the sequels, remakes, and giant blockbusters. My claim is that they are already giving us those original movies, but people just don't go out and support them. Thus it's slightly hypocritical of us as a people because we beg Hollywood for more original movies, but when we are given them we don't go out and see them. Thus in the business of making movies, it makes sense to keep making the movies that earn the money. Thus the conundrum. With all of this said, my challenge for you is to go out and find Hunt for the Wilderpeople. It's the type of movie that deserves your support and I promise that you will enjoy it, because I think it's a movie that's accessible to all in terms of the content. It's a fun adventure between a young kid and an old man that is both hilarious, heart-wrenching, and mildly intense at parts. A well-rounded movie that will give you the feels. I'm not going to crown it as the best movie of the year, but I will say it's pretty great. I'm going to give Hunt for the Wilderpeople a 9/10.

Movie Preview: August 2016

The summer of the disappointing blockbusters continued in July as Star Trek Beyond, Ice Age: Collision Course, and Jason Bourne were the latest sequels to not live up to their predecessors in terms of both reviews and box office totals. Steven Spielberg experienced one of the worst outings of his career with The BFG, which only out-grossed Empire of the Sun and The Sugarland Express in terms of Spielberg-directed movies after adjusting for ticket-price inflation. Finally, the Ghostbusters remake performed decently in its first weekend, but bled pretty badly in its ensuing weekends. It wasn't all horrible, though. The Secret Life of Pets and The Legend of Tarzan both cruised past expectations, despite not being universally praised, and Finding Dory topped Captain America: Civil War to be the highest-grossing movie of the year. And horror won big with breakout performances from Lights Out and The Purge: Election Year. Now it's time to dive into our final month of the summer. August. Are the fortunes going to change? Not likely. August is usually the worst month of the summer and outside one or two titles, this month doesn't look super promising.

August 5th - 7th-

Taking the Guardians of the Galaxy slot this year is DC's highly anticipated Suicide Squad. Thanks to an incredibly strong and aggressive marketing campaign, Suicide Squad is essentially guaranteed to be the first August release ever to open north of $100 million, easily topping Guardians of the Galaxy's previous record of $94.3 million two years ago. The all-villain premise has many intrigued as does the all-star cast which is led by Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn and Jared Leto as the Joker. It's no secret, though, that DC hasn't had as smooth of a road as Marvel to say the least. They are in desperate need for a win here, but the Batman v. Superman comparisons are very strong. Both were highly anticipated. Both had huge opening weekends. Both had poisonous reviews from critics heading into the weekend. Batman v. Superman currently owns a 27 percent on Rotten Tomatoes while Suicide Squad currently sits at just over 30 percent. Batman v. Superman ended up getting mixed reviews from the fans as well which led to it dropping like a rock in its following weekends and has so far been outgrossed this year by Finding Dory, Captain America: Civil War, Deadpool, The Jungle Book, and Zootopia with The Secret Life of Pets currently on its tail. Will Suicide Squad follow suit and be another miss for DC or will the fans spit in the faces of the critics and enjoy the movie? We'll find out this weekend.

It's worth noting that the Olympics also start this weekend and even though it looks like the Olympics won't have a negative effect on Suicide Sqaud, it very well may have an effect on other movies this month, which may include the other opening this weekend, that being Kevin Spacey's Nine Lives, which looks like it might be dead on arrival. As was apparent last month, too many family movies in a short period of time means that some will be left in the dust. Steven Spielberg found this out the hard way as the phenomenal grosses of Finding Dory and The Secret Life of Pets destroyed The BFG. The Ice Age franchise also had this problem as Ice Age: Collision Course may not even make up half of what it's predecessor made. Are family audiences ready for yet another movie targeted at them in this short amount of time, especially when Pete's Dragon is also right around the corner? Probably not. Look for this movie to get ignored this weekend, especially since the trailers have made it look like a downright horrible movie. If you haven't heard of this, Kevin Spacey is a dad ignoring his family who gets turned into a cat to learn a lesson. So yeah, that premise has also been done a hundred times before.

August 12th - 14th-

The next Disney classic to get a live-action remake will be Disney themselves remaking Pete's Dragon. Although it's debatable as to whether or not the original 1977 movie can really be called a classic as it's not one of Disney's more popular movies when compared to others. Yes, it does carry some childhood nostalgia with many, but it only has a 6.3 score on IMDb with only 16,000 votes. Not that a classic is determined by IMDb numbers, but a true classic will be much higher on both, like The Jungle Book, which has a 7.6 with 122,000 votes. It is the third live-action Disney remake that Disney has done themselves this year and the fifth overall. In April, Disney struck gold with The Jungle Book, but then completely struck out the next month with Alice Through the Looking Glass. On the non-Disney side, Universal's The Huntsman: Winter's War completely tanked while Warner Bros.' The Legend of Tarzan exceeded everyone's expectations. Pete's Dragon could realistically go either way, but don't expect The Jungle Book numbers. It does have a solid cast led by Bryce Dallas Howard and Robert Redford. And it is all live-action this time. No animated hybrid movie this time around. Just a CGI dragon that kinda looks like a mix between a dog and dragon. And it's not a musical either, like the original was.

Playing counter-programming to Pete's Dragon will be the animated movie Sausage Party, which is very much so NOT a kid's movie. The current stereotype is that if a movie is animated, then it must be a kid's movie. The team behind this movie are doing their best to break that stereotype as the goal here was to provide an animated movie for adults. This movie follows a bunch of hot dogs and other food items in their fight against humans who are brutally killing them. Has the idea ever crossed your mind that you are killing your food when you are chopping it up, peeling it, and/or taking a bite out of it? That's the idea that this movie is taking. And it's doing so in a very foul, raunchy way. This is rated R for "strong crude sexual content, pervasive language, and drug use." And apparently it's the raunchiest and most foul movies of the year, so they are really taking this animated movie for adults concept to the extreme. Voicing the food characters in the movie are plenty of raunch-com veterans including Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, Michael Cera, and James Franco.

The final movie of the weekend is Florence Foster Jenkins. There always seems to be at least one August release that is an awards-hopeful movie and this looks to be it. I mean, all you have to do is cast Meryl Streep in your movie and you have a good chance to get at least one nomination, right? And I don't mean that as an insult. I mean that as a very high praise. The lady is arguably the most decorated actress in history of cinema, at least in terms of awards as she's had a total of 19 acting nominations in her career. The next closest is Katharine Hepburn and Jack Nicholson, both with 12. Could this be nomination number 20? This role has Meryl Streep the lead role of Florence Foster Jenkins in a movie that is, and I quote the poster, "the inspiring true story of the world's worst singer." Starring alongside Streep is Hugh Grant, who's also getting award buzz, and The Big Bang Theory's Simon Helberg. The movie is directed by Stephen Frears, who's had three of his movies get nominated for best picture: Dangerous Liaisons (1988), The Queen (2006), and Philomena (2013). Florence Foster Jenkins opened in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand back in May and earned a decent chunk of change from each country.

August 19th - 21st-

July saw the controversial remake of Ghostbusters get surprisingly good reviews and perform better than expected at the box office. This month Paramount is hoping for similar success with their controversial remake of Ben-Hur. The iconic 1959 Charleton Heston masterpiece is not only seen as one of the greatest movies ever made, but it's also one of the most successful movies at the box office. It's $74 million that it made in 1959 is the equivalent of $848 million with today's ticket prices, which is good enough for 14th place on the all-time box office list adjusted for ticket price inflation. In addition to that, it won 11 of its 12 Oscar nominations, including best picture, best director (William Wyler), best actor (Charleton Heston), and best supporting actor (Hugh Griffith). The buzz for this remake hasn't been as poisonous and hateful as the Ghostbusters remake, but this has been flat-out ignored because people just don't seem to care or be on board with this at all. Some early predictions have this opening as low as $10-15 million. Not good for a movie with a $100 million production budget. Timur Bekmambetov, director of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, is on board to direct this movie and Jack Huston will take the title role of Judah Ben-Hur.

Looking to possibly steal the weekend from Ben-Hur is War Dogs. This is based on the true story of two men in their early 20's who, through a series of unique events, won a $300 million contract from the Pentagon to arm America's allies in Afghanistan during the Iraqi War. These two men were David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli, who are played by Miles Teller and Jonah Hill in this movie. Thus the movie is an action comedy/drama that comes to us from director Tod Phillips, the director of The Hangover trilogy as well as other comedies such as Due Date and Starsky and Hutch. In total, seven of Phillips' nine directorial efforts have earned over $100 million total at the domestic box office when adjusted for ticket price inflation, which is a very good track record. Jonah Hill in one of the two lead roles is a good sign for the film as well and Miles Teller will be looking to get back on track after a followed up his praised role in Whiplash with a series of duds, the most noticeable being the universally hated Fantastic Four remake. Bradley Cooper will also be starring alongside Teller and Hill in a supporting role.

Finally, we have the highly anticipated stop-motion animation film Kubo and the Two Strings. The stop-motion animation genre is not the most box office friendly, which is a shame considering how much time and effort goes into making these movies, but Kubo comes to us via Laika, the stop motion animation company the made Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, Coraline, ParaNorman, and The BoxTrolls. These four movies from Laika all made between $50-75 million at the box office, so they've been consistent in that rate. It's safe to say that Kubo will fall in that range as well. The other thing Laika has been consistent with when it comes to these movies is getting Oscar nominations for the best animated feature category. None of them have won, but all four of them have been nominated. So look for Kubo to earn at least $50 million at the domestic box office and get an Oscar nomination early next year. The story is about a young boy named Kubo who needs to locate a magical suit of armor that was once worn by his father, a legendary Samurai warrior, and use that in order to stop a vengeful spirit who has wreaked all sorts of havoc on their village. The voice cast in the movie includes Charlize Theron, Ralph Fiennes, George Takei, Rooney Mara, Matthew McConaughey, and Art Parkinson as Kubo.

August 26th - 28th-

The final weekend of August as well as the first weekend of September is known as a dead zone for the box office. Nothing ever performs that well. Thus it's become a self-fulling prophesy because studios choose not to release any major movies around that time period. A lot of action, horrors, and dramas that aren't usually expected to make much are dumped in that spot. Continuing that trend we have three such releases to finish off the month. The first being Mechanic: Resurrection. This franchise started with a 1972 action movie called The Mechanic that for some reason was given a Jason Statham remake in 2011 of the same title. The remake opened to $11.4 million on its way to $29.1 million total. Not a number that usually warrants a sequel and I don't know if it's a movie that people really wanted a sequel to, but we got it. Jason Statham returns in the lead assassin role while Tommy Lee Jones and Jessica Alba have been added to the cast. Numbers similar to the first might be fair. Statham is a pretty popular action star, but in terms of the box office his solo action movies like this have consistently opened around $10 million, give or take a few million.

We got our action movie in Mechanic: Resurrection. Now we have our horror movie in Don't Breathe. And suddenly this weekend is looking a lot like the final weekend of August 2014. Guardians of the Galaxy topped the box office yet again in its fifth weekend while action movie The November Man opened to $7.9 million and horror movie As Above/So Below opened to $8.6 million. Although it is worth reminded that in this disappointing summer, our horror movies have done quite well. The Conjuring 2 has now topped $100 million. The Purge: Election Year has made around $80 million and Lights Out is almost at $50 million in just two weekends. Don't Breathe is a horror/thriller where a bunch of dumb kids decide to steal from a blind man only to find out he is a pretty dang resourceful blind man and they have no idea how they are going to escape. It premiered at South by Southwest back in March to good reviews and is directed by Fede Alvarez, director of the 2013 Evil Dead, which made $54.2 million. Does that mean this movie has breakout potential? Possibly. If it does, it won't take much to actually win the weekend.

And finally we have another sleeper movie that might just stay asleep and that is Hands of Stone. This is a boxing movie about legendary boxer Roberto Duran and his equally as legendary trainer Ray Arcel. Duran is played by Edgar Ramirez while Arcel is played by Robert De Niro. On paper that sounds like a win, but unless the movie is a part of the Rocky franchise, boxing movies are a tough sell at the box office. Southpaw opened to $16 million last summer and that's on the good side of the spectrum. Last time De Niro starred in a boxing movie was Grudge Match with Sylvester Stallone and that only opened to $7 million. In 2011, Warrior rode phenomenal reviews to a grand total of $5.2 million in its first weekend. Sports movies in general are often more miss than hit. Earlier this year, Eddie the Eagle and Race both opened below $10 million ($6.1 million and $7.4 million respectively). Last year McFarland, USA barely squeaked ahead of the $10 million mark with $11 million. And those three movies are examples of movies that also had good reviews. Moral of the story is that Hands of Stone has a tough uphill battle to climb and it probably won't make it.

Jason Bourne Review

It's been nine years since the character of Jason Bourne has graced theaters and I've got to say that it's really good to have him back! The original Bourne trilogy is one of my all-time favorite trilogies. I was going to watch them in preparation for this new film, but life got busy and I didn't get around to it. Oh well. I know them well enough to know what I like about them and what I expect from a new Jason Bourne movie. There are a few things that make this one of the greatest trilogies. First, all three movies are really good. That alone elevates it above a lot of trilogies. Sure, I could rank them from favorite to third favorite, but there's no weak link like there often is an a trilogy. Second, there is an overarching story that connects all three movies beautifully, yet each movie can stand on its own as an excellent film. Third, the action in each movie is phenomenal. Fourth, the aforementioned story is intense, intriguing, mysterious, and captivating. Fifth, the characters are all well-written allowing some great story arcs and character moments throughout, especially with our title character Jason Bourne. Thus these movies work well as action movies, thrillers, and character pieces. So yeah, this new movie had a lot to live up to. But we had our old crew back, so I was confident!

Yeah, there is a fourth movie in this series. But like everyone else, I'm going to mainly choose to ignore it. Why? Well, first off it's not really a Jason Bourne movie. It's an Aaron Cross movie. Paul Greengrass, director of Supremacy and Ultimatum, chose not to return as director and when that happened, Matt Damon chose not to return either. So we had a Jason Bourne movie without Jason Bourne. Jeremy Renner was cast as a Jason-Bourne-esque character named Aaron Cross and while he did a great job as the character, the movie spent the whole run time trying to justify why they were making a Jason Bourne movie without Jason Bourne instead of coming up with a good story. When you have a Jason Bourne movie with a poor story, that's a problem. The second half of the movie ended up being a ton of fun in terms of the action, but a decent action movie is all it was. It wasn't even a good thriller or a good character piece. I didn't hate the movie as much as some. I even gave it a decent review on this blog back when I was still fairly new to this movie reviewing thing. But I haven't seen it since theaters and I don't really have a strong desire to either because it's a very forgettable movie. All that really matters is our Matt Damon Bourne movies.

With those thoughts out of the way, it's time to get back to our real Jason Bourne movies. I was super excited when Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon decided to return for this fourth true Jason Bourne movie and thus this was one of my most anticipated movies of the year. The title announcement during that Super Bowl spot surprised me, though. They broke the trend of titling it "The Bourne _________" and just titled it Jason Bourne. They could've stolen another title from the book series. That's what The Bourne Legacy did. That fourth book and fourth movie literally have nothing in common outside that title. The fifth book is titled The Bourne Betrayal. That would've been a cool title. We also have a total of 13 books now (the last ten written by Eric Van Lustbader with the first three written by the late Robert Ludlum). We could've stolen a title from any of them. But no. Just Jason Bourne. Not bad, I suppose, since the books and the movies never really had a whole lot in common anyways. But I was stoked nonetheless. When I saw the score on Rotten Tomatoes for the first time, my heart literally sank. It's currently at 57 percent. That's only one percent higher than the 56 percent of The Bourne Legacy. I hate it when one of my most anticipated movies gets trashed by critics. Was this really going to be that bad?

No. Plain and simple. It's not that bad. So let's correct these Rotten Tomatoes scores real quick. 56 percent for Legacy is about right. As is 93 percent for Ultimatum. I'm bit surprised that Identity is only at 81 percent while Supremacy is only at 83 percent. The fact that nearly 20 percent of critics gave those first two movies a bad review is embarrassing for them. All three belong in the 90 percent range. So what about Jason Bourne? This belongs in the high 70 to low 80 range. It's not quite the masterpiece that the first three are, but it's still pretty good and is certainly much better than Legacy. Since Ultimatum did do a decent job of wrapping up the trilogy, how do they manage to extend this story? If you want that answer, you're just going to have to see the movie. I'm not going to dive into specifics with this story because this is a case where the marketing team for this movie actually did a great job with the trailers in NOT giving away the movie. If you read my most recent review of Nerve, I personally enjoyed the movie, but I was frustrated like heck that I knew exactly what was going to happen after every turn because the trailer for the movie was a two-minute cliff notes version of the entire movie. This didn't happen with Jason Bourne, though, so I'm going to respect that marketing and not even give you a general premise.

I will say that Legacy spent the whole movie trying to justify the fact that they were making another Bourne movie without even having Bourne in it. They spent so much time doing that that they forgot to tell an interesting story. No justification here for Jason Bourne. They simply pick up a certain period of time after Ultimatum left off and continue the story almost as if they never missed a beat. Unlike Legacy, this feels like a Jason Bourne movie! We follow the same formula that made the first three movies a success and thus I sat back and had a great time. I don't know if the trilogy is old enough for me to feel nostalgic while watching this new movie, but those are the feelings I had. It was good to see the crew back together. It was great having Matt Damon back as Jason Bourne. And it looked like everyone was having fun making this movie. It didn't feel like a cash grab for the studio and Matt Damon didn't look like he was there for a paycheck. If you listen to interviews with Matt Damon, the guy loves playing Jason Bourne. He loves having the title of being Jason Bourne follow him around for his whole career. Some actors aren't a fan of that. Matt Damon is fine with it. He loves Jason Bourne and you could tell that from this performance. It felt like he was enjoying being back in this role and thus it was fun to watch him.

If I go back to the reasons why the Bourne movies are so great, we have three things. Great action movies. Great thrillers. Great character pieces. Once again, I'm not diving into super detailed specifics here, but I want to analyze Jason Bourne against those three aspects in order to fairly determine how it holds up to those movies. Legacy wasn't good because it only got the action right. It missed the other two aspects. Jason Bourne manages to successfully hit all three, but the issue is that it didn't hit quite as high in either category as I was hoping. Let's start with the action. One staple of the Bourne movies is the brilliant use of shaky cam. There's a lot of people that will say that this stylistic choice is inherently bad. I disagree. Is it overused sometimes? Perhaps. Is it always necessary? No. But it's not inherently bad and this franchise is a great example of that. Paul Greengrass does a great job of implementing the shaky and making it improve his movies. In my opinion, the shaky cam enhances the action sequences and makes the movie more intense. However, if you are one that got sick or dizzy watching the Bourne movies, I totally understand if you don't like it. If you were hoping that this one would be different, sorry. It's the same as the others, so proceed with caution. That aside, the actual action here was phenomenal... when it happened. Great opening sequence. Great closing sequence. A few fun fights in between. But we did go a long time without any action.

That leads me to the next point. Thriller. This movie is a lot more thriller than action, almost to a fault. In each Bourne movie, Bourne is trying to get answers to something while others are trying to hunt him down for some reason, thus making for a very intriguing story that leaves you on the edge of your seat. Same formula here. If it ain't broken, don't fix it. That's the philosophy they use with this series and it works once again. Mostly. But in this case, there was a lot more hunting him down than actually fighting him. Jason Bourne spends a whole heck of a lot of time walking and others spend a whole heck of a lot of time trying to catch up to him or find him. I wanted a few more confrontations along the way. That would've helped our balance not be so lopsided. But it definitely was a lot of really intense walking because the people were almost catching him, which made me nervous. Then we had our super intense score playing the whole time. So good. The biggest problem with the thriller element, though, was it was kinda like one of those heart monitors. Spike. Drop. Spike. Drop. Spike. Drop. What I mean there is that there are actually two plot lines going on. One interesting one. One boring one. I wanted to stay on the interesting one, but we didn't. The movie kept getting derailed with this second plot line that I didn't care about and that was frustrating.

Finally, the characters. The Bourne movies always have great characters on both sides. Jason Bourne is trying to figure out who he is and why people are trying to kill him while the people on the other side have pretty dang good motivations for trying to stop him. In Jason Bourne, I loved all of our characters. But I didn't completely understand the motivations behind everything. Motivations were clear in the original trilogy. Here they weren't and thus with this specific element of the movie it felt more hollow and unbelievable than it should've. It wasn't bad. It just wasn't as compelling. But the actors did a great job with it anyways. As I said earlier, Matt Damon looked like he was having a blast playing this character again. Then we had Tommy Lee Jones and Alicia Vikander. Tommy Lee Jones played your typical old guy in a Bourne movie role. We have a lot of old crazy people in this franchise and Tommy Lee Jones just might be the best one. And Alicia Vikander just might be the most interesting part of this movie. I won't say why, but this girl is special. Ever since she made my jaw drop in Ex Machina last year, she has been on fire. She was great in The Danish Girl. She was great in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. She was great in this. She's definitely an actress who is going places.

The discussion of expectations are an interesting one. With Nerve this week, I absolutely loved myself. But I went in with really low expectations and that's probably a good part of the reason why I enjoyed myself so much. With Jason Bourne, I was slightly let down, but that's because Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon have proven in the past that they can team up and make a nearly perfect action thriller and thus when they don't hit that level again, it can be seen as disappointing. That's why I honestly think this movie has such a low score on Rotten Tomatoes. Expectations were so high that it's easy to trash the movie because it didn't live up to those lofty expectations. But yet this movie doesn't deserve to be trashed. No, it's not a great movie. But it's still a good movie. There's not as much action as I wanted, but the action that's there is still pretty dang good. Our thrill ride was disconnected frequently by another plot line that didn't belong, but it was still a good thriller. Our character motivations weren't as clear or interesting, but we still had great characters. Overall, I still really enjoyed myself with this movie, even if it wasn't as good as it could've been, and I hope another sequel is on it's way with this team. I'm going to give Jason Bourne an 8/10.

Nerve Review

In the midst of this giant, blockbuster-filled summer, we have a small thriller called Nerve sneaking its way into theaters hoping to become a bit of a sleeper hit. The target audience here is definitely the teenage crowd with a bit of holdover to the young adult crowd. Basically the group of young people who are obsessed with social media and app games. I'll be honest, I didn't have super high expectations going into this movie. It didn't look that great. I also expected this to this to be a movie that the critics would completely trash and one that would tank at the box office. I was thinking somewhere between 10-30 percent on Rotten Tomatoes with a box office total of around $5 million for its opening weekend. The box office total is still to be determined, but apparently this surprised with $1.1 million on its Tuesday night opening night, which is a pretty good sign of things to come. I was also surprised to see this in the 60 percent range on Rotten Tomatoes, neck and neck with Jason Bourne. So I was like, what the heck. I'll check it out. I enjoy thrillers, so maybe this has the chance to be a decently entertaining teenage thriller. Maybe it's these low expectations that I had going in, but I was genuinely surprised with this. It's actually a fun, little thriller!

Due to the fact that this is not a big summer blockbuster and hasn't been heavily advertised, there's a chance that you have never heard of this movie. Allow me to explain. In this fictional, modern-day setting there is a game called Nerve. As the game itself describes, it's like truth or dare without the truth. It's mainly done on the phone and is about as popular as Pokemon Go is in real life. Everyone plays it. The options in the game are to be a player or be a watcher. As a player, you are fighting not only for honor and glory, but also for money. The riskier the dare, the more money you earn. But in order to keep that money, you have to keep playing and keep doing more dares. If you bail, you're out. At the end of a certain period of time, the two highest scoring players will go head to head in one final dare. The dares themselves are determined by the watchers and the creators of the game are an anonymous group that have kept this game a secret from authorities, so another rule is that you are not allowed to tell the police about this game. So yeah, this is super sketchy and I don't know why anyone would really play this if it were a real thing. But at the same time, I know people would play. And even more people would watch. And it would cause a ton of problems. 

If you find this premise intriguing, I recommend you just go see it. Please don't watch the trailer for this movie if you haven't already seen it. Or watch like the first 30 seconds or so and then turn it off. After I first saw this trailer in theaters, I honestly felt like I had watched the whole movie and I found that frustrating. I remember a day where trailers would tease a movie and make us excited. But instead we live in a day where studios think they need to spoil their whole movie in the trailer in order to get people to go see their movie, especially if it's a smaller movie like this. I hate it because I want to be surprised by a movie and if all the big moments are in the trailer, it ruins my experience in the theater. With this movie, I was hoping that I was wrong and the whole movie wasn't in the trailer, but it is. Like seriously. The whole fracking thing. Our two main characters, played by Emma Roberts and Dave Franco, are both playing this game and end up teaming up because the watchers decide to set them up. And ever single dare they do in the movie is in the trailer. Every. Single. Freaking. One. And I'm not exaggerating. Just by reading my non-spoiler premise, you know that this is sketchy game and that bad things are going to happen. But if you watch the trailer, you know exactly what bad things are going to happen because it's all there. I was furious watching this movie because of that.

If I were to grade this trailer, I would give it a big fat F. A 0/10. Despicable. Disgraceful. I hate it. I hate this trend. But this review is not a review of that trailer. It's a review of the movie. Even though I knew exactly what was going to happen, I tried not to let my thoughts on that trailer determine my opinion of the movie. That wouldn't be fair. Especially because this is actually a really fun movie. First and foremost, all of our actors completely sell this premise. It could've been a really silly, cheesy premise, but it's not. While watching this movie, you totally believe that this is a super popular game that would actually catch on like a Pokemon Go. Because, come on. We've all played some sort of variation of truth or dare in our lives whether it be extreme and crazy or harmless and fun. Because of this, you know that a truth or dare app would be super popular if it existed. Now would it be as popular if it cost money to play, required you to enter all of your personal information, and was controlled by a mysterious, sketchy organization? Probably not. But there's a lot of crazy people in this world that would participate anyways, especially teenagers who don't think about consequences and are instead motivated by incentives of power, recognition, and money.

This caused me to think what this game would be like if it existed as is in real life. It would be insane, especially if the watchers got to choose the dares people did. A lot of the dares would be raunchy and dirty. And if not that, they would be super dangerous and violent. But people would do them anyways because pride, lust, and greed would get in the way of logic and morality. Thus I realized as I watched that this movie is actually pretty tame. It's not a violent movie. It's not a graphic movie. It's not a sexually explicit movie. The worst we got was Emma Roberts and Dave Franco running around a mall in their underwear because their clothes got stolen. But come on. Don't try to tell me that their next dare in real life wouldn't be to take off their underwear and/or make love right there in public. I'm perfectly glad that this WASN'T the case in the movie. They definitely were shooting for a PG-13 rating and a light PG-13 rating at that in order to attract a teenage crowd. We didn't need to be graphic and explicit with our movie. But I'm just saying that a suspense of disbelief is required here, especially when some of the later dares get a bit cartoonish and silly. And the execution by our characters was a little too easy. No way someone would survive some of those dares.

That said, despite this being a very tame movie where a lot of the dares towards the end got a bit silly, the movie actually did a great job of building tension and making the movie suspenseful. Part of this is what I said earlier with the cast. They really sell it. Emma Roberts and Dave Franco as our two leads especially do a great job with their characters. Emma Roberts is a very attractive female who is much more than just a pretty face to look at. She's likable and charming. My new celebrity crush? Sure. She's my age and Julia Roberts is her aunt. Both pluses, right? In seriousness, though, I do hope she gets more big roles because she was the best part of this movie. And Dave Franco was cool, too. I enjoyed him in both Now You See Me movies and I enjoyed him in this. The Franco brothers are both now on a role. The acting isn't the only thing that sold this movie, though. This was a well shot, well edited movie that had a great flow to it. Never a dull moment. The cinematography was great and we had an interesting neon color scheme that grabs your attention throughout. On top of this, the score is done very well and the soundtrack works, too. All this makes for some real honest tension and suspense throughout. Never once did I fear for our characters' safety, but I was nervous during most of the dares that were done and that's because of all this combined together.

The movie also provides an interesting social commentary on our society. I mentioned the greed and pride aspect already. How many people in our world are willing to throw values and common sense out the window in order to gain popularity and recognition? Way too many. The other interesting social commentary comes with the group of watchers. This is especially prevalent in the second half of the movie, so I won't dive into specifics, but how many people in this world are much more willing to do and say awful, horrible things when they are hidden in a crowd or are anonymous? Just go look at any YouTube comment section and you'll know what I mean. People on those YouTube comment sections are bitter, mean, brutal, racist, sexist, and have no respect for people's feelings. I've seen people get unfairly mauled and attacked with zero mercy shown for things as silly as a difference of opinions on a movie. Go look at a review for anyone who didn't like Batman v. Superman or go look at the comments to those Ghostbusters trailers. Would people say things like that in real life if they were face to face? No. But hidden behind the comfort of their own computer with an anonymous username and some people are completely different people. It's a shame and it's something this movie addresses in an interesting way.

Overall I enjoyed my experience with this movie. The performances were great. The movie was well made. There was a lot of honest tension throughout as the dares got more and more dangerous. The pacing of the movie was perfect. On top of that, there were several interesting themes that were discussed that are very relevant today, especially among the teenage crowd that the movie is hoping to attract. Where the movie unravels a bit is when I stopped to think about what I watched afterwards. I could've used more twists and turns. I could've used more shocking moments. Some of the specific dares were a bit silly and unrealistic. The resolution to the movie left something to be desired for. But these are all things that started to surface in my mind after the fact. During the movie I had no time to stop and think about things in depth or work out things logically in my head. I was thoroughly enjoying the ride! As I said at the beginning of this review, expectations probably had a lot to do with this. My expectations were very low and thus I found myself pleasantly surprised. In a summer that's been full of a lot of disappointing blockbusters, this is a little thriller that feels refreshingly entertaining and fun, which is what summer movies are supposed to be. I'm giving Nerve an 8/10.

Lights Out Review

A couple of years back, there was a little horror short film that came out called Lights Out. It's just under three minutes long, but is a super effective little short film. I have it linked for you right there if you haven't seen it. Basically there's a mysterious figure that shows up when the lights get turned off, but disappears when the lights get turned on. When the lady in the short film keeps turning the light on and off, this creepy figure gets closer and closer. This feeds off people's fear of the dark, making it unsettling walking through your house at night when the lights are off. This is why it's so effective. It made its rounds on the internet and social media and got popular enough for it to be adapted into a feature-length film which was just released this past weekend. The advertising has smartly been pushing producer James Wan, who is a horror master, but the cool thing is that this movie is written and directed by David Sandberg, who is the man who wrote and directed the original short. Now he gets to expand his little story from three minutes to 80 minutes. This was a risky venture because some short films are better as short films as opposed to feature-length films. But Lights Out is an example that works well as both. It's a good short film and a good feature-length film.

As with the short film, Lights Out is about a mysterious, demonic woman figure that shows up when the lights are off and disappears when the lights get turned on. But it's also a whole lot more than that. First off, yes this mysterious demon lady is deadly. If you let her get too close without shining a light on her or turning the light on, she will grab you and hurt you. I'm not going to spoil if she actually kills anyone or not, but that's a definite possibility. Demon lady aside, the core of this movie is actually about a family. Yes, it has a plot! And a surprisingly good one with great characters. We have a mom who's a bit crazy, a young boy who lives with his crazy mom, an older sister who is grown up and living on her own, and a boyfriend to that sister. Mom spent a lot of time in a mental hospital when she was younger and is not doing well, so it's not a good situation for young boy. Older sister lives a bit of a sketchy life, but she sees this issue and is trying to get young boy to live with her instead of mother. The sister's boyfriend, who is NOT useless, plays the voice of reason in all this as he's trying to talk a bit of sense into his girl when she does things on a whim without thinking them through. On top of all this is the demon lady showing up and messing with their lives even more.

A horror film with a good plot, well-written characters, and good acting? Now there's a novel idea! I consider myself a horror fan, but I'm also a fan of film in general. I get frustrated with a lot of modern horror films because the focus often isn't on making a good movie. It's on making some quick cash. A lot of these horror films are dirt cheap to make, so even the smallest of box office returns in most cases will still be considered a profit. In the case of this film, the budget was only $5 million, so if it only made $20 million in its entire run, that would be considered a win. The fact that it made $20 million in it's first weekend alone must have the studio and filmmakers ecstatic right now. This has sadly caused many franchises to go downhill very fast. Take the Paranormal Activity movies for example. That first movie cost $15,000 to make and ended up with about $200 million worldwide. No surprise that we now have six of them, most of which are very poor quality. Studios get so caught up in the money that they will throw together a quick story, hire some b-list actors, throw in a bunch of jump scares, and call it a movie. Plot and characters get thrown out the window in favor of some quick cash. Thus when I get a horror movie like Lights Out that actually has a good plot and well-written characters, I become ecstatic.

All these main actors need to be mentioned by name here because they all did a great job. Our most recognizable name is Teresa Palmer as the older sister. She's had a handful of misses recently, so it's good to see her finally catch a break by being in a good movie again. Previously she has been most known for her role in Warm Bodies in 2013 as well as I Am Number Four and The Sorcerer's Apprentice before that. I've liked her in every movie I've seen her in and this movie is no different. She does a good job. Our young boy is played a kid named Gabriel Bateman. He's played a handful of small roles from movies and TV shows I have not seen, most notably being Annabelle. A good child actor can be hard to come by, but this kid holds his own and does a job. The boyfriend in the movie is played by Alexander DiPersia. Most impressive with him is that usually the boyfriend/girlfriend is the throwaway character destined to die and usually it's a very unemotional death used to scare our main character. Not the case here. He has a lot of charm and charisma and, as I said before, is the voice of reason. I appreciated that. Last but not least, the best individual performance of the movie came with our crazy mother played by Maria Bello. She comes nowhere near the performance of the crazy mother in The Babadook, but she does crazy decently well.

Now for the horror aspect of this movie. Story and characters are fantastic and I definitely appreciate that they are given attention in this movie. But if we're a horror movie, the most important part is the horror, right? Unfortunately this is a bit of a mixed bag for me. Mixed in with the great plot and interesting characters is a whole slew of horror cliches. This demon lady is honestly creepy and I'll get more into that in a second, but there are so many jump scares in this movie. I was disappointed that a movie with a concept so intriguing relied so heavily on jump scares. Jump scares in a movie aren't inherently bad. Don't get me wrong. But I appreciate a horror movie where jump scares aren't the focus. My favorite horror movies are the ones that are creepy and unsettling without having a ton of jump scares, but that's not what this movie is. It's jump scare after jump scare after jump scare. It got a bit old. The other thing is that they tried to give this demon lady a backstory, but they did a pretty cruddy job of it. If you're going to explain the villain, make sure its a well-written villain. I won't dive into spoilers, but this is a pretty poorly written villain and that made the second half of the movie a lot less scary. It would've been better if they just left that demon lady a mystery.

On this subject, I would say that there's three main branches of horror movies: psychological horror, supernatural horror, and slasher horror. With how vague the initial short story is, they could've taken this movie a number of different ways. I personally would've preferred it if they turned this into a psychological horror. Think of how creepy it would be if this demon lady remained a mystery and our main characters weren't even sure if she was real or if they were just going crazy. That would be terrifying and would legitimately make me paranoid when I'm in the dark for at least a week or so. As is, this is a supernatural horror movie, with an uninteresting, poorly-explained demon lady. Yet despite this, I will admit that the movie did a decently good job at being effective despite poor writing when it comes to this demon lady. Last night when I was getting ready for bed, I had to walk through our dark hallway because both of those lights are burnt out and that was a terrifying walk. I turned the corner to the bathroom and turned the lights on as fast as I could because I was positive that demon lady would be there. Thus while this movie isn't an epic psyhcological horror like The Babadook, I would say the initial 1978 Halloween movie is a good comparison, which I just watched this past week. The backstory for Michael Meyers is pretty poorly written and unbelievable, but they do such a good job at making him creepy anyways that the movie gets under your skin.

No, this isn't the best horror movie of the year. But it's decently effective. I was creeped out by the demon lady and I loved our storyline and characters. It was refreshing to see a horror movie take time to flesh out a story and characters because that doesn't happen super often in horror. Sure, I would've appreciated it if the movie were a psychological horror instead of a supernatural horror. I think they shouldn't have tried to explain this demon lady and I also think they shouldn't have relied so heavily on jump scares. But that's just a personal preference. It's worth noting that I was in a sold-out showing and almost everyone else there was jumping, yelling, screaming, and panicking at every little thing that happened and several rounds of applause broke out when a character did something good. They were all so into the movie that it was actually rather distracting and I found myself laughing at how scared everyone got and kinda wished that I was watching the movie in an empty theater. But at the same time, it showed me that despite my personal opinions, if horror movies make you jump easily, this one just will get under your skin fast. But back to my personal opinion, compared to other horror movies this year, this doesn't shine a candle to The Witch, but it's better than The Conjuring 2 and about on-par with The Shallows. Thus I will give Lights Out an 8/10.

Star Trek Beyond Review

Here's a juicy review that I've been waiting a long time to write. Star Trek Beyond. Three years ago I got quite a bit of flack with my review of Star Trek Into Darkness. My friend and I didn't like the movie, but it seemed like everyone else did, including the critics. So I knocked out my controversial review and took the heat for it. But that's okay. That happens occasionally when you write as many movie reviews as I do. A few months later, there was the official Star Trek convention where those in attendance ranked all the Star Trek movies at the time. Do you know what came in dead last? Yup! Star Trek Into Darkness! Boy did that make me happy to see that. Is Star Trek Into Darkness the worst Star Trek movie in my opinion? Yes. It is. I'll get to that more in a second. Leading up to Star Trek Beyond, I wanted to dive deep into my soul to figure out exactly why I like Star Trek and why this new reboot franchise just hasn't done it for me, because no I didn't like the 2009 reboot either. Then the plan was to use that knowledge to give my best review for Star Trek Beyond. What did I do? I paced myself and watched all 12 Star Trek movies leading up to this 13th theatrical adventure. Now it's time to give you my results of this marathon.

First I must explain that Star Trek is a franchise that I grew up loving. Do I consider myself a trekkie? I don't know actually. I don't think I'd meet the minimum requirements to officially dawn that title. But I will say I'm a Star Trek fan. I grew up watching The Next Generation with a little bit of Voyager and Deep Space Nine. Have I ever watched all episodes of those three shows in order? No. But I enjoy them nonetheless. Note that I didn't include The Original Series in that. I didn't grow up watching that one. But before you have a heart attack, know that in my adult years I have dove into The Original Series and gained a very high appreciation for it to the point where if you make me pick my personal favorite Star Trek series, I'm going to go with The Original Series. When it comes to the now 13 movies, well, it's been a bit of a rough ride to say the least. In my humble opinion, the only three great movies are The Wrath of Kahn, The Search for Spock, and First Contact. I also enjoyed The Undiscovered Country and The Voyage Home, although I'd classify those two as good, not great. The Motion Picture, The Final Frontier, Generations, Insurrection, and Nemesis are all either bad or sub-par in my opinion. So no, not every Star Trek movie is created equally.

Then we have our reboot movies. I'll get to Star Trek Beyond here in a bit, but for now I will continue to build anticipation to that and focus on Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness for a second. I don't like either of them. Star Trek put us in an alternate dimension, but did so in a weird, convoluted way that in my opinion is more of a cop-out than an interesting story choice. I liked our intro with Chris Hemsworth as George Kirk, but Chris Pine's James T. Kirk is an abomination in that movie. I hate how they made him a spoiled, unlikable brat that joins Starfleet on a dare and becomes captain because his dad was a war hero. On top of that lame story, the villain was dumb and the Spock/Uhura love story was awful. Not a good movie. But Star Trek Into Darkness was a whole heck of a lot worse. Why? So many reasons, but if I'm being brief, it's a cheap, second-rate remake of The Wrath of Kahn, which is the best Star Trek movie. A completely copied story with characters I didn't care about and a watered-down version of Kahn that was much worse than the original Kahn. Cumberbatch did the best with what he was given, but that wasn't a whole lot. The death of Kirk was cheap and frustrating because they completely copied it from The Wrath of Kahn and was made worse by the fact that they didn't have the guts to keep Kirk dead for longer than 10 minutes.

I gave Star Trek Into Darkness a poor review the first time around, but in the last three years it has festered inside of me to the point where I outright hate it. At least our other bad Star Trek movies either had a crew I cared about or good character moments in them. Star Trek Into Darkness has nothing going for it. Luckily J.J. Abrams didn't screw up Star Wars in the same way he did Star Trek. But speaking of which, J.J.'s involvement in The Force Awakens means he was unavailable to direct this third movie in the reboot franchise. Roberto Orci, who co-wrote the first two movies, was initially tabbed to direct the movie, but then for various reasons he jumped ship. After his departure, Simon Pegg and Doug Jung wrote a brand new script and Justin Lin from the Fast and Furious franchise was hired as director. Yes, Lin's Fast Five and Fast & Furious 6 were both fantastic and the fourth movie, simply titled Fast and Furious was also decent. But should we really be hiring the director of the Fast and Furious movies to direct a Star Trek movie? Was this third movie just going to turn into a high-octane, brainless action movie with Star Trek characters? I was NOT down for this. When the trailers showed up, I was worried because that's exactly what it looked like.

The reviews came in strong as it's currently at 89 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. But that didn't convince me. Those same critics also gave 2009's Star Trek a 95 percent and Star Trek Into Darkness an 87 percent and I just told you what I thought about those movies. I couldn't even trust the YouTube critics that I follow because they're in the same exact boat. So despite a whole bunch of reviews in, I essentially went into this movie completely blind and totally expected to hate it. I had my roast-fest all planned out in my head and I was going to unleash this angry demon inside of my soul on this new franchise. But yet I always have the philosophy of going into every movie with an open. So I did. But at the same time, I also had fresh on my mind my reasons for liking Star Trek as a whole and thus there were certain checkpoints that this movie needed to meet in order to get a pass. To my huge surprise, this movie actually met them! I'm totally serious. J.J. Abrams doesn't know how to make a Star Trek movie, but apparently Justin Lin does. No, this movie doesn't have a lot of depth or emotion to it, but it's a fun little Star Trek adventure that felt like a solid filler episode of the TV show. For the first time in this reboot series, it felt like I was actually watching Star Trek. That made me happy.

In thinking about what it is that makes me like Star Trek, I decided that the most important thing is to have a crew that I care about. This is something that The Original Series, The Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine all had. Good crews with characters that I care about. Leading these crews has to be a solid captain. William Shatner as Captain Kirk and Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard are perfect examples. Both of these men are phenomenal actors that make for great captains. William Shatner as Captain Kirk especially has so much charm and charisma that makes him so likable. He has plenty of character flaws, but that allows him to go through so much growth. This is what the reboot series was missing in the first two movies. Chris Pine's Kirk was an abomination. My favorite part of Into Darkness is when Cumberbatch was beating the crap out of him. It made me happy. It wasn't Chris Pine's fault, though. It was how he was written. Concerning the rest of our crew, Zachary Quinto didn't quite sell me as Spock and the romance between him and Uhura totally ruined both of their characters. Karl Urban was a little over the top as Dr. McCoy. All he did was complain and whine. Same thing with Simon Pegg's Scotty. The only two main characters who nailed their roles were John Cho as Sulu and Anton Yelchin as Chekov.

First order of business for Mr. Lin: fix our crew. Check. Starting with the top, Chris Pine's Kirk is no longer crybaby Kirk or spoiled-brat Kirk. He's Captain Kirk. He acts like a really good, likable captain. Does he have the charm and charisma of William Shatner? Heck no. But in fairness, not many people can match that. But he does take a huge step forward in this movie. Whereas in the first two movies I cheered when he got beat up, in this one I actually cared for his safety. Next up, the Spock and Uhura romance gets axed in the beginning and Zachary Quinto does a much better job of acting like the emotionless, logical Spock that Leonard Nimoy did so well. Him and Kirk make a great team like Kirk and Spock are supposed to. Karl Urban is toned down a bit as Dr. McCoy and Simon Pegg as the writer of this movie was able to write his Scotty much better. Zoe Saldana doesn't have much to do as Uhura, but at least she doesn't negatively impact the movie like she did in the last two. Sulu I was ready to complain about because they announced recently that he was gay and I had George Takei's disapproval to back me up on that, but that reveal doesn't occur. And finally, every scene with Chekov totally broke my heart. Anton Yelchin does such a great job in all three movies. He was taken from this earth way too soon. May God bless him and his family.

So yeah. Good crew that I care about? Awesome! Let's go have a fun adventure! Fun space adventures are another reason that makes me love Star Trek. I love science fiction and I especially love when that science fiction involves space. That's part of the reason why I enjoy both Star Trek and Star Wars. Space! If anyone tells you that you can't love both franchises and you have to pick one, please slap them. They deserve it. Star Trek Beyond's story finds them on their five-year mission and Simon Pegg and Doug Jung actually attempt to write an original story, thus it automatically gets a pass over Star Trek Into Darkness for that reason. This isn't a cheap remake of another better Star Trek movie. It's its own thing! And it doesn't make me cringe like the story in the first one, so that's another plus. Granted Pegg and Jung decided that they needed to do the obligatory destruction of the Enterprise in this movie like each generation of Star Trek before it has done. That made me roll my eyes. But after they crashed-landed on this planet, we had a fun, little adventure. The main crew was split up and a lot of the red coats were taken hostage along with Uhura and so our goal was for everyone to find each other, get off the planet, and learn why this latest villain-of-the-week tried to kill them all.

The final aspect of Star Trek that I love are the intellectual, thought-provoking messages and themes spread throughout the series. Yes, this movie had a good crew with characters I cared about. It had some great character moments with plenty of good one-liners. And it had a fun space adventure. But did it have this final element that would be the frosting on the cake? No. That's what I would say the biggest flaw of this movie is. Yes, it is fun. But no, it's not a deep movie. There's not a ton of strong themes. It doesn't make me stop and ponder about the messages it's trying to portray. It's simply a shallow, fun adventure. That's why I said it's like a solid villain-of-the-week episode. Idris Elba plays our villain and I actually enjoyed him much more than Benedict Cumberbatch's Kahn and Eric Bana's Nero from the first two movies. It does take us a little too long to learn what's up with Idris Elba's villain, but the final act with him is pretty solid. Throughout the middle of this movie, Justin Lin does a great job with the action, which was too be expected from our Fast and Furious director. But if fun action is all we're getting throughout the second act of a Star Trek movie, it still leaves me a little disappointed. Star Trek isn't supposed to be just fun. It's supposed to be fun AND thought-provoking with great character moments. Thus I say I was pleased with this movie, but not blown away.

In the end, I will say that I was pleasantly surprised with Star Trek Beyond. Given my dislike of the first movie and my bitter hatred towards Into Darkness, I was totally expecting to dish out an all-out roast fest with this review, especially since the trailers were pretty bad. But this turned out to be a decent adventure. I have now learned that Justin Lin knows how to make a good Star Trek movie, something that J.J. Abrams failed miserably with in his two attempts. We had an original story that wasn't copied from a previous Star Trek movie. A lot of the character traits with our crew that bothered me in the first two movies were fixed and I actually found myself caring for Kirk, Spock, Bones, and company.  I certainly wasn't cheering for the villain here like I was in our last movie. It misses the intellectual, thought-provoking element of Star Trek and goes mainly just for entertainment as it's just a simple, shallow movie that's nothing special. But it's a huge step forward from our previous efforts. If I were to give grades to the other two movies, 2009's Star Trek gets a 5/10 while Star Trek Into Darkness gets a 3/10. So the fact that I'm giving Star Trek Beyond a 7/10 should be seen as a generous compliment. I'd say it's the sixth best Star Trek movie. I'll put those rankings in the comments below.