Happy Death Day Review

The "Groundhog Day" formula has been quite the popular formula to follow in Hollywood. That, of course, is being stuck in some sort of time loop until you learn a lesson or figure out how to overcome some sort of obstacle. The most recent example of this formula being "Edge of Tomorrow," which was a sci-fi version of "Groundhog Day" where audiences got to watch Tom Cruise die over and over in a D-Day like scenario until he figured out how to win the war against the alien army. And now we have the movie "Happy Death Day" hoping to feed off that success by bringing us a comedic horror version of "Groundhog Day." After seeing this premise done so many times, you would think that I would be sick of it by now. For some reason, I'm not. It's a fun premise that somehow gets me every time. Thus when I saw the trailers for "Happy Death Day," I had a childish grin on my face, crossing my fingers that this would be another fun variation of this premise while keeping in the back of my mind that there's a possibility that this could end up as a disaster, like many modern-day horror movies. Lucky for me, this is a movie that doesn't take itself seriously at all and thus becomes a rather fun sort-of horror film that's worth your time this Halloween season.

In the movie, Jessica Rothe plays a college sorority girl named Tree Gelbman. She wakes up one day in the dorm room of a guy named Carter Davis, played by Isreal Broussard, having not remembered what happened the previous evening. She puts on her shirt, leaves the room, and heads off to class, making sure to be rude and arrogant to everyone in her path, roommates included. Because, you know, that's how we have to have her in this type of movie. We have to watch her learn to be nice to the world. Except she does kind of have an excuse. Today is her birthday, which is not a very happy day for her due to certain family issues. But after living a somewhat normal day for her, she ends up all by herself in a dark part of town where she comes across an individual dressed in black with a baby-face mask, that's apparently the school mascot. That person kills her and then she wakes up back in the dorm room of Carter Davis. And what do you know. It's the same day again. At the end of each ensuing day, the crazy person with the baby face mask is waiting for her to kill her again. Why trap her in a time loop instead of kill her for good? I don't know. The movie doesn't really answer that question. This is the type of movie where certain things you just have to accept.

Because of that, there's a few ways you can look at this movie. You can take it super seriously and complain at all the logical fallacies present in the movie. Why is she in a time loop? I don't know. Why doesn't she use one of her lives to de-mask the killer to figure out who he/she is? I don't know. When the mystery is revealed, does it make sense when you think back on the rest of the movie? Probably not. Is it kinda silly that it follows the "Groundhog Day" formula to a t, with a "Groundhog Day" reference thrown in there? Yeah. But here's the thing I'd say to you if you did take that route with this movie. The movie itself doesn't take itself seriously at all, so it's a bit unfair for you to do so. This is a very self-aware movie that simply decides to have a ton of fun with a silly premise, thus I think it can be enjoyed if you try to sit back, relax and just have fun. That's exactly what I did and it was a very enjoyable ride. I imagine the writers had a lot of fun writing this screenplay. I imagine the director had fun bringing it to life. And I definitely know that the lead actors had a ton of fun in their roles. Jessica Rothe completely owns this role by going all in on whatever she was told to do, thus she ends up carrying this whole movie on her back and you can't help but like her.

It's also worth noting that this isn't really a horror film. If you're whole purpose of going into this movie was to be scared beyond reason, you're going to walk out really confused and disappointed that you were instead treated to a light-hearted comedy. Sure, there were a few creepy moments when the baby-faced killer shows up and quite a bit of attempted jump scares that I never bit at. But this is not a scary movie and I don't think it was trying to be, so I'm not going to fault it for that. If you thought it looked scary based on the trailers, then get mad at the advertising if you want, which I do admit was a bit deceiving. When I first watched this trailer, I thought for sure this was going to be a dark, creepy, hard R-rated film, thus I was surprised when it was given a PG-13 rating. No, this is not a graphic, bloody film. Every time our girl gets stabbed or killed, the camera either cuts away or jumps to her waking up. The one censored f-bomb in the trailer is the only f-bomb in the movie. And the scene where she is walking around naked in the trailer is not any more graphic than it is in the trailer. You see her bare shoulders from the front and bare back from the rear. So yeah, a lot of trailer bait shots to trick teenagers into thinking this is a risque movie, but it's not.

My biggest gripe that I had while watching the movie is that it seemed like it was going to end a specific way and I don't think I would've been happy with that specific ending. I don't want to dive into specifics with this, but right when I started to grumble and complain at how they decided to wrap this up, they turned the corner slightly and went a bit of a different direction and that direction was enough to please me. Is this a movie that I plan on owning and watching every Halloween for the rest of my life. No. When you compare it to "Groundhog Day" and "Edge of Tomorrow," it doesn't get very close to that. I don't know if I even have a huge desire to watch it a second time, but if I have family or friends that are curious enough to check it out, I'll happily sit down and enjoy the movie with them. It's a fun, enjoyable ride as long as you don't take it too seriously. If you are wanting dark, scary and serious, go watch "IT." If you want fun and enjoyable, then check out "Happy Death Day." If you are poor or have no time to head out to the theaters this Halloween, then don't be too upset that you missed this. Find it on Netflix or rent it at Redbox sometime. That's perfectly acceptable. You're not missing "the movie of 2017." My grade for "Happy Death Day" is an 8/10.

Blade Runner 2049 Review

The movie "Blade Runner" has a unique history. It was initially released in 1982 to poor box office results. Before that, though, its early screenings went so bad that the studio decided to throw on some voice over and attach on a happy ending in hopes that general audiences would be happy about the movie. After the aforementioned poor box office results, it eventually caught on after release and became a cult classic. In 1992, a director's cut of the film was released that took away the voice over and the happy ending, but it wasn't a true director's cut as it was put together based on Ridley Scott's notes. Ridley Scott himself wasn't happy with that release either. It wasn't until 2007 when Scott finally got involved and put together a final cut that he was happy about and actually had full say in everything. The movie is seen as a revolutionary sci-fi film that inspired a lot of movies that we all love today. Despite that, I, for some reason, managed to never see it. It was always one of those movies on my list to eventually catch up on, but never got around to until the release of "Blade Runner 2049" gave me an excuse to. No way was I going to go into the sequel without seeing the original. Now that I've seen both, it's time to dive into this interesting franchise.

I don't want to spend too much time on "Blade Runner" itself because I'd rather focus most of this review on the original, but nevertheless I think I am at a bit of a disadvantage at having not seen "Blade Runner" until 2017. It's a bit of a slow, though-provoking film that dives deep into the themes of human vs. technology. I think a lot of humanity is scared of technology getting too advanced, thus in Hollywood we see almost every movie about artificial intelligence going completely awry with the robots we've created overtaking us and ruling the earth. In fact, I can't really think of a movie off the top of my head that portrays artificial intelligence as a positive thing. It's almost always negative. And that's what "Blade Runner" is all about. Humans created these artificial intelligence that this universe has called replicas, but things went so bad that they've become illegal on this planet. Now there are certain people working as blade runners whose job is to hunt down and "retire" the replicas that are on the earth. Harrison Ford is one of said blade runners and the movie is about him hunting down and killing four specific replicas. But he falls in love with one of them while hunting the others down and then there are questions about if he himself is actually a replica.

You see, that was all super interesting and everything, but I finished the movie thinking that I've seen this premise a thousand times, but better. Yet I got to thinking that it's quite possible that the movies I deem better may not have happened had it not been for "Blade Runner" paving the way with this idea. Thus is why I say I'm at a disadvantage by waiting until 2017 to see this. Perhaps if I were alive in 1982 when this was released or had seen this movie when I was younger, maybe I would think differently. But as is, despite it being done very well, it didn't seem that special of a movie to me. Yet I still loved the fantastic visuals and mesmerizing score, and I was excited to return to this universe in "Blade Runner 2049" being that my man Denis Villeneuve was the man in the director's chair for this film. If you don't know Villeneuve by now, you need to. I haven't seen some of his earlier films, but recently he is responsible for "Prisoners," "Sicario" and "Arrival," three very good films. I would go as far as saying he is one of the best directors in the business. All you need to do to get my attention is to let me know that he is directing a film and I will be in the theater watching that film as soon as I can. He has not disappointed me yet and that streak continues with "Blade Runner 2049."

You can tell by watching "Blade Runner 2049" that Villeneuve has mad respect for the original film because he has taken that original film and delivered a proper sequel that does justice to this movie that so many love. They could've taken this franchise and updated it for modern audiences. They could've turned it into a giant action franchise or used this movie to set up a whole bunch of other sequels, but that's not what happened. Villeneuve has made a "Blade Runner" sequel that takes what "Blade Runner" set up and builds on it. While the first movie was set in 2019, this movie is set 30 years after that, in the year 2049, and feels like a natural progression. The technology from the first movie has expanded and progressed while the universe we're in is bigger, better and more beautiful than ever before. Like, seriously, if nothing else, this movie is worth seeing just for the visual effects and cinematography. And just like the original, the soundtrack is quite mesmerizing. The movie is nearly three hours long, but for me I was so caught up in this world that I was totally fine with the length of the film. Yeah, sure, it probably could've been 20 minutes shorter, but I never got bored or restless due to how beautiful and mesmerizing this movie is.

I don't know how much I want to give away about the story itself because I mostly avoided all the trailers. I didn't want to know anything about a sequel to a film that I hadn't yet seen. When I finally saw the first movie, I essentially went straight into this sequel without catching myself up on the trailers. But the basics of this plot center around Ryan Gosling. Because replica technology is advanced, they've seemingly figured out how to work with replicas as Ryan Gosling himself is a replica and a blade runner. And that's not something that's revealed at the end of the movie. That's known from the very beginning. Ryan Gosling's job as a blade runner is to retire some of the older models that were more dysfunctional and less obedient than himself. In the midst of this, he runs into a certain breakthrough that sets up a whole bunch of questions and eventually leads Gosling to Harrison Ford's character of Rick Deckard. But make no mistake, this is Ryan Gosling's movie. Not Harrison Ford's. But when Harrison Ford does turn up about halfway through the movie, he does an excellent job at picking up where he left off. He doesn't act like Harrison Ford or Han Solo. You see him on screen and you know he is Rick Deckard, which I find impressive.

The movie as a whole is truly a marvel to behold and honestly at least as good as the original, if not a few steps above. If you are among the crowd that believes that "Blade Runner" is a masterpiece, then you need to show up for this movie because it might be your favorite movie of the year, or even of the decade. It's being praised as such by many and for dang good reason. But when it comes to my personal opinion, I think the flaws of "2049" are the same as "Blade Runner." We've discussed the topic of artificial intelligence and technology so much in Hollywood that there's almost an over-saturation of the genre. Thus I don't necessarily think there's anything new or groundbreaking presented in this movie. Granted, the movie does a fantastic job and making you think there is. The visual effects, cinematography and score are so top-notch that they combine together to try to trick you into thinking you just watched the greatest movie ever made. I had to actually take a few days to figure out what this movie was actually about. When I did my best to push aside the technical marvel that this movie is and focus solely on what was presented in terms of story, characters and theme, it became a lot easier to pick this movie apart.

Yet for better or for worse, this is definitely a "Blade Runner" sequel. It's a slow-moving, sci-fi, mystery film that takes its time to set everything up so that things feel natural and unforced. If you thought the themes of technology vs. humanity, and the often gray area between the two were phenomenal and thought-provoking in the first movie, just wait until you see what themes this movie has to add to that. It takes that line and blurs it even more. But I don't know, I still think I've seen these themes done much better in other movies. The first half of this movie played out a lot like the movie "Her," the movie starring Joaquin Phoenix falling in love with the advanced version of Siri, voiced by Scarlett Johannson. But I think "Her" is more powerful and resonating than "Blade Runner 2049." In terms of the blurred line between humanity and artificial intelligence, the movie "Ex Machina" dove into that in a fantastically gripping fashion that will stick with me for a lot longer than "Blade Runner 2049" will with its various versions of the replicas. But yet I still have mad respect for this film that Denis Villeneuve has so carefully crafted and put together. It may not be my exact cup of tea, but I will recommend it to anyone who loved the original and I will give the movie a 9/10.

Classic Movie Review: Friday the 13th (1980)

When I made the decision to write some Halloween-themed classic movie reviews this month, I looked at the calendar and knew there was one movie that I absolutely had to do. "Friday the 13th." On Friday the 13th. Which is today. I mean, when else am I going to get the opportunity to review "Friday the 13th" on Friday, October 13th, the famously haunted day? When it comes to horror movie franchises in the 80's, there's three major horror film franchises that propelled the slasher horror genre, "Friday the 13th," "Halloween" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street," with their respective superhuman, serial killer antagonists, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Kruger and Michael Meyers. I've been very well aware of these three killers since I was young. It was especially fun to dress up as them on Halloween. I remember specifically being Freddy Kruger one year and I also think I put on a hockey mask and acted as Jason. They're fun characters to be on Halloween. I want to review all three of these classic slashers and I was planning on starting with "Halloween," but I had to rework my schedule a bit and so because of the themed date, we are starting with Jason. But look forward to my reviews of the other two because there's a lot I want to discuss with these three movies.

While I have been very well aware of Jason since I was in Elementary School, I had not actually seen his movie before, so last night watching it was my very first time. That makes this perspective quite a bit different than when I review "Halloween" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street," because those two I have had many, many years of reflecting on. But I think it's kinda fun to have a fresh perspective on some classic movies, eliminating every bit of nostalgia that can sometimes cloud our vision of certain movies. On that note, I do think it's interesting that, unlike it's 1978 slasher predecessor "Halloween" of which this movie was definitely inspired by, "Friday the 13th" was not received well initially. It did make plenty of profit, earning $39.7 million on a $550,000 budget, which was pretty decent for a horror movie in the 80's, and justified them making approximately 700,000 sequels. OK, 12 to be exact. But eight of those were in the 80's as we almost had one per year for the entire decade (they missed 1983 and 1987). But no, despite this, critics didn't like this movie and it took some time for this to be seen as a cult classic. Honestly I can see why. Sure, one can have some nostalgia for the popular character's origins, but this is definitely the lesser of the three classic slashers.

If you are like me and you lived your life without seeing this movie and you don't want it spoiled for you, feel free to click away now because this movie requires me talking about spoilers if I'm going to do this movie justice. Go find a way to watch this movie and come back and finish reading. If you want, this is actually back in theaters today in celebration of the festive day. At least it is in my city. So that's an option. If you don't care about spoilers for a 37-year-old movie or you've actually seen it, then proceed reading. In analyzing this movie, I did my best to think about context and perspective. This movie has every single horror cliche in the book. I mean, the whole premise is a group of teenage kids in a cabin in the woods as they are about to begin work as camp councilors for this summer camp that is reopening. Meanwhile, someone really doesn't want this camp to take place and goes around killing these kids one by one. We don't know who that is because the camera perspective takes a first person approach whenever this killer is around, thus giving the movie a mystery spin on it. But yeah, that's it. Teenage kids in a cabin in the woods with a killer going around. If this movie was made today, I don't think anyone would care for it.

But that's where context comes in. I enjoy horror movies, but I'm not expert enough to know where every horror cliche began. Is it possible that "Friday the 13th" helped create these horror cliches? Jason's thing is that he guards or haunts this lake area because of what happened to him as a kid. I thought to myself that maybe people learned to like Jason so much that other horror movies tried to replicate this, turning it into a cliche. Did people walk out of theaters in 1980 complaining that they had seen this premise a thousand times before? I honestly don't know. Even if so, I'd be willing to bet that this popularity of this franchise and this character bolstered that, so I'm willing to give that more of a pass. Then we have to know that this was made in a time period where people loved their slasher films. You didn't need to come up with anything crazy, epic or super unique. If you made an effectively intense slasher film with some sort of serial killer walking around killing people, a lot of people ate that up. If a movie does a good job of pandering to its audience, I think that's something at least worth respecting even if the movie itself doesn't quite hold up to what we may expect from a horror film in 2017. Movies evolve and change over time and that's perfectly OK.

That said, I have to be honest with my personal opinion. This movie has very little depth to it and it has a cast of characters that I really don't care too much for. I think perhaps the most important part of making a successful slasher horror film is having a cast of characters that the audience cares about. If you honestly feel for your characters and you want them to make it out of this experience alive, then it adds to the intensity of the situation if suddenly their life is in jeopardy and you honestly have no idea if they are going to make it to the next scene. I never experienced that in this movie. We had a group of like 6-8 of these camp counselors and I never developed a strong attachment to any of them. We had two of them separate from the group to go make love in the other room and instantly I knew they had about five minutes of movie time left to live. Sure enough, once the girl gets up, boy gets stabbed from beneath the bed, followed shortly by the girl getting an ax to her head in the bathroom. Well that was lovely. Now let's move onto the next deaths. No real emotion. No intensity during the scenes. I wasn't even super scared. It just felt like a movie void of any emotion or plot as we just watched these kids get killed one by one in this cabin in the woods.

I think the most redeeming aspect of this movie came in the last act of it, which is why I say I have to spoil this movie in order to do it justice. If I just said that it was a boring movie until the exciting and intense ending, I don't think that would be good enough. I mean, this is my only chance to talk about this movie, so I'm going to take that. One thing that I did find interesting throughout is that we don't know who this killer is. We take a book from "Halloween" by doing the first person killer camera trick, only seeing the weapons hit the people or the already dead bodies hiding around the corner for other characters to stumble on. Knowing plenty about Jason, but nothing about this movie, I simply assumed it was the perspective of Jason that we were taking. But no. As it turns out, this is not really Jason's movie at all. This is Jason's mother's movie. She's the killer. And she has some pretty solid motivations because in previous years, her son Jason drowned in the lake and she blames everyone around her. That anger and hate turned her into a psychotic killer and now she is killing all of the people there in order to prevent this summer camp from being opened so that no one has to suffer what she suffered by having her young son drown in a lake.

I say that most of the characters in this movie weren't worth caring about and most of that does have to do with bad acting, that could be attributed to bad directing and/or writing. But when Betsy Palmer as Mrs. Voorhees shows up, she owns every scene she is in. She is extremely menacing as this psychotic killer mother and when she was trying her hardest to kill this final remaining girl, those sequences were really intense. I even kinda cared about this girl, whose name was Alice, and I did find it rewarding when she overcame and decapitated Mrs. Voorhees. She won. She overcame the challenges presented to her and made it out alive. I think that's something that is important in a horror movie, having a protagonist we care about overcoming the evil placed before them. This also sets up for some revenge plots in the next movie. Jason is upset at Alice for killing his mother, giving him solid motivation instead of being a villain that goes around and kills for no apparent reason. Speaking of Jason, he does show up in this movie for a brief moment. Here we are at the end of the movie with Alice floating over the lake after victory and Jason jumps out of the water and gets her. Dream sequence or no, that made me jump like 10 feet. I was not expecting that.

Overall, "Friday the 13th" is a movie that is definitely worth respecting if you are a fan of the horror genre because it did help pave the way to bolster this slasher flicks. And it also gave us the iconic horror villain Jason Voorhees. Yet when compared to the other two movies, "Halloween" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" that I'll get into later this month, this definitely doesn't hold a candle to those. I give it respect from being a product of its time that successfully delivered the type of film that people liked back in the 80's. And perhaps the horror cliches weren't as big of cliches when the movie was released. But as is, this is a movie that's void of plot for the majority of the run time and doesn't really have any characters worth caring about. When we have a slasher horror filled with characters being killed that leave no lasting emotional weight when they're gone, then that's a significant problem. But Mrs. Voorhees being revealed as the villain surprised me and when she was on screen, the movie was pretty great, so that redeemed the film somewhat. And that final jump scare. Man. If I were ranking individual jump scares in movies, that has to be towards the top of the list and almost made the whole movie worth it. Thus my final grade for "Friday the 13th" is a 7/10.

Movie Preview: October 2017

Thanks to the shockingly huge run of Stephen's King's "IT," September 2017 reversed course from the summer by easily becoming the highest grossing September on record with $696.1 million record, besting the 2015 record of $626.4 million. The $123.4 million opening weekend of "IT" shattered the September opening weekend record, previously set by "Hotel Transylvania 2" with $48.5 million. "IT" wound up making a total of $286.6 million in September, which represented 41.2 percent of the entire month's overall grosses. The next highest grossing movie in September was "Kingsman: The Golden Circle," which wound up with $62.2 million in the final two weeks of September. This goes to show that highly anticipated, high quality movies with good marketing campaigns can make money in any month of the year, which could help future Septembers perform even better. Now we move onto October, which should see "IT" continue to do well given the Halloween season. The rest of the new movies? Well, let's just say most people will be saving their money for what should be a busy holiday season in November and December. But there's still a lot of movies on the schedule that will attempt to change people's minds, so let's dive in.

October 6th - 8th- 

The first weekend of October is officially in the rear view mirror as of the posting of this blog. This is because of a short vacation that put this blogger a bit behind schedule. Nevertheless, the weekend was won by the surprisingly underwhelming performance of Blade Runner 2049. Heading into the weekend, the studio's expectations for the long-awaited sequel to the 1982 cult classic were around $45-50 million, with many sites predicting it could go as high as $55-60 million. Thus its total of just $32.7 million was shocking to many, given how strong the reviews were from critics and general audiences alike. It appears that general audiences simply weren't quite as excited for the sequel as long time fans were. The audience breakdown ended up being 86 percent above the age of 25 and 71 percent male. Thus many may have overestimated the power of the "Blade Runner" brand, which itself was an initial box office failure as well. Like "Blade Runner," "Blade Runner 2049" is a futuristic, neo-noir, sci-fi film that heavily explores themes of advanced technology and the potential dangers of artificial intelligence. The movie is set 30 years after the events of the first film as sees Harrison Ford reprising his role while teaming up this time with Ryan Gosling.

Coming in second place was the even more disappointing debut of The Mountain Between Us, which tallied just $10.6 million as it suffered from mixed to poor reviews from critics with its 44 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie stars Idris Elba and Kate Winslet as two strangers who survive a plane crash in the high Uintas and have to learn to trust each other so that both of them can survive. The movie is based on the novel of the same name written by Charles Martin and is the type of movie that Fox was probably hoping would be an awards contender. Having Idris Elba and Kate Winslet in the lead roles is a great start for that. They also premiered the movie at TIFF last month before giving it a wide release this past weekend. Given that October is the month where awards season starts to kick into full gear, Fox played all of their cards right. The problem here is that having a quality movie on your hands is the most important factor here and mixed reviews won't cut it. Thus this ends up being the type of film that shot for the stars, but instead fell flat on its face.

Coming in at the tail end of this past weekend's wide releases was My Little Pony: The Movie, which ended up in fourth place at the box office with $8.9 million, just behind the $9.9 million that "IT" made in third place and barely ahead of the $8.7 million of "Kingsman: The Golden Circle" in fifth place. While $8.9 million might not seem like much, this is actually an improvement for Lionsgate when it comes to their attempts to distribute animated films. Lionsgate most recently saw "Rock Dog" open to $3.7 million, "The Wild Life" open to $3.3 million and "Norm of the North" open to $6.8 million. "My Little Pony" obviously had its built in audience that it was targeting, which mostly includes young girls. But also includes plenty of older girls as well as a section of fandom called "bronies," which are adult males who love "My Little Pony." In order to please its fans, "My Little Pony: The Movie" brought back a lot of the original voice cast and characters from the TV show while adding a whole host of new characters to attempt to bring in more audiences. Its $8.9 million is a decent opening for a movie adaptation like this, so no tears shed here.

October 13th - 15th- 

And now we dive into the actual future releases. This October sees the arrival of the infamous date of Friday the 13th. Hoping to take advantage of the haunted date is the horror movie Happy Death Day. Any horror movie this Halloween season will have the disadvantage of following up "IT," which will still be having great legs throughout the season. "Happy Death Day" will hope to differentiate itself by being a more teenage-friendly horror film with its PG-13 rating. Not that teenagers didn't go see "IT" despite the adult-rating, but "Happy Death Day" is specifically targeting them, hoping they show up in droves. "Happy Death Day" is the latest film to try to take advantage of the "Groundhog Day" trope of being stuck in a time loop that was popularized recently by "Edge of Tomorrow." This time around, a girl keeps getting killed by a mysterious person in a mask and has to re-live the day of her death over and over until she presumably figures out who this person is and how to stop him or her. Despite being a very common premise, it went over remarkably well in "Edge of Tomorrow," meaning if "Happy Death Day" plays its cards right in terms of character and plot, then it might end up being a very popular movie this Halloween season.

Hoping to challenge "Happy Death Day" for that top spot will be Jackie Chan's The Foreigner. This will be the latest in a string of R-rated action films that have dominated the box office of late. "The Hitman's Bodyguard" ruled for three weeks starting in late August. "American Assassin" was the runner up during the second weekend of "IT," then "Kingsman: The Golden Circle" ruled for two weeks in late September. In fact, if we throw genre aside, if "The Foreigner" can manage to pull the upset, this will be the 10th straight weekend where an R-rated movie has been No. 1. The big draw for "The Foreigner" will be lead star Jackie Chan back in an American action movie doing his popular fighting style once again. Now Jackie Chan hasn't really left the film industry. In the last 5-10 years he's done quite a few handful of live action films, but most of them have been Chinese films that didn't cross over to America. This is probably because he's able to have more freedom to do things his way over in China as opposed to here in the United States. The premise is very much like "Taken" in that it's a revenge film after someone killed his daughter. Early reviews are positive, though, meaning this could have breakout potential if it connects with general audiences as well.

In around 1,200 theaters, Annapurna will be releasing the very relevant drama Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. Director and write Angela Robinson must be very happy that "Wonder Woman" was such a smash hit this summer, because now this biopic of the creator of "Wonder Woman" has the potential to make a lot more money than it otherwise may have. William Moulton Marston, who went by the pen name Charles Marston, had a polyamorous relationship with his wife and his mistress, with all three of them being very happy with the situation, despite that not exactly being accepted in the day. This movie tells the story of their relationship, how it inspired the "Wonder Woman" comics and how those comics were very controversial at the time. Those who loved "Wonder Woman" this summer may very well be curious as to the story behind her creation, if Annapurna plays their cards right, which they didn't with the movie "Detroit," back in August. In a very crowded month, this could either become a sleeper hit or it could get lost.

The final wide release of the weekend is the latest biopic that Chadwick Boseman will be starring in and that is Marshall. Boseman gained popularity by playing Jackie Robinson in "42" in 2013 as well as James Brown in "Get on Up" in 2014. Those breakout roles led him to be cast as Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After being introduced in "Captain America: Civil War," Black Panther will be getting his movie this February. Thus Chadwick Boseman definitely has the star power to help propel this forward as "Marshall" will see him play the role of Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice. Open Roads Films will be hoping for some positive reviews on this one so that they can give it a good Oscar push. Those reviews will be critical here as Open Roads has also made the decision to scale back the theater count. Initially scheduled for a wider release, they have decided to instead play this in just over 800 theaters, thus playing the word of mouth game to hopefully push it forward through a crowded marketplace.

October 20th - 22nd-

The third weekend of October has five new releases, which means something has to give because they can't all make a ton of money. The most likely candidate of the bunch to lead the way will be Tyler Perry's Boo 2! A Madea Halloween. Tyler Perry has been churning out his movies pretty consistently since 2006, with his Madea series being most popular. Madea being a fictional character of Tyler Perry dressing up as a older black woman. Despite Tyler Perry having a pretty faithful fan base that show up to all his movies, regardless of what critics, he was trending downward before last year until his Halloween themed Madea movie, "Boo! A Madea Halloween" surprised and became his second highest grossing film with $73.2 million total, behind only "Madea Goes to Jail." The holiday theme combined with the Madea character got Madea fans to come out of their closets and swarm the theaters. So Perry acted very quick and threw together this sequel for this year. More Madea with more Halloween. Comedy sequels are very hit and miss, with a lot more siding on the miss portion of that lately. But the Madea films from Perry have thus far had a pretty safe floor as all of them have made over $50 million, so it feels safe to bet on this one.

The next three movies have the potential to all be neck and neck, so at this point it's hard to predict which one will rise to the top, but lately the movie that has been trending upwards is The Snowman. No, this is not your typical happy snowman that sits in your front yard and it's certainly not a Frosty the Snowman movie, this is a movie about a serial killer whose signature includes leaving a snowman at every murder scene. It's based off the book of the same name by Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø.  The movie stars Michael Fassbender as the detective hunting down this serial killer and co-stars Rebecca Fergusen, Val Kilmer, J.K. Simmons and others. With this being a thriller released in October, "The Snowman" hopes to be this year's "Gone Girl" while hoping to avoid becoming the next "The Girl on the Train." That being in terms of quality, of course. "The Snowman" would love to make similar money as either film, but perhaps a more realistic comparison financially might be 2007's "Zodiac," which opened to $13.4 million while ending with $33.1 million total.

Next up we have a movie in a similar situation as the aforementioned "The Mountain Between Us," but will be hoping for better results and that is Only the Brave. Unlike "The Mountain Between Us," this is a survival movie that's based on a true story, whereas "The Mountain Between Us" is fictional. "Only the Brave" tells the story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a group of elite firefighters who sacrificed their lives fighting the Yarnell Hill Fire near Yarnell, Arizona in June 2013. At the time, the fire was the deadliest U.S. wildfire since 1991 and the deadliest for U.S. firefighters since 1933. It's the sixth deadliest firefighter disaster in U.S. history and the deadliest wildfire ever in Arizona. The movie is directed by Joseph Kosinski, director of "Tron Legacy" and "Oblivion," and stars Josh Brolin, Miles Teller, Jeff Bridges, Jennifer Connelly and Taylor Kitsch. Again, the success of this type of movie is dependent on reviews. Strong reviews could mean Oscar buzz and/or strong box office. Negative reviews could mean the movie is forgotten after a few weeks. With this specific event fresh on the minds of many, proper execution of the story will be necessary to please audiences, much like Peter Berg has had with "Deepwater Horizon" and "Patriot's Day."

While "The Snowman" is trending upwards and "Only the Brave" will await critical reviews, a movie trending the wrong direction this weekend is Geostorm, which looks like a disaster movie taken straight out of the 90's with special effects from 2017. The 90's loved their big, silly disaster movies that may have made no sense, but audiences have seemingly grown out of that phase, with a lot of recent disaster movies being completely rejected by audiences. The most notable recent example was that of "Independence Day: Resurgence," which may have been more accepted had it come out two or three years after the original was released in 1996, but was probably 15-18 years too late by coming out in 2016. Same story here for "Geostorm"? The plot is the monster of all disaster movies with the satellites designed to control the global climate having gone completely skiwampus, causing crazy national disasters to happen across the globe. In addition to audiences having overgrown this genre, it might be possible that this movie has poor timing with a lot of actual natural disasters devastating millions across the globe this year. The movie is directed by Dean Devil, producer of "Independence Day" and stars Gerard Butler, Ed Harris and Abbie Cornish.

The final movie of the month is the latest Christian film from Pure Flix, that of Same Kind of Different as Me. Pure Flix recently delivered "A Question of Faith" into 661 theaters on the final weekend of September to decent results of $1.03 million in opening weekend, a decent total for a smaller Christian film. If the theater count is the same for "Same Kind of Different as Me," that's probably a good range to look at. Or it could play like Pure Flix's "A Case for Christ," which opened to $3.97 million in 1,174 theaters this past April on its way to $14.7 million total. "Same Kind of Different as Me" stars Greg Kinnear from "Heaven is for Real" as a man who is struggling with his marriage and is forced by his wife, played by Renee Zellwegger, to befriend a homeless man, played by Djimon Hounsou. The story will presumably be teaching the principle that if you are in the service of your fellow beings, you are only in the service of your God. This type of Christian movie about the power of service could go over quite well with Christian audiences, but a breakout performance on the lines of "The Shack" ($57.3 million) or "Miracles from Heaven" ($61.7 million) is probably not in the cards.

October 27th - 29th-

With Halloween coming on a Tuesday this year, if moviegoers are looking for a good theatrical scare the weekend before, they'll have the chance to see "IT" or "Happy Death Day" if they haven't already. Or they can venture out to see Jigsaw, the latest addition in the long-going "Saw" franchise. "Saw" was first released around Halloween in 2004 and did well enough for them to decide to do another sequel each year until 2010. The franchise revolves around John Kramer, known as the Jigsaw Killer, or just Jigsaw. He captures his victims and puts them through certain "games" or "tests" to see how much psychological or physical torture they can endure. For example, in the first "Saw," two men are chained into a room and one of them is told to kill the other one or his wife and kids are going to be murdered, followed by him being left for dead. Not surprisingly, critical and audience reaction both went down with each ensuing film, but because the budget was so small that they made great profits, anyways. The seventh installment in 2010, titled "Saw 3D" was supposed to be the last one. But it's often never good to believe Hollywood when they say they're done. So we'll see if audiences are actually interested in this eighth film seven years later.

The next movie sees George Clooney return to the directing chair with his latest film Suburbicon. Clooney has quite the decorated history with the Oscars in all sorts of categories, having been nominated as an actor, producer, writer and director, winning an acting nomination for "Syriana" as well as a best picture for "Argo" as a producer. As a director, he's had various levels of success. "Good Night, and Good Luck" got six Oscar nominations, including best picture, while "The Ides of March" was also given high critical praise. But other movies, such as his latest 2014 film, "The Monuments Men," were a completely different story. Written by the Coen Brothers and starring Matt Damon, Julianne Moore and Oscar Isaac, "Suburbicon" was supposed to be Clooney's return to form as a director, but reviews out of Venice and TIFF were shockingly bad as the movie currently sits at a 41 percent on Rotten Tomatoes with 49 reviews counted. Many have cited too much tonal inconsistencies with this movie being a dark comedy about a supposedly peaceful community hiding a very violent underbelly. Clooney probably hopes that general audiences react better than the festival crowds, otherwise this might be dead on arrival and disappear quickly.

The final significant release of the weekend is the war drama Thank You for Your Service. This is the second appearance this month by Miles Teller in a movie based on a true story, with the first being "Only the Brave." The movie is directed by Jason Hall in his directorial debut following his Oscar nomination as the writer of "American Sniper." It's based on the book of the same name by David Finkel and tells the story of soldiers from Iraq who are trying to reintegrate back into society, but are having troubles doing so due to PTSD and other issues. This movie doesn't have a whole lot of buzz heading into its release and didn't make any festival rounds, so it has a big uphill battle to fight in order to gain recognition, but if it can manage to stand out of the crowd with how many war films have tackled similar subjects, then this could be a sleeper. But at the moment it's not looking super positive.

Last month I covered the movie All I See is You, but it managed to avoid release and moved into the last week of this month instead. I don't have any idea if Open Roads is committed to this date either, or how many theaters they are planning for this one, but this is the thriller directed by Marc Forster ("Word War Z," "Quantum of Solace") where a woman played by Blake Lively receives her sight and learns that her husband, played by Jason Clarke, is not quite the man she thought he was. For a few more details, head over to my September preview.

Classic Movie Review: It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)

This Halloween season I thought it would be fun to sit down and review a few Halloween classics. Typically on this blog I stick with reviewing newer movies in theaters. That's not to say I think new releases are the only movies worth watching. I'm a strong advocate of going back and watching older films. That's just the niche I've established on this blog. But I have had a desire to find an excuse to go back and review some older movies, so I thought that this Halloween season would be a good excuse to do so. And if people reading my blog decide that they enjoy these older reviews, maybe I'll do more of them. Call this an experimental phase here. Now this is not the first series of older reviews I've done. I wrote detailed reviews of all six episodic "Star Wars" movies leading up to "The Force Awakens." But this is the first time I've used the label "Classic Movie Review." With this label, I use the word "classic" to mean vintage, seasoned or old. A way to differentiate between my typical theatrical movie reviews and these older movie reviews. Not "classic" as in perfect quality. Because I still plan on being completely honest. I sometimes get annoyed with the idea that no flaws exist in these older films just because they're old. So get ready for some honest reviews of some classic films!

When I announced my intentions of doing this on my facebook page last month, I asked for requests as to what Halloween-themed movies people would want to see me review so I can get a good combination of movies I want to review with movies that others want to see me review. When I did that, I was surprised to see that the first and most popular request was this little 1966 Charlie Brown TV special. It's not really a movie, as its only a 25 minute long TV special, and there's not much to it. Just Charlie Brown and company doing Halloween things. But OK. I'll talk about Charlie Brown. Because we all love Charlie Brown, right? One of the great things about Charlie Brown is how relatable he is to so many people. He's very ordinary and plain. He has a lot of ambition and desire, but it seems like he fails at everything he does, thus his self-confidence is super low, which is not helped by the fact that he has people like Lucy giving him non-stop insults. I think that's often how a lot of us see ourselves. We look at everyone else around us and see how amazing, attractive and successful they all are while looking ourselves and seeing how plain and ordinary we are. Thus it's easy to have low self-confidence. I'm just me, right? There's nothing special about me.

The beauty of it all is something that I think was expressed so beautifully in 2015's Blue Sky production of "The Peanuts Movie." Spoilers for that movie if you haven't seen it, but Charlie Brown spends the whole movie crushing after the cute, little red-headed girl. Every situation in the movie is him trying to impress her, but seemingly failing in true Charlie Brown fashion. Thus he's shocked at the end when she has an honest desire to be his pen pal. In a moment of pure confusion and almost self-loathing, he asks her why she wants to spend any time as his pen pal. He's just Charlie Brown. But she turns around and flips things over by going over each situation we've seen in the movie and telling Charlie Brown how those situations honestly impressed her. Charlie Brown has no self-confidence in his abilities, but he should. And the little red-headed girl genuinely detailed why he should in fact love himself and be proud of who he is. That moment floored me and nearly brought me to tears because I saw myself in that and it honestly opened my eyes just like it did for Charlie Brown. And I think that's a great message for all of us. If ever you're down about yourself, remember the story of Charlie Brown. Because, like him, you are special and important.

I think that's why we all love Charlie Brown and why we're willing to sit down and watch TV specials or read comic strips that aren't necessarily elaborate or deep. We love these characters. We relate with them. We have fun watching them. Thus when we have a TV special that's been playing on TV every year for the last 51 years, we're all willing to sit down and watch it again, even though we've seen it so many times. Which, by the way, ABC will be playing it on Thursday, October 19, so mark your calendars! Or just go ask one of your friends if you can borrow it, because a lot of people own it. Or search for it on YouTube, because it's there as well. Yes, I've watched it plenty of times, but as I sat down last night to re-watch it in preparation for this review, I wanted to specifically know what set this 25-minute TV special apart from everything else Peanuts related. If there exists a person on Earth that has never seen this special, what would they take from this that would cause them to remember it? If you have a young child that has not been exposed to anything Peanuts related, could you choose to sit them down and show them this and have them instantly converted to Peanuts because of something spectacular that this did? Or is this something elevated by nostalgia?

Keeping those questions in mind, I watched this. Then I spent the night and morning pondering about it. Then I watched it again. Perhaps those critical lenses is the wrong way to watch this, but holiday-themed nostalgia is a real powerful thing. There's a lot of movies out there that hit theaters for the first time and are duds because the quality isn't super high. But because they gain a cult following due to the holiday theme, they become classics where anyone who says anything bad will be burnt at the stake. I personally try to resist and figure out which holiday movies are worth watching because they are genuinely good movies and which ones are nostalgia-boosted movies. After careful evaluation, I have determined that "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" rides that line pretty well. This is a perfectly harmless bit of 25-minute entertainment, full of Peanuts characters doing exactly what you want Peanuts characters to be doing, thus it's really hard to watch this without coming away with a big smile on your face. And if you want to put yourself into the Halloween mood, watching these characters hunting down and carving pumpkins, putting on costumes, going trick-or-treating and spending time at a Halloween party is definitely going to put you into the mood.

On the flip-side to that, if you're looking for something deep, profound and emotional from this, you're not going to get it. It's simply Peanuts characters doing Peanuts characters things. You can call them cliche if you want. Lucy insulting Charlie and Linus. The gag where Charlie tries to kick the football. Snoopy hunting down the Red Baron. All of the side characters and their gags. This is not a Peanuts special that really branches out and does anything different. Maybe that's because it was made in 1966 where all of that wasn't as common or played out. So you give it a pass. But then you go watch everything else Peanuts related and come back to this, it might lose its charm a bit. Perhaps you can say it doesn't quite hold the test of time when you look at it honestly. Which is then made up for by the fact that we've all watched it so many times that the nostalgia aspect is very strong. Re-watching it is not going to affect me in the same way "The Peanuts Movie" did or still does. I may not sit down and watch it on my own when I'm bored during October, but if it becomes the showing of someone's choosing at a movie night, I'm not going to complain. It still brings a smile to my face as I sit down and watch it, especially when I have family and friends around with me.

You might be angry at me for looking at this special with such harsh critical lenses, but so be it. However, in doing so, I did pick up on one other potentially interesting aspect that I don't know if I caught before. In between all the Peanuts gags, there is a thru story here and that has to do with Linus and the Great Pumpkin. The Great Pumpkin is an attempted folklore that hasn't really made it into our culture like Santa, the Easter Bunny or Cupid has. But in this instance, Linus believes in the Great Pumpkin and decides to valiantly sit in his pumpkin patch at night waiting for it to come. He even gets Sally to sit with him. The subtle brilliance of this is that the Great Pumpkin never comes and he ends up wasting his time when he could've been with his friends. I think there's a lot of cartoons or shows that would have Santa, the Easter Bunny or the Great Pumpkin show up to please kids and audiences. But this chooses not to. I can see a lot of various ways that this can be interpreted thematically if you make it a discussion point among friends, the biggest one in my mind being that the show is telling us that it's most important to spend time with family and friends on holidays instead of focusing too much on fictional folklore that often flood our holiday seasons.

That last bit I find super interesting, especially when I attempt to critically analyze it and figure out what it means. There's also quite a bit of subtlety like that thrown in the smaller moments that may have been overlooked by myself and possibly some of you out there reading this that I think makes this genius. But even with that, I don't know if this specific Peanuts special has quite as much to say as many other Peanuts specials, comic strips and movies have. But does it need to? Perhaps not. I think for most people, the fun of this special is sitting down and watching our beloved characters celebrating Halloween in a very classic Peanuts way. Nostalgia and tradition definitely play a big role in this and I don't think that has to be a bad thing. Since this has been playing every year on TV since it premiered in 1966, a lot of people out there have fond memories of watching this with family and friends, so continuing that tradition will bring back those memories and thus make you happy. That's the best thing about holidays, right? Traditions. Memories. Family. But from my own critical lens, this isn't necessarily the Peanuts special that I would claim as a flawless masterpiece that I have to watch every Halloween. Thus my grade for "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" is an 8/10.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle Review

On Valentine's Day weekend in 2015, "Kingsman: The Secret Service" debuted right alongside "Fifty Shades of Grey" as some counter-programming for people that actually appreciate these things called movies and not the complete trash that is the latter-mentioned movie. I of course wasn't going to touch that filthy piece of sleaze, so I smartly elected to enter the theater for this "Kingsman" movie that looked like it could be a bit of fun. And holy cow did I experience quite the wild, intense ride. From the moment Sofia Boutella's character used her prosthetic legs, which doubled as sharp blades, to slice a man vertically in half, to the moment where hundreds of heads colorfully blew up with patriotic music playing in the background, I was thoroughly entertained. I now own the movie and have joyfully watched it on many occasions. It's one of the most fun action movies I've seen in a long time. So naturally I was super excited to jump back into this universe, especially when it was announced that Matthew Vaughan was back to direct and most of the cast from the first were on board to reprise their roles, while people like Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore were added to the cast. And the trailers looked phenomenal. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, see, that's a funny discussion. A lot of critics seem to think that a lot did go wrong in this movie, thus it unfortunately is in possession of a giant, ugly, splattered, rotten tomato on the critics aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes. I always do my best to make up my own decision and not let someone else's thoughts influence my own when it comes to movies, but it's interesting what reviews can do to your expectations. The absolute worst feeling is when you go into a movie that you are dead set on loving, only to witness a disaster unfold. So when others said that they didn't like this movie, I had to temper my expectations a bit to avoid that huge crash of disappointment. But then I paid closer attention to what people were actually saying and I got the vibe that we had an "it's not as good as the first, that means I hate it" scenario. As if no gray area or middle ground is allowed in film. If it's not an epic masterpiece, then it has to be the worst movie on the planet, right? WRONG!!! I hate that mindset. Thus I went from super excited to tempered expectations to determined to enjoy the movie anyways. All before seeing the movie. And hey, a 50 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes means half of the critics liked the movie. That's a good sign, right?

I purposely detail that experience because, in this situation, choosing to ignore what I deemed as unfair criticisms actually made it so I really enjoyed this movie. It's really easy to jump on the bandwagon of hate, especially when more and more hateful reviews come out. But my plea for all of my readers is that you don't jump on bandwagons just because everyone else is. It's perfectly OK for you to love a movie that other people don't enjoy. On the flip side, you are also not required to enjoy a movie that the whole population of Earth seems to be enjoying. Go to a movie that you think you are going to enjoy and make up your own mind as to how you felt about the movie. I see too many people being heavily influenced by the opinions of others that they often end up hating movies out of obligation because everyone else hated it. I don't like that. And I'd hate for a movie such as "Kingsman: The Golden Circle" to be thrown to the wayside just because it became the cool thing to say it was a bad movie. Because it's not. Not in my opinion, anyways. And hey, if you look at the audience score for "The Golden Circle," it currently stands at a 75 percent, which is close to the 84 percent audience score "The Secret Service" received. That should mean something.

With that rant out of the way, let's talk about this actual movie, which I think has a lot worthy of praise. Is it as solid as the first? No. It's not. But that doesn't make it a bad movie. In my opinion it's OK to simply be good. Which is exactly what this movie is. A good movie. One of the major things that holds this movie back from being great like the first one is the actual plot. Julianne Moore plays a crazy psychotic woman living in the middle of the jungle in some country and she has essentially gained a monopoly on the drug industry where she has poisoned every recreational drug in the world. Now she goes to the president of the United States with certain demands she wants met or else everyone who has caught her disease will die within like 24 hours. In the meantime, every Kingsman base in U.K. has been blown up by her, so the remaining Kingsman have to go to the United States and team up with the Statesman, essentially the United States' version of the Kingsman, to stop Julianne Moore before half of the population of the world dies. Yeah, this plot got a bit too silly for me. I mean, I know this is "Kingsman." Ridiculous is the name of the game. But it got a little too unrealistic and ridiculous. I would've liked them to be a little more grounded with things.

Mainly I'm tired of this whole shtick with the main villain trying to destroy the world. There's not a whole lot of solid motivation behind what Julianne Moore is doing and she doesn't pull off an evil, crazy psychopath convincingly enough, even though she admittedly is having a ton of fun with the role. Never once did I believe she was capable of destroying every single Kingsman base and never once did I believe she was capable of inserting a drug into every last recreational drug on Earth or that she could just press a button and the remedies would be immediately dispersed within seconds to every single person. It was too much. I feel that Matthew Vaughan simply wanted to go bigger and better with every aspect of the movie and thought that having a more powerful villain with a more deadly plan was the right thing to do. I don't think it was. It would require a super crazy, terrifying villain to successfully pull that off and even though Julianne Moore had a ton of fun with what she was given, she wasn't the right choice. The person who did work as a villain was the return of Edward Holcroft's Charlie, one of the butt-hurt, rejected Kingsman candidates from the first movie back for revenge. Except he played a distant second fiddle, so it didn't quite make up for it.

The other missed opportunity here was the team-up with the Statesman and the lack of focus in the second act. When we're first introduced to the Statesman, Channing Tatum is front and center and he does a dang good job with his role, as does Jeff Bridges with his role as head of the Statesman. But then Channing Tatum falls victim to this virus and is out of commission for the entire movie, thus getting like 10 minutes of screen time. On top of that, the only time we see Jeff Bridges is in an office during discussions and plans. I wanted a lot more of those two alongside Taron Ederton, Mark Strong and Colin Firth. That would've been awesome. Instead we get a lot of mediocre Halle Berry playing the Merlin role for the Statesman and a whole lot of Pedro Pascal as the Statesman agent who actually gets most of the screen time and involvement in the action and the story. That frustrated me. We also went on a whole lot of tangents in the middle of the film that bogged the story down. The run time of this movie clocks in at 141 minutes. We could've shaved like 30 minutes of that off and the flow of the movie would've been much improved. And while I'm dishing out complaints, two decisions were made that angered me. But those are spoilers.

There you go. I think those aspects of the movie are what are causing a lot of people to hate this movie. But to me, all of that doesn't quite bring the movie down to rotten level. There's just a lot of missed opportunities, a lack of focus and a forgettable main story and villain. But all of our main cast take what they are given and fully commit to it. The beginning of the movie is rather insane with some high octane action sequences that I had a blast with. Teron Egerton once again owned it as Eggsy while Mark Strong and Collin Firth were both fantastic as well. And even though Channing Tatum and Jeff Bridges weren't in the movie as much as I wanted them to be, they also owned the screen time they got, making it so I would love a spin-off focused solely on the Statesman. This time with Tatum and Bridges being front and center instead of being sidelined. And again, even though I didn't like Julianne Moore's character, she gave it her best. Thus we had a cast and crew that were fully committed to making this a fun movie and that level of commitment honestly made me really enjoy the movie. And most of the action sequences were on par with the first movie. We don't get a "church sequence" in this movie, but what we do get is a crazy, wild ride that I enjoyed.

The best part of this movie is the final third for me. Given the nature of a final third, I will not detail it, but we get intense, crazy and surprisingly emotional, even though a few decisions made me angry. And there was one specific action sequence that did make me super dizzy, but I don't think the action as a whole was quite as bad as some are making it out to be. Yes, this does get a bit on the comic book level with certain stunts that take place. Again, bigger and badder doesn't always mean better quality. And given that this was the first sequel that Matthew Vaughan has ever directed, I think he got a little carried away with trying to make the movie bigger and better. I hope that he is able to learn from certain mistakes and give us a more grounded, slightly more realistic third movie. But I still had fun. And if you go in with the mindset that this movie is a "Kingsman" movie, I think you'll find a lot of entertainment value out of this. The first act of the movie is a ton of fun. The third act of this movie gets ridiculous and insane in all the ways you hope a "Kingsman" movie will do. A lack of focus in the second act, a lame villain and a lackluster overall story are what brings this movie down, but I still think this is better than many are giving it credit for and thus I will award the movie an 8/10.

The LEGO Ninjago Movie Review

"The LEGO Movie" in 2014 was a movie that a lot of people were really nervous about. I mean, a movie about LEGOs? What can you do with that to make it interesting? Turns out with the right creative team you can make anything work. Phil Lord and Chris Miller were definitely the right two people for the job as "The LEGO Movie" was absolutely genius and one of my favorites of 2014. And on record, I wasn't among the crowd dreading it. I saw those trailers and I was sold. But apparently I'm in the minority, which is OK. I ended up being right with my premonitions. That aside, the success of "The LEGO Movie" opened up a whole new door for Warner Bros. Animation with a whole slew of different LEGO Movie options that they could do and they decided to start things off brilliantly with "The LEGO Batman Movie" earlier this year. Not only was Will Arnett's Batman one of the funniest parts of "The LEGO Movie," but there have been so many iterations of Batman over the years that doing a LEGO spoof movie on the character was absolutely genius. While I loved "The LEGO Movie" more, "The LEGO Batman Movie" wasn't too far behind in quality. And now we have the third movie in the LEGO series in... "The LEGO Ninjago Movie"? In Warner Bros. we trust?

With the success of "The LEGO Movie" and "The LEGO Batman Movie," it didn't take too much convincing for me to be excited about "Ninjago." Ninjas are cool, I guess. I like the cast in the movie. And the trailers were fun. So why not? Let's just trust in Warner Bros. and jump right in! The problem here for me was that "The LEGO Movie" was made for people who love LEGOs and "The LEGO Batman Movie" was made for people who love Batman. I am definitely deep into both those crowds. "Ninjago" was a completely unknown entity for me. Since the announcement and trailers for "Ninjago," I learned there's a popular kids TV show called "Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu" that aired its seventh season earlier this year that has also sparked (or perhaps vice-versa?) a whole brand of Ninjago LEGO sets that are some of LEGO's most popular sets. So I suppose it makes sense. But who's the audience here? How are they going to make this movie appeal to adults and kids this time around when most adults probably aren't super aware of "Ninjago" unless they have kids who love the series and the LEGO sets? Or have they decided to just ignore the adult crowd this time around and make a LEGO Movie specifically for the kids?

The answer to that latter question is definitely the latter answer. "The LEGO Ninjago Movie" is a movie solely for kids. Adults expecting the quality and depth of the first two movies are going to be sorely disappointed as we instead have a movie that is about on par with a straight-to-DVD LEGO movie. And remember the creative team that I referenced earlier that was key to making "The LEGO Movie" work? That might be our biggest problem here. We don't have Lord and Miller on this project like we did with the original. We don't even have someone like Chris McKay, who, prior to directing "The LEGO Batman Movie," worked a lot as director and producer of "Robot Chicken." With "The LEGO Ninjago Movie," we have a trio of directors who have primarily worked in the art department on various animated projects. Charlie Bean is the most experienced in the director's chair, having directed eight episodes of "TRON: Uprising" and 17 episodes of "Robotboy," while Paul Fisher and Bob Logan are stepping into the director's chair for the very first time, TV or film. And the team of writers is a rather large one, seemingly led again by Fisher and Logan, who have no screenwriting experience either. Too many cooks in the kitchen? And none with enough experience?

With that in mind, it makes perfect sense as to why this story is just a mess. And even though I know nothing about "Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu," I got the premonitions after watching this that the movie had absolutely nothing to do with the TV show. After reading a brief few things from a few people, I think my premonitions might be right and thus it's possible that your kids who love that show might walk away a bit confused as to what in the heck they just watched and why it has nothing to do with their TV show outside outside character names and character designs. That's all I'll say about that, given my limited knowledge of the show. Just a potential fair warning there. What we do have is a story that you can predict from the second you watch the trailers and a movie that thinks it's as smart as "The LEGO Movie" but really just had me bewildered as to how off it was. Kinda like the young 10-year-old kid who is confidently trying to sound as smart as his older brother, but is really just pulling at straws with no one wanting to be brave enough to tell him that all the knowledge he's spouting off is completely wrong. That's how "Ninjago" felt to me. The confident, yet clueless little brother to "The LEGO Movie." Thus I walked out of the theater really disappointed.

As far as specifics go, I do feel the need to talk about two plot points. Both were featured highly in the trailers and neither are actually spoilers. However, if you've read enough from this review and/or you haven't seen the trailers, you don't have to proceed if you don't want me talking about plot points. If you don't mind, then allow me to continue. Our main story arc in this movie follows a young teenage kid named Lloyd, whose secret identity is one of the Ninjas protecting the city. His father is the evil Lord Garmadon who daily attacks the city. Getting Luke/Darth Vader vibes just by me saying that? Yeah, we'll get to that. The other major plot point is that of a cat attacking the city. That I actually thought was a spoiler, thus I wasn't going to mention it in this review. But as it turns out, the whole father/son thing is more of a spoiler than the cat. Yes, it's a giant, live action cat that has seemingly jumped onto the LEGO set and started to play with the buildings, not helped by the fact that Lord Gardadon has a laser pointer that the cat loves playing with. Yeah, this is kind of a funny gag that had me laughing. However, I thought that this cat duel was going to be the final boss fight for our ninjas. No. The cat shows up at the beginning and is the main conflict throughout the movie.

So yeah, the funniest gag in the movie is one that is way overplayed. The cat showing up for 5-10 minutes at the end and destroying their city could've made for a funny finale. But he kinda wore out his welcome by being there for the whole movie. Then we have our father/son thing. And I really am curious to know how this writers meeting worked out for this. Someone honestly suggested that the evil overlord of the city was the father of the main character, as if this would be a clever, unique story to follow that would win over audiences. As if no one watching has ever heard of this thing called "STAR WARS"!!!! Had they done something fun or unique with that story arc, then fine. But I swear they wrote this movie as a huge ninja parody of "Star Wars," hoping that no one would figure it out if they followed nearly the same exact structure. Or maybe they wrote this thinking that their target audience of young kids either wouldn't care or wouldn't notice. Which is totally fine if it pleases them. But I am a little frustrated that they chose to completely ignore the adult crowd that turned out in droves for their last two LEGO movies. I was waiting for something unique or clever with this story. Instead it's exactly what you think it's going to be.

I suppose there's enough fun to be had in this movie that it's a passable film, especially for younger kids that are dying to see another new movie since it's been a couple months. In comparing this movie to the likes of "Cars 3" or "Despicable Me 3," I was certainly a lot less frustrated this time around. I didn't hate life and I wasn't completely bored to tears. The cat stuff is fun for a while and the adventures that the group of ninjas go on, led by Jackie Chan's Master Wu as their teacher, were decent. There were a few fun LEGO ninja fights. But the movie was also trying way too hard to be as clever as "The LEGO Movie" instead of doing its own thing. Lloyd was too much like Emmet. Lord Garmadon was too much like Lord Business. The message was fine and you got a few feel goods, but it also mirrored "The LEGO Movie" quite a bit. There was even a live action element to the movie that starts this film off and feels completely forced and unnecessary this time around. If your kids were looking forward to this movie, you should take them if you have the time and money because they'll probably enjoy it. But if you can convince them to wait until the DVD release, that might be best. My grade for "The LEGO Ninjago Movie" is a 7/10 and even that feels a bit too nice.