Movie Preview: October 2018

September was unsurprisingly the slowest month of 2018 thus far. But that's to be expected as September is typically the lowest-grossing month of the year, although last year that honor belonged to October, which definitely won't be the case this year, but we'll get to that. As far as September standards go, this year was actually fairly productive as the $664.3 million that was earned was the second highest September on record, behind only last year's $697.6 million total that was notably boosted by the huge phenomenon that was "IT," which accounted for 41.1 percent of the month's total earnings. Compare that to this year where the $109 million September total of "The Nun" only accounted for 16.4 percent of the month's total, meaning we had a much more balanced total this time around with 12 movies making at least $20 million and five making at least $40 million. Last year only had seven movies make $20 million while only two crossed the $40 million threshold. Now as previously noted, October is oftentimes just as low as September at the box office. However, with several huge juggernauts on the schedule this month, that almost certainly won't be the case, meaning 2014's record of $758 million is well within striking range, so let's dive in and look at it.

October 5th - 7th-

Things are set to start off with a bang this October as we have, not one, but two movies that could challenge the October opening weekend record, which is currently held by "Gravity" with $55.8 million. In fact, no two new October releases have combined to earn $100 million on the same weekend, which is quite likely to happen this weekend. Tracking indicates that Sony's Venom will be leading the charge. Sony has had a bit of a rocky history of late with their superhero movies, which caused them to strike up a deal with Marvel to let Spider-Man over into the MCU. But they're stubbornly not giving up on having their own cinematic universe separate from Marvel and they're hoping to launch that with "Venom," one of the more popular antiheroes in Marvel comics and a common foe of Spider-Man, who most recently showed up in "Spider-Man 3." Tom Hardy takes the lead role of Eddie Brock, aka Venom, as he faces off against, not Spider-Man, but fellow symbiote Riot, played by Riz Ahmed.

As far as the box office potential for "Venom," industry tracking for a while now has pegged this in the $50-70 million range for opening weekend, which puts it well below the typical $80-100 million that the solo MCU films have been making and only half as much as "Spider-Man: Homecoming," which opened to $117 million last year. However, without Spider-Man, and without the MCU label, it would be unfair to expect "Venom" to hit those levels, which is why Sony has smartly only spent $100 million on the production budget, which is at least half that of the $200+ million budget of Sony's "Amazing Spider-Man" movies as well as far below the $250 million budget of "Spider-Man 3." So "Venom" doesn't need to make as much to earn a profit for Sony. In fact, if it does hit in the expected range, that makes the comparison of "X-Men: Apocalypse" a viable one as that movie opened to $65 million, making $155 million total. The lackluster reviews might also cause it to fall lower and come closer to the $53 million that both "Green Lantern" and "The Wolverine" opened to, leaving a potential $115-130 million final total. Add in the overseas numbers and Sony just might be able to sneak out a win.

Playing challenger to "Venom," helping the weekend get to record-breaking levels for October, is the fourth cinematic iteration of A Star is Born. This story was first told in 1937 with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March. It was remade in 1954 with Judy Garland and James Mason and again in 1976 with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. And now Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper take the reins. Each iteration of the story has involved two individuals on the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of their career -- either acting or music, depending on the version -- finding each other and falling in love, with one having their star rising while the other is experiencing a downward spiral. Each of the three versions have been met with some level of acclaim at the Academy Awards, with the 1937 and 1954 films each getting both of the lead actors a nomination, a feat that this 2018 film is looking to replicate after very strong reviews out of the festivals. In fact, the 1937 film received a total of seven nominations, the 1954 film received six and the 1976 film received four. Early buzz suggests that this 2018 film might top all of them for nominations, or at least match the high total. Because of all this, a lengthy box office run is in play here and it's looking to start off with at least $40-50 million.

October 12th - 14th-

This next weekend could be a bit of an interesting race for the top spot. Depending on how "Venom" and "A Star is Born" perform on their opening weekends, either of them could feasibly be in for a second weekend around $30 million, with "A Star is Born" likely to have the better weekend two hold. And $20-30 million is where two of our new openers this weekend will be aiming for, with First Man being the most likely candidate to successfully challenge for that top spot. "First Man" will be the third directorial effort from Damien Chazelle, who has made quite a name for himself after his first two films, "Whiplash" and "La La Land," both got best picture nominations, with "La La Land" winning best picture for about 15 seconds before "Moonlight" was revealed as the real winner. And now Chazelle is looking to go three for three with best picture nominations as he brings back Ryan Gosling to tell the story of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon. "First Man" had a successful festival run, coming out with an 89 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. If general audiences connect with it on the same level that festival audiences have, the movie could be in for a long run at the box office. Although a different genre, Chazelle's "La La Land" ended with $151.1 million domestically.
 
After getting treated to "The House with a Clock in Its Walls" towards the end of September, family audiences will get another family-friendly Halloween film in Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween. The "Goosebumps" series began in 1992 with author R.L. Stein writing 62 books in the original series from 1992 to 1997 with several other spin-off series also existed for a total of 231 books that have sold a total of over 400 million copies. The first "Goosebumps" movie came out in 2015 and made $80.1 million domestically after opening to $23.6 million. A safe prediction would be to put "Goosebumps 2" in a similar range, meaning it would be in a close competition with "First Man" for the best new opener of the week as both try to push "Venom" and "A Star is Born." The specific plot for this one revolves around two boys finding the book titled "Haunted Halloween," which in turn releases the popular doll named Slappy, who in turn releases all sorts of monsters in the world. The two boys, along with their sister and Jack Black's R.L. Stein work to stop Slappy before things get too crazy. Now given reaction to the marketing hasn't exactly been on fire, it wouldn't be surprising to see this fall a bit short of the first movie, especially with the level of competition at the moment.

Set to pull up in the caboose of all this is the final wide release of the weekend, Bad Times at the El Royal. This movie is a mystery/thriller wherein seven strangers all coincidentally meet up at a rundown hotel called El Royal, only to find out that something fishy is going on, making it a bit like "Clue," except with a stronger edge to it, as if Quentin Tarantino directed "Clue." The movie has quite the large cast that is headlined by Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson, Jon Hamm, Cailee Spaeny, Lewis Pullman and Chris Hemsworth as our seven strangers that meet up. The director here is not Quentin Tarantino, but Drew Goddard, who has done a lot of work with writing and screenplays, and is most notably known for creating the Netflix series "Daredevil." As far as his theatrical directorial efforts, the only other movie he directed was "The Cabin in the Woods" in 2012, which opened to $14.7 million. That is about the range where tracking has this movie opening, although if the reception is strong with general audiences, it could end up sneaking up on "Goosebumps 2." The movie debuted at Fantastic Fest in late September and had fairly good reception as it a 78 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, which is a good early sign.

October 19th - 21st-

The third juggernaut of the month that also has a chance at topping the $55.8 million mark that "Gravity" set is Halloween. This has been a franchise that has been around since the original John Carpenter horror classic was released in 1978. The general reaction to every entry in the franchise since the original has been mixed at best, which a lot of the entries being declared as awful. Yet despite that, Hollywood refuses to let this franchise go as this 2018 "Halloween" will be the 11th movie in the franchise and third that is simply titled "Halloween." Prior to the trailer being released, it would've been easy to predict that this movie would be yet another one that gets kicked to the curb and mostly ignored outside the potential for a decent opening weekend that, at best, might come close to the $26.3 million of the 2007 Rob Zombie "Halloween," the current highest in the franchise. But then the trailer came out and blew everyone out of the water as it looked to potentially match the quality of the 1978 original film, erasing every other film in the franchise and attempting to be a direct follow-up to the original, essentially replacing "Halloween II," except for saying that Michael Myers got captured and has spent the last 40 years back in prison.

This idea of a proper follow-up to an extremely popular horror film brings to mind what happened last year with the movie "IT." Ever since the 1986 novel by Stephen King and the ensuing 1990 TV mini-series starring Tim Curry, "IT" had been an extremely popular properly, ruining the careers of real-life clowns ever since. When it finally got a movie adaptation last year, with both an extremely effective marketing campaign and well-liked movie, it shattered records by opening to $123.4 million. That's the power of horror nostalgia and so far "Halloween" has played its cards perfectly with an extremely effective marketing effort that has fans excited. Not only that, but Universal was confident enough to release it at Toronto International Film Festival and Fantastic Fest with the reception being strong as it holds an 85 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, the second highest score behind the original's 93 percent, and the only other movie to even have a fresh score. This suggests that a huge opening weekend is in play as well as a strong run throughout October. Can it come close to "IT"? It might be a bit unfair to expect that. But at this point it seems like an opening close to the $53.8 million opening of last month's "The Nun" is at least what it'll do.

October 26th - 28th-

With "Halloween" set to blow up the box office the previous weekend, and with the Halloween holiday being right around the corner from this final weekend of October, "Halloween" should have no problem repeating at No. 1 at the box office as none of the three new releases look to provide much competition. Of the three, Hunter Killer has the best potential to open highest. This is a fictional and somewhat futuristic war film starring Gerard Butler, Gary Oldman and Common and is about a group of Navy SEALs who have to go over to Russia to rescue the Russian president, who has been captured by his own Defense Minister, with the goal of preventing World War III. Perhaps they are unfair comparisons because they're not quite the same type of movie, but the last two films that Gerard Butler headlined were "Geostorm" last October and "Den of Thieves" this January. Those two movies opened to $13.7 million and $15.2 million. Somewhere in that general ballpark is probably where "Hunter Killer" will fall. Prior to that, Gerard Butler also headlined "London Has Fallen," which opened to $21.6 million. Four very different movies, yes, but all of them being action films of some sort starring Gerard Butler, so the comparisons might not be too crazy.

The final two films are likely to not be much of a blip on the radar, but of those two films Johnny English Strikes Again is the most noteworthy one to mention. This stars Rowan Atkinson as a bit of a bumbling spy in a slapstick heavy comedy and is the third movie in this Johnny English franchise, following "Johnny English" in 2003 and "Johnny English Reborn" in 2011. In 2003, "Johnny English" opened to $9.1 million in the United States while "Johnny English Reborn" fell even smaller, opening to $3.8 million. This suggest that "Johnny English Strikes Again" would be extremely lucky to hit $10 million and might even struggle to get to $5 million. However, stopping at that would be extremely foolish because this is not an American franchise. Despite both movie's low American totals, both "Johnny English" films finished with a worldwide total of $160 million, meaning that 82.5 percent of the first movie's total came from overseas while 94.8 percent of the second movie's total came from overseas, with the United Kingdom unsurprisingly being the highest market for both films. So the American total of this third movie probably means close to nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it's here as a courtesy release for those who care.

The final movie of the weekend comes from Pure Flix and that is Indivisible. This movie is based on the true story of Army Chaplain Darren Turner and the battle scars that war left on them, threatening their marriage. Given that this is a Pure Flix film, the Christian angle of using God to help save their marriage is the big theme here, making this a similar story to the September film "Unbroken: Path to Redemption," which had the advantage of being connected to the popular "Unbroken" film from 2014. Despite that, "Path to Redemption" still couldn't break out beyond the usual Pure Flix release, which doesn't inspire confidence in "Indivisible," which thus looks to fall in line with the other Pure Flix films of 2018, "Samson," "God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness," "Death of a Nation" and the previously mentioned "Path to Redemption," all of which failed to hit $3 million on their opening weekend. The highest opening weekend for Pure Flix is "God's Not Dead 2," which opened to $7.6 million. It doesn't look like "Indivisible" will get anywhere close to that. Without much awareness at this point, it's possible that "Indivisible" even struggles to get to $2 million.

Retro Review: Halloween II (1981)

Last year I began an experimental venture in the month of October in reviewing several iconic Halloween-themed films in honor of the season. I had a lot of fun with that and the reviews got a lot of attention, so I thought it would be a great idea to bring this series back and call it a tradition. Last year I called these "Classic Movie Reviews," but I struggled with that label because "classic" typically denotes high quality and that's not necessarily what I was aiming for. I just wanted a differentiation between current movies that I normally review and older movies. "Retro Review" seemed like a better representation of that, especially since "Halloween II" isn't necessarily a classic. Plus there's alliteration there. So let's see if this sticks better. As a part of my reviews last year, I reviewed the trifecta of classic horror films, "Halloween," "Friday the 13th" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street." I initially thought that I'd do the sequels to all of these films this year, but I think I'll take a pass for now. However, "Halloween II" became an immediate priority when I figured out what the new 2018 "Halloween" is all about. They're wiping the slate clean and doing a direct follow-up to the original as if "Halloween II" didn't exist. So now we have to determine the better sequel.

When I reviewed the original Halloween last year, which I have linked right there if you missed it, I dove into a long discussion about what makes a proper horror villain as well as what makes a legitimately terrifying movie. Both of these elements are certainly subjective, especially in terms of what scares someone, but my basic conclusion when it comes to Michael Myers is that I don't necessarily find him to be that intriguing of a character. He's written to be the personification of pure evil in that he was born without a soul and simply decided to kill his sister when he was just six years old. After spending 15 years in a mental institution, he broke out and killed three seemingly random teenagers for reasons that the movie chooses not to explain. Before he can kill the final one he's hunting, our main character of Laurie Strode, he gets shot six times, falls off a second-story floor, then disappears, seemingly unharmed. So not only was he born without a soul and has zero motivation, but he's also immortal? Personally I don't find that quite as interesting. I've spent a lot more time than I probably should studying serial killers and the lack of realism there takes me out of it a bit. And I also disagree one what qualifies as pure evil.

I'm not going to completely rehash that subject. You can go check out that review for a more in depth look into that. But that's the basic summary. However, despite me not fully agreeing on Michael Myers being the greatest horror villain in terms of his character, the movie itself is possibly the most effective horror film I've seen in terms of how scary it is. There's not an over-reliance on jump scares or gory sequences, but rather the effective use of music, sound effects and camera work, as well as proper setup for the scenes, make the movie legitimately terrifying. Where the movie might be lacking in the writing, John Carpenter makes up for in the setup of the horror. Thus he turned Michael Myers into a thing of nightmares, even though I find it fairly easy to critique him. The final result is the perfect horror movie if your goal is simply to watch a movie that'll scare you. After all, not many necessarily require an in-depth character study in their horror films. They just want horror. That means this sequel that came out three years later had a lot to live up to. And, well, its legacy is not quite as squeaky clean as its predecessor. That means I can breathe easily knowing that I can criticize this without having to worry about people coming at me with their torches and pitchforks.

That said, I'm not going to tear into this movie as I actually think its a worthy successor and probably a step ahead of a lot of horror sequels in the 80's. I feel like the 80's was the golden era of the slasher films, but I also don't feel like the filmmakers and/or studios cared about having quality sequels. It was all about quantity as all of these franchises were given a crapton of sequels in quick succession and not many of them are known for being good films, unless you're one who can enjoy a brainless slasher film whose purpose is to kill as many people as fast as possible in the most gruesome ways. For me, though, that's not good horror. In fact, that's what gives horror a bad name as some studios only care about the dollar bills that'll be cashed into their banks, so they effortlessly throw up a whole bunch of worthless sequels to get that money. That's why I can appreciate "Halloween II" because it seems like there was a lot of people involved in the making of this film that actually tried to make a proper follow-up. I think they had an excellent idea for the premise of this film as this movie picks up right where the first movie left off. It even backs up and uses the ended of the first movie as the beginning of the movie, then continues on from there.

The result of this makes for a fun "Halloween" marathon on Halloween as the two movies essentially fit together as one movie. We don't even progress forward a single day. The majority of this movie is the second half of that same Halloween night, although at this point the town is in a frenzy because the word has gotten out that a man named Michael Myers escaped from a mental institution, killed three teenagers, and is now still on the loose. Dr. Loomis, Michael's psychiatrist when he was in the mental institution, continues his manhunt for Michael, this time being increasingly more furious since he shot Michael six times and it did nothing. Laurie Strode, who barely escaped Michael earlier in the night, has now been taken to the hospital, where there just so happens to not be a whole lot of staff working that night. Since Laurie escaped, Michael seems even more angrier as he sets to finish what he started by killing Laurie. And since Dr. Loomis hasn't thought to look for Michael where Laurie actually is, we have a movie that mostly takes place in this empty hospital with Michael wandering around hunting for Laurie, killing all the dumb staff members in the process. Since empty hospitals are creepy places, this leads to a lot of genuinely creepy sequences.

I think the biggest problem I have with this movie is that it takes a while to get going. And it's not even a very long movie to begin with as the movie is just under 90 minutes when the credits start rolling. I want to say that 45-50 minutes of that is fairly uneventful. A lot of sequences with Dr. Loomis and the police officers talking about Michael and trying to figure out where he went or if he's even still alive as a poor kid gets blown up early in the movie who had a mask similar to Michael. There's a lot of panic around the city and setting up characters that we really don't care for and have no connection to our main characters outside being the hospital workers at Laurie's hospital. I know the first movie also had plenty of build up before we got into the meat of the movie, but that at least had a solid intro with Michael as a kid, the horror of Michael's escape, Michael creeping around the town during the day as he stalks our main trio of teenage girls, and the build-up of said girls who all have this connection as friends. The intro to this movie is the ending of the last movie followed by Michael killing a random nobody. And then there's a whole lot of talking and exposition. At no point during the first half of the movie do I feel any sort of tension or purpose.

Then our next big problem is that when we do get going, there's a lot of Michael hunting down characters that I don't care about. In "Star Trek" lore, we call these red coats. Side characters whose names we might not even know whose only purpose is to get killed off while our main characters escape danger. So if all you care about is seeing graphic deaths of characters we know nothing about, then most of this movie is for you because that's the majority of what happens. And I'm not necessarily bothered too much by the brutality of said deaths, but it's worth noting that the first movie is not a very graphic movie. The horror comes in the suspense that's setup with the music, breathing sound effects and excellent camera work. This movie tries to scare you by having over-the-top graphic deaths of characters we just barely met. None of that scares. I would prefer a horror movie to focus on setting up likable characters and then make me nervous when said characters are in danger. There's also several false jump scares, which I find annoying, and so many cliche horror moments, like the couple getting killed right when the start making love. Perhaps those might not have been cliches back then, but they certainly don't hold up well in 2018.

After all that wait and build up, followed by a mostly boring second act of killing off all the red coats, the finale of this movie is the saving grace and that's when Michael actually starts going after Laurie, who is helpless in the hospital bed for most of the movie until she barely escapes right before Michael walks into her room. Granted, Laurie isn't given a whole lot to do, but she's set up so well in the first movie, meaning we actually care for her survival. And since all the nurses around her are dead in this extremely poorly run hospital, I was genuinely on the edge of my seat when she was trying to escape, but wasn't at full strength and had no help around her until Dr. Loomis finally comes to his senses and runs to her rescue. And on that note, I am reminded of a bit of a redaction that I need to make on my review of the first movie. I said that I don't know why Michael has such a vendetta out against Laurie. And, well, spoiler alert if you haven't seen this 37-year-old movie and still want to, but this movie reveals that Laurie is Michael's sister. So apparently Michael's big motivation is that he hates his family. He killed one sister when he was six and now he's trying to kill his other sister when he's 21. There's still no reason why, but at least that's something.

In just over two weeks, when the new "Halloween" gets released to the general public on October 19, this movie is set to be erased from existence along with every other "Halloween" movie in the franchise that came after it. I see it as a situation similar to "The Flash" when Barry does something stupid and then runs back in time to reset the timeline. In fact, not only is every movie from "Halloween II" and on being erased, but apparently so are parts of the first movie because we are going to be told that Michael was captured after being shot in the first movie and then spent the next 40 years in prison before escaping again and going after 60-year-old Laurie. Will that work? I don't know. Stay tuned for October 19, or shortly thereafter when I get my review out, to find out. But it will be interesting to see if I end up liking the chase Laurie around in the hospital later that night sort of follow-up that this movie presents or the Michael got caught and thrown in prison for 40 before escaping again sort of follow-up in the new movie. I don't have a huge attachment to "Halloween II" like I do to some other horror films, so it's not a huge bar for the movie to jump over, but this is a decently entertaining follow-up with a solid premise, so I'll give "Halloween II" a 7/10.

Smallfoot Review

We're finishing off the September movie reviews on this blog and we do so with "Smallfoot," which almost topped the box office this past weekend, but got beat out by Kevin Hart's "Night School," which is a movie that I don't really care to see, given the reaction. I'm very picky with my comedies because a lot of the modern comedies simply don't make me laugh and most of the time Kevin Hart is someone who really annoys me, unless he's teamed up with actors, writers and/or directors who know how to put a bit of a leash on him and harness his energy into material that's worthwhile, which was apparently not the case for "Night School." Anyways, instead of seeing that, I opted for the kids movie. The weekend before, we were given "The House with a Clock in Its Walls," which is a movie more for the older kids as it tests the boundaries of what can be included in a PG movie. If that's not the type of movie you want your kids seeing, Warner Animation Group has provided you with "Smallfoot," a movie specifically targeted at the younger crowd that is perfectly safe and harmless. Will the older kids get bored with it? It's a possibility. But that's why it's nice that we have a good balance with this and "House with a Clock." There's options out there for kids of all ages to enjoy.

But what about the adults in the world without any kids? Is there anything worthwhile in here for them? Well, actually, yes. Depending on how much of a heart you have for family-friendly animated films. I went into this movie very hesitant. If it was a more crowded weekend and I had more going on, I probably would've just skipped this one without feeling too bad because I thought it looked very dumb and childish. Maybe it would please your 2-year-old, but would anyone else older than that really care? That said, it wasn't a busy weekend for me and there really wasn't any other options for me to see. As I said, I didn't care to see "Night School" after the critics trashed it. And I also wasn't quite interested enough in "Hell Fest" or that "Little Women" movie that I bet you probably didn't even see advertised unless you're crazy like me and go to the theaters super often. So I figured, what the heck. I have a lot of nieces and nephews who are at a young age. Maybe I can go see this one to give a recommendation to my siblings as to whether or not they should go take their kids to see it. But I didn't think I would like it. While I was watching, I fought it. I was refusing to give it a chance in my mind as it started, but a strange thing happened to me and I lost that fight.

The premise that the trailers advertised followed a Yeti that happens to run into a "smallfoot." A human being. But the rest of the Yeti don't believe him because they think the smallfoot don't exist. Get it? We in the real world are always trying to hunt down bigfoot, but most people claim they don't exist. What if the bigfoot, or Yeti, are doing the same thing with humans? IT'S FUNNY! Right? No, not really. I didn't think so based on the trailers. And I thought we were going to get a movie with our Yeti hunting down the smallfoot and them wandering around in the wilderness for most of the movie until they got back to the Yeti village. But that's not really what happened in the movie. I mean, that's the bare bones premise here. But what really captured me was that there was a lot more movie to this movie. It's like with the movie "Megamind." When I saw the trailer for that back in the day, I thought it was a Megamind vs. Metro Man movie. Either I was dumb or I didn't see all the trailers, because when I watched the movie for the first time, I remember being surprised when Megamind "beat" Metro Man in the first act and the movie thus became much different than I expected. That's kinda what I experienced here with "Smallfoot" because there's a lot more here than meets the eye.

First and foremost, the themes in the movie are surprisingly powerful. It reminded me a lot of a "Fiddler on the Roof" sort of story arc where one group of people are bound in tradition, but a certain percentage of people end up breaking tradition, with the moral being that sometimes it's good to break tradition. That might be a bit of an oversimplification of "Fiddler on the Roof," but the themes of tradition are what are paralleled here. The full premise for "Smallfoot" is that the Yeti live on the top of the Himalayas, but the leader of their city teach them that the top of the mountain is all that exists. Under the clouds, the mountain is held up on the back of some giant yaks. They need to ring the gong every morning to wake up the great snail (aka the sun) and their everyday tasks are very mundane, but need to be done to feed the yaks. Something to that effect, anyways. But one of the big rules is that they are to not ask any questions. In fact, the leader of their city has a coat of stones and each stone has a rule or a principle that is deemed true and never to be questioned. All the Yeti are forced to buy into this or else they are banished. On one of these stones, there is a rule that is written that the smallfoot don't exist. And the whole city is forced to believe that or be banished.

This is where the conflict of the movie comes in. Our main character named Migo, voiced by Channing Tatum, helps his father everyday, who is the one that rings the gong every morning to wake up the great snail. On one occasion, Migo starts to practice hitting the gong, but ends up missing it and flies over to a cliff where a human in an airplane crashes. He is elated that he has seen a smallfoot, but that smallfoot disappears before he is able to show the city of his discovery. When it goes back to the city and is confronted by the Stonekeeper, voiced by Common, he is forced to confess that he only saw a yak. But yet he won't do that because he knows what he saw, but has no proof. So he gets banished from the village and runs into a secret group of Yeti who also believe that the smallfoot exist and convince Migo to go find it to show proof. The confusing thing to Migo is that he has a strong belief in all the stones, yet he knows that he saw a smallfoot, and that directly goes against one of the stones. This secret group of deserters start to plant the idea in his head that if one stone is wrong, perhaps it's possible that all of them are wrong? They're not doing this to purposely rebel, but are rather out to find the truth, which they feel brings power and enlightenment.

Yeah. I thought I was getting myself into a silly little kids film. But what I discovered was a movie that was surprisingly deep and thought-provoking. Truth is knowledge and knowledge is power. And the truth can set you free. Yet, as Uncle Ben in Spider-Man always says, with great knowledge comes great responsibility. And sometimes knowing the truth can be dangerous. Yet do we hide the truth in order to protect people? Is that appropriate? Or do you tell people the truth and let them act accordingly so that they can be prepared for reality? This is the discussion that this movie puts forward and as we dive deeper into the movie, more of this theme is explored. Because the truth of the matter is that the Yeti aren't the only ones in the world. They don't live on a mountain that's on the backs of some giant yak with nothing down below the clouds. The rest of the world exists down there and that world might be dangerous because humans might have misinterpretations about who the Yeti are. Going along right with all those themes is another side theme discussing integrity as our main human character, whose name is Percy and is voiced by James Corden has an inner conflict with himself as doing the right thing isn't getting him the success that he desires.

Believe it or not, I could go deeper into all of these themes that the movie discusses, but I'm not going to because I don't feel like spoiling the movie, which is what I would be required to do in order to fully complete the thoughts in my head about what the movie has to say. And I know it's a silly, little kids film, but I'm still not going to spoil. But I will say that I liked how things resolved as there's a lot of genuinely strong messages that this movie teaches to kids that I think parents would really appreciate, so I give this movie a strong recommendation for parents with young kids. Yes, I know that life is busy and there's also "The Grinch" and "Ralph Breaks the Internet" coming out in November, so maybe you don't have the time and money to see everything. But in that case, I think that once this movie comes out on DVD, it would be a great one to buy to show all of your kids. In addition to the movie teaching great messages, there's also a lot of fun characters that they'll be attached to and a lot of solid humor that will have them laughing. There was a family with lots of young children behind me at me screening and they all had a blast with this. So yeah, I was literally not expecting anything from this, but this was a great surprise for me and thus I will give "Smallfoot" an 8/10.

The House with a Clock in Its Walls Review

In my most recent review, I discussed how surprised I was when I saw that Paul Feig was directing "A Simple Favor," which is a more dark and twisted thriller with a touch of comedy scattered in. This was surprising because Paul Feig has only directed straight-up comedies before this. However, what surprised me even more was when I first saw the trailer to this movie, "The House with a Clock in Its Walls." Why? Because when I was doing my yearly preview back in January, I noticed that Eli Roth had two movies coming out this year. Immediately, and without question, I put both of those movies into my bad movies section simply because Eli Roth is the most tasteless, disgusting director I knew. Prior to this year, all of his movies are what you call torture porn, or spatter films, where the purpose is to watch the graphic mutilations of the human body. "Hostel" and its sequels are the most well known of these that Roth directed, but the one movie of his that I saw, for some strange reason, was "The Green Inferno," a cannibal horror film that is as disgusting as it sounds. In learning that all his movies were like that, I had zero desire to ever see an Eli Roth film again. Thus is why I confidently put both "Death Wish" and "House with a Clock" on my bad movies list.

"Death Wish" came and went earlier this year. It had Roth's typical R-rating and looked super graphic. I don't know if it was as disgusting as his previous films, but it got awful reviews, so I didn't bother with it. But then the trailer for "House with a Clock" dropped and I was beyond stunned. At that point, the rating hadn't been released, but the trailer made it look like it was going to be a kids film starring Jack Black and Cate Blanchett that reminded me a lot of that "Goosebumps" movie from the other year, especially since both movies starred Jack Black. In fact, I think I saw the trailer in the theaters for the first time and I thought they were advertising "Goosebumps 2," which gets released here later this month. But nope. It was this Eli Roth film. And I just couldn't wrap my head around the fact that he was going from torture porn to kids film. And yea, when the rating was released, it was indeed a PG film. As it turns out, this is a series of kids books that began in 1973 centering around the lead boy named Lewis Barnavelt. The series was started by author John Bellairs, with Brad Strickland taking over in the 1990's. There are now 12 of these books, with the most recent one, "The Sign of the Sinister Sorcerer," coming out in 2008.

Given that I didn't even know these series of books existed until I did my research on the movie while writing my September movie preview, I obviously haven't read any of them. If you or your kids have read them, I would love to hear how the book and the movie compares. I thought it was a pretty fun adventure with a surprising amount of heart and suspense added in. As the story goes, Lewis has recently lost his parents and is thus forced to move in with his uncle Jonathan, played by Jack Black. Lewis' big desire is to simply live a normal life and he really misses his parents, but he's in for anything but normal in this new life of his as there's all sorts of magical happenings in this new house. The furniture is alive, the paintings are constantly changing, strange creatures are looming around, and, as the title suggests, there is a mysteriously ticking clock somewhere in the walls of the house that has been driving Jack Black's character insane. And yes, as it turns out, Jack Black is a warlock. And Cate Blanchett, Jack Black's neighbor, is a witch. Thus Lewis becomes interested in learning how to do magic, making him an American Harry Potter of sorts. Or maybe Harry Potter is a British Lewis Barnavelt, since "House with a Clock" came first.

As far as a recommendation goes, this is honestly a tough one. This is a movie that's meant for kids, but it's also a movie that pushes the boundaries of what's appropriate in a kids movie. First and foremost, this movie does have a bit of language. I had talked to some people prior to the movie being released who were worried about it being appropriate for their kids due to the language, so I counted. I got to about six or seven curse words and there could be a few more as Jack Black's character curses probably more than he should. I don't know if that number of curse words is alleviating to you or worrisome, but that's what I came up with, so use that as you will. Perhaps more worrisome is level of suspense that exists. There were a lot of moments, especially in the second half of the film, that put me on the edge of my seat. And I'm an adult who is used to watching a lot of horror films. If you have kids who are extra sensitive to scary images and sequences, this might be a movie to skip, especially when it comes to young children, because this movie might legitimately traumatize them. I'd recommend keeping your young kids far away from this and only take your older kids if they are interested. Perhaps the 10-12 year-old range.

Yet at the same time, those of us who are older can look back to our childhood and recollect that it's these style of movies that we remember most when it comes to Halloween classics. Movies that are directed towards kids and families, but are a little more on the intense side, causing some to say that they probably aren't kids movies. I immediately thought of "Hocus Pocus," "Beetlejuice," "Gremlins" and "Poltergeist," the latter two being extremely influential in bringing about the PG-13 rating. Some of my other friends on Facebook came up with "Something Wicked This Way Comes," "The Watcher in the Woods," "The Witches," "Tower of Terror" and "Little Shop of Horrors" as other movies that traumatized them as a child. But yet despite claiming that these movies gave us nightmares growing, they're often now our favorite Halloween movies as adults because of the experience. So is it safe to say that kids like being scared and it could be good for them? That discussion is one that could potentially be super interesting. If the answer is yes, then "House with a Clock" comes in as highly recommended because it fits in with all of those movies mentioned because it's much more than a silly little adventure that you'll forget 10 minutes after leaving.

Throwing all of that aside and focusing specifically on my personal experience, the movie ended up being exactly what I thought it was going to be when I first watched the trailer. A movie that's awfully similar to the "Goosebumps" movie from the other year. Perhaps that's a movie to consider if you're thinking about taking your kids to see this. Show them that movie at home if they haven't seen it. If they like it, then take them to see "House with a Clock." If that movie is too much, then save your money on this one and go see something like "Smallfoot" instead. Or maybe be a bit patient and wait for "The Grinch" or "Ralph Breaks the Internet" in November. Personally I enjoyed "Goosebumps." I read those books as kids and they were fun books that pushed the boundaries of what was appropriate for a kids book. But the level of suspense in them was at the perfect level. Not too terrifying, but terrifying enough to give me a good rush and make me want more. The movie did that feeling justice, even though the CGI was a bit weak. With "House with a Clock," the mystery and suspense was also at the right level. The acting was fantastic. And the CGI was much better than "Goosebumps" with all the creatures and supernatural occurrences.

I think the biggest complaints that I have were that it felt a bit juvenile at times. There were moments where it slammed the brakes and slowed down for too long, thus the pacing wasn't always perfect as it tried to not be too intense. And there were way too many poop jokes, mostly involving a magical tree in the shape of an animal. I don't know why those were included. None of them were funny to me. But maybe they'll make the young kids that do end up seeing the movie get a good laugh. But when push comes to shove, this was a fun Halloween adventure that makes me give mad props to Eli Roth for not only stepping out of his wheelhouse, but also doing a very good job. Or maybe I should give at least an equal number of props to Eric Kripke, creator of the CW show "Supernatural," who wrote the script and helped produce the movie. On Twitter he said that the original book inspired him to create "Supernatural," so he was super excited to help bring the book to the big screen. And suddenly it all makes sense. If you like "Supernatural," chances are you might like "House with a Clock." And yes, there are some fun "Supernatural" Easter eggs that I picked up on even before I realized Kripke was involved. On that note, I'm going to give this movie an 8/10.

A Simple Favor Review

From the director of "Bridesmaids," "The Heat" "Spy" and "Ghostbusters" comes... a dark and twisted thriller? Say what? Yup. Paul Feig, who has done nothing but comedy his whole life, has stepped out of his comfort zone to direct a thriller. Even before he was directing comedic movies, he was bouncing around directing various episodes of comedic TV shows like "The Office," "Nurse Jackie," "Parks and Rec" and "30 Rock." Never has he done anything like this, which is why I was super shocked when I saw this trailer, then learned Paul Feig was the director. That alone had me curious because I wanted to see what type of movie Paul Feig had up his sleeve with this. But that wasn't quite enough to make me interested in seeing it. As I chronicled in my "Searching" review, September has been the place for bad thrillers with the likes of "No Good Deed" (2014), "The Perfect Guy" (2015) and "When the Bough Breaks" (2016) all being September releases. So I've conditioned myself that thrillers released in September will be bad, so I usually don't bother with them. And I thought that's what this was. Our annual bad September thriller. Then the reviews came out and they were on the positive side on Rotten Tomatoes, so that was enough to convince me to give this a shot.

With this movie, we're going to play the same game as we did with "Searching." If you like thrillers, you understand that the less you know about them going in, the better your experience is going to be. Thus I'm going to put up the warning label that you should just stop reading and go see this movie if thrillers are your thing. It's a wild, crazy ride that's worth your time. Although it does have more of the "Gone Girl" edge to it when it comes to content, so keep that in mind before you completely take my word for it and dive in. If you need a bit more, then feel free to proceed with this review. This isn't a spoiler review, but it's the type of movie where any details that are said could, in theory, be taken as spoilers. Hence the warning. On that note, in terms of a premise for the movie, I was put at ease a bit with the introduction because the first scene of the movies describes the premise. Anna Kendrick's character has vlog page (an off-brand of YouTube, because, unlike "Searching," I'm guessing they didn't want to pay to use YouTube itself) where she normally does various homemaking stuff, but this time she tells her viewers that her best friend has gone missing and she's sad about that. So that's our premise. Then we jump back in time to tell how we got to that point.

And this is what takes us to the most interesting part of this movie. The relationship between Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively. The platonic, friendly relationship that is. These two characters are written as completely opposite characters of each other. Anna Kendrick is the innocent, naive, bubbly single mother. Meanwhile, Blake Lively is the foul-mouthed rebel with seemingly no moral code. It's as if Blake Lively saw her real-life husband play Deadpool and wanted to try to do something similar. Anyways, how these two characters first meet is a little bit cheesy, especially since we get a slo-mo intro of Blake Lively when she first walks onto the screen. But after we get past that, these two are pure gold together. It really felt like the two of them were having the time of their lives while filming as if they're best friends in real life. I don't know if they are, but based on this movie I'd be surprised if they weren't. Their chemistry was just that good. When you have chemistry that good, it always makes the movie that much more enjoyable to watch. On the flip side of things, when there's a lot of conflict behind camera and actors aren't in sync with each other, that also has a tendency of rubbing off on screen, but in a bad way.

On that note, you immediately know that there's a lot more to this Blake Lively character. And the first clue is the obvious one in that the intro to the movie is five days into the future where Anna Kendrick states that her friend has gone missing. But even if they hadn't started the movie off that way, you would've been able to tell that there's a lot more to this character than is initially revealed and it gives you a sense of uneasiness as you move forward as she has this dark aura around her and a rather cunning personality. My guess when we started was that she was playing Anna Kendrick. Taking advantage of her innocence and naive nature. Thus it made their interactions a bit nerve-wracking. I felt like there was a real sense of danger that had me nervous for Anna Kendrick because I cared for her since she was set up to be the good girl. I don't want to say too much, but there is a point where Blake Lively is probing into Anna Kendrick, trying to figure out if she had dark secrets of her own, which made me think that there was more to Anna Kendrick as well. After all, even though she did have that innocent persona, she was willing to let this dark woman into her life and she wasn't quite as disturbed as you might think in interacting with her given the setting.

I do feel like I have given away too much, but I did warn you earlier, so I don't feel too bad. Plus, all I've discussed so far is from the setup of this movie. The first act, if you will. As we went along, I was getting a legitimate "Gone Girl" feel with this movie. If you've never seen that movie, I'd call that one of the best modern thrillers I've seen. It's dark and disturbing, but perfectly crafted by David Fincher, who rarely misses when it comes to his directorial filmography. The fact that "A Simple Favor" was reminding me of "Gone Girl" made me super happy inside as I became fully invested in the movie. It was feeling like a movie of the year candidate that was even superseding "Searching" as the best thriller of 2018. But I will say that there comes a point where you can tell that this a David Fincher directed movie, but rather a Paul Feig movie. Had this been a David Fincher film, I would have no doubt that this would've been an excellent movie that would leave me lost in thought long after I left the theater because I can only imagine what he could've done with these characters and this setup. But no, this is not quite that type of movie. When push comes to shove, I was totally fine with that because what we ended up with was quite the enjoyable ride in its own way.

Some might still label this as a comedy. In fact, if you go to the movie's IMDb page, they have comedy listed as the first genre for the movie, ahead of crime and drama. I would disagree with that label, though. I think this is a drama or thriller first that also has comedic elements scattered in. The point of this movie isn't to make you laugh. The point is the thrill ride you are taken on with the disappearance of Blake Lively and whatever dark, twisted plan she has up her sleeve. But there are moments that did make me laugh and thus I could tell that this was a director who normally does comedy, but is trying his feet in the thriller genre, yet can't completely disappear into the project. If you've watched any of Paul Feig's films, you can definitely see some of his trademark humor in the movie and there are drastic tonal shifts in the movie. Because of this, I can understand if people come out of this movie complaining that the movie didn't know what it wanted to be, claiming that it's part thriller and part comedy, but not fully committed to both. Yet I would disagree with those conclusions because I felt that when it did shift tones, it did so tastefully without compromising the overall purpose of the movie, thus giving us a good blend of genres.

The final thing I'll say is that there does come a point where the movie reveals itself. Like every good thriller, there's a mysterious nature to this. A lot of thrillers make you wait for a long time before they reveal all their secrets, usually delivering a powerful twist positively impacts the viewing experience. I love these moments in thrillers. If you can successfully get my jaw to hit the floor, I will praise you to the high heavens. However, "A Simple Favor" is slightly different in that it doesn't rely on the twists. Rather it reveals its hand a lot earlier than I expected. For a moment I felt super smart that I had figured out all the secrets early on. But then I realized everyone in the theater probably felt the same way, so I immediately shrunk back down. From then on, the enjoyment of the film is predicated on whether or not you accept what the movie becomes. I personally did. And it's a journey that, while remaining its sense of drama and thrills, also doesn't take itself too seriously, almost in a Bond-esque way even though it never blends into becoming an action film. Yes, I was on the edge of my seat for a while, but then I was given the opportunity to slide back and relax, making this a unique experience that I wound up enjoying. Thus my grade for "A Simple Favor" will be an 8/10.

White Boy Rick Review

I'm slowly getting caught up on my September movie reviews. While August was a bit sparse in terms of quality, causing me to skip a lot of the in the second half of the month, September has at least provided a lot of interested titles that had my attention, even though the month hasn't exactly lit up the box office office after "The Nun" exploded with a $50 million debut. But I'm still working on this second weekend of September in terms of getting my reviews up. On said second weekend, "The Predator" won the weekend in terms of the numbers, but it certainly wasn't a win for the franchise as the movie set the record for the worst debut ever for a movie debuting in over 4,000 theaters, coming in a pathetic $24.6 million. I've never seen a Predator movie and I'm certainly not starting with that one, so don't expect a review from me. However, it's the other three movies that had my attention that weekend. I already gave you my review of "Unbroken: Path to Redemption" and now it's time to give you my reviews of "White Boy Rick" and "A Simple Favor." Then we can move on to this past weekend where we got the family friendly Halloween film "The House with a Clock in Its Walls" from director Eli Roth. First up in all of that is our yearly drug trafficking movie, "White Boy Rick."

This movie is based on a true story that happened in the 80's. Because, you know, we're a bit obsessed with the 80's right now and Hollywood likes these drug trafficking movies. So to continue both of these trends, someone dug up this story of Richard Wershe Jr., aka White Boy Rick, a young boy in Detroit who was caught up in the drug business at an all too early age. While perhaps not a drug kingpin like some of the trailers claim, even though the movie itself doesn't really do so, Rick was heavily involved in the drug business by the time he turned 17. I would say a big portion of the credit for this goes to a poor upbringing with divorced parents, who weren't exactly model citizens themselves, combined with being caught up in the wrong crowd. Living in Detroit certainly doesn't help matters there as the crime in the city over the years, and even today, is very well documented. So being "caught in the wrong crowd" wasn't a very hard thing to do. His sister got involved with a sketchy dude, which got him to be involved with sketchy friends. Pretty soon he knew his way around things fairly well in terms of petty crime and the drug business, which got him addicted to this lifestyle of drugs, money, girls and what not, which we all know never ends well.

The movie itself chronicles his story, which spans from 1983 or 1984 up until 1987, so we have a good chunk of about four or five years that they attempt to cover in just one movie, which is a bit of a daunting task. The other major element of his life that the movie focuses on, outside being involved in the drug business at an early age, is the fact that he became an FBI informant early on in the story, which was 100 percent illegal on their part. So yeah, sketchy police doing sketchy things to try to catch the sketchy criminals leads to all sorts of messy situations that poor Rick got caught in the middle of. And their using Rick as an illegal, underage FBI informant to try to catch all of his friends may or may not have planted ideas in his head of actually becoming a drug dealer. According to the movie, they recruited him to do minor drug deals so that he could tell them who was involved and where they were located. Later in the movie, in an effort to try to help out his family situation, he branches off on his own into the drug business because this thing called money is super attractive to him, and up to this point in his life, money is not a thing that him, his sister or his dad ever really had, thus we begin the downward spiral.

As far as the movie itself goes, I will give the movie all the credit for introducing me to this story. It's one of those movies where you immediately head over to the internet and Google the true story of White Boy Rick. Sometimes this causes the movie to be ruined in retrospect if you learn that the movie was inaccurate in telling this story. In certain instances, I can let that slide. But for the most part I think that if you are going to tell a true story via film, then your main objective should be to accurately tell that story. If that story doesn't lend itself to a Hollywood film, then find a different story that does and tell that one instead. If you can't find a true story that tells things the way you want it to be told, just come up with a fictional story to tell. I mean, people can watch things like "Breaking Bad" and be equally as affected by the themes of the series even though the characters and story itself are fictional. All that said, you may think that I'm leading you to believe I'm going to claim that "White Boy Rick" screws this up, but that's not the case. From what I can gather, "White Boy Rick" does a great job in accurately telling this story. Thus I commend the film for finding a fascinating story and telling it without twisting the facts of what really happened.

However, accurately telling a true story is not the only factor in making a good film based on a true story. That daunting task of covering a large time span is another major element that you need to get right and sadly "White Boy Rick" rather embarrassingly falls flat on its face when it comes to that. There's a lot of time to cover in this movie, but there's no sense of urgency in the pacing or the editing. The movie is filled with a lot of long, drawn out scenes that feel less important to the plot of the movie. In between all of those sequences are all of the more important scenes that are jumped over too quickly. Had the movie been paced properly, there would be potential for it to be similar to last year's "American Made," the drug movie with Tom Cruise, or perhaps a "Sicario." Maybe we can even look at the small screen to something like the aforementioned "Breaking Bad," which is an excellent series, or "Ozark," which I've just started, but is so far really good. In these movies or shows, the pacing properly allows for a story that leaves you on the edge of your seat given the subject matter at hand. But with "White Boy Rick," I found myself begging for the movie to get to the point. Then when it did, it ran right past the point, then slowed down again at the wrong spot.

The other major problem here is to get me to properly care about these characters and their situation. I think the movie's goal was to make you care for this kid who got stuck in an awful situation that he was unable to dig himself out of. The movie painted him as the victim of all of this. A victim of circumstance. A victim of a bad neighborhood. A victim of a poor upbringing. A victim of corrupt FBI agents who illegally used him as an underage informant and sparked the idea in his head to get into the drug industry. Yet I didn't really feel that bad for him. In any drug movie like this, being invested in the main character is essential to the enjoyment of the film, even if you disagree with the choices being made by said character. But I didn't really find myself super invested in Rick or his dad. There's nothing wrong with the acting in the movie. In fact, everyone does a great job in the roles they are given. I just don't know if the roles themselves were that interesting. Rick's dad just seemed like a guy who had an inability of getting his life together and Rick just seemed like a punk kid with no sense of moral direction who became obsessed with drugs and money. I think I was more invested in his sister's arc than his.

Even so, there was still potential with this film. The inherent problem with doing a movie like this is that there's only so many ways a story like this ends. Either the person somehow gets out and gets clean or they get thrown in prison or wind up dead. And very rarely do stories like this end up as the first option. Movies about people getting involved with the drug industry usually end up with them dead or in prison. So in telling a story like this, there's an added challenge of coming with something fresh and unique otherwise you just get another story of someone who ruined their lives doing drugs or selling drugs. But with proper execution, you can still manage to make an intense film that leaves you on the edge of your seat. "White Boy Rick" had an interesting enough story with the angle of this being a young kid who got involved in drugs, but it ended up being mostly a miss for me because the execution of the film felt like all of the emphasis was in all of the wrong places, leaving me mostly bored throughout instead of intensely invested. I'll give the movie credit for getting me interested in the real story, but the more I think about it, the more I lean towards the idea of this not being a story worthy of being invested in. So I'll give "White Boy Rick" a 6/10.

Unbroken: Path to Redemption Review

I'm guessing the casual viewer, when seeing news of an "Unbroken" sequel, may have been perplexed at its existence, especially since this is coming from a completely different production company than the people who made the first movie. It's a low budget team of Christian movie makers instead of a major Hollywood studio. That's why it made only $2.2 million this past weekend as opposed to the first "Unbroken," which made $30.6 million opening weekend, ending with $115.6 million total domestically. This prediction of how the casual viewer might look at this sequel accurately reflected it's critical score on Rotten Tomatoes as it currently stands at just 26 percent with just 19 reviews counted, with most of the negative reviews calling it boring and unnecessary, with nothing interesting to add to the first movie. I'm not surprised at that. Most critics are super critical of faith-based movies. A lot of my favorite faith-based movies have a rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes. In this case, the 86 percent score that "Path to Redemption" has on the audience section of Rotten Tomatoes might be more telling, as is the A grade it got on Cinemascore. People who were actually interested in this movie seem to have been mostly pleased with the outcome.

As far as my personal experience, I was one of the people who was rather upset with the first film. Yeah, sure, if you go in completely blind to the story of Louis Zamperini, you might have found the story rather uplifting and rewarding. Angelina Jolie directed the movie and she showed decent competency in her ability to make a film. It was well shot and well acted. It did a pretty good job at telling the first two-thirds of Zamperini's story. But therein lies the problem. In typical mainstream Hollywood fashion, the filmmakers took a very religious story and removed the religion from it, instead choosing to focus on the horrors of war and war-related action sequences. And even then, they sanitized the story quite a bit in order to get their family-friendly PG-13 rating, which in this instance didn't do Zamperini's experiences justice. What happened to him was a lot more brutal than what the movie chose to display. But even putting that aside, this specific story was a whole lot more than just a guy who became a prisoner of war in Japan. It's a story about a guy whose experiences in war completely destroyed him and nearly ruined his life, yet the movie summarized things by simply stating in the credits that he lived up to his promise to follow God.

I was shocked and stunned when I saw that in theaters. They took the heart and soul of the story and summarized it in the end credits with a line that doesn't even do justice to the term over-simplification. Zamperini got home from war, got married, and was doing alright, but his PTSD continued to get worse and worse as time went on. He became a drunken mess, he couldn't find a job that he was satisfied with taking, and his wife was extremely close to divorcing him because she couldn't handle it anymore. He even completely forgot about his promise that he made to God when he was on that raft one night, wherein he promised that if God saved him, he would spend the rest of his life serving him. This is an element of war that I don't think Hollywood spends enough time on. They focus so much on the war itself and what the soldiers went through during the war, but often completely ignore the post-war trauma that many soldiers went through when they got home. That's why I loved the book "Unbroken," by Laura Hillenbrand, because not only did it tell the story of what Louis went through during the war, but it also told the story of what he went through after war and how he was able to miraculously overcome it.

And that's where we get to this movie. After seeing "Unbroken" in theaters, I thought that was the end of things as far as movies based on Zamperini's life. But then I saw this trailer. A movie based on what happened next. Apparently I wasn't the only one who felt cheated after watching Angelina Jolie's movie. I was rather elated to see that a Christian studio set out to do Zamperini's story justice because the story of what happened to him when he got home was the best part of the story. So while the rest of the world was checking out Shane Black's latest addition the Predator franchise, simply titled "The Predator," a super creative title might I add, I went out to see "Path to Redemption." I considered that a pretty good decision. "The Predator" was getting panned, anyways. And I have never seen any of the Predator movies, so why would I be a good judge of that? But given how passionate I was about the book "Unbroken," and how disappointed I was about the first movie, I needed to see this movie. And the world needed my review because none of these other critics were going to give it a fair look. Except for maybe Josh Terry of the Deseret News. And yeah, he gave it a good review, so you can take that into account. He's someone I generally trust.

 All of that said, my level of excitement for this movie was officially set at cautiously optimistic. I loved the idea that this follow-up was happening. I didn't love the specific studio that it was coming from. Pure Flix. They have a very rocky record when it comes to Christian films. Yeah, "Woodlawn" was alright and I hear "The Case for Christ" was surprisingly good, but they also did "God's Not Dead 2" as well as "God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness," the latter of which was so poorly received by all parties earlier this year that it didn't even expand far enough for me to see it. So yeah, Pure Flix is very well known for distributing the very preachy, Protestant films that make you feel like you walked into a Sunday sermon instead of a movie theater. Sometimes they work good enough, but more often than not they usually are severely lacking in cinematic quality, forgetting about things such as acting, directing and proper storytelling. Unfortunately that's exactly where "Path to Redemption" falters. It's not a very high quality film. For everything that "Unbroken" does wrong, I will give credit where credit is due and Angelina Jolie did a better directed job than Harold Cronk did in "Path to Redemption" and Jack O'Connell was a much better Zamperini than Samuel Hunt.

"Path to Redemption" completely skips over all the war sequences, choosing to tell that whole story in newspaper clippings at the very beginning of the movie. A big part of this is that they wanted to focus on the final section of the movie. But I think another reason is that they no desire to make a war film because I'm guessing this team didn't know how and also didn't have close to the proper budget to make it work. Director Harold Cronk, who directed the first two "God's Not Dead" films, doesn't ever seem to know what to do with his actors in any of his films, so I'm guessing that they're mostly always on their own when it comes to the script, which is probably why the acting is all over the place. Samuel Hunt does his best job with what he's given, but he doesn't have the appearance of someone who has just been traumatized from war. He'll be your perfectly normal average Joe one moment, then yelling at people and throwing things across the room the next. Instead of feeling like he's a broken man, it feels very jarring and out of place. Jack O'Connell could've done an amazing job at post-war Zamperini, but he was never given the opportunity. And bless her heart, but Merritt Patterson has no chemistry with Hunt as Zamperini's wife.

I think another major problem with this movie was that I believe it would've been extremely effective as the final 30 minutes of the first "Unbroken" rather than being a 90-minute movie on its own. I'll hold my ground that this portion of the book is what makes the story interesting, but it's the final third of the book as opposed to being a second book on its own. There's not enough content to fill an entire movie and make it perfectly engaging, especially when you don't have a very competent team of writers to begin with. The moments where Zamperini is having nightmares about the war or seeing hallucinations of the main Japanese guy who tortured him are extremely effective. There's a scene with him at a restaurant where the server gives him rice, but he flips out because his memories with rice consistent of it being full of bugs and worms, thus making that scene effective. But in between moments like this, there's a lot of moments with everyone living life in a very normal way and those moments weren't very engaging. They spent a long time on the love story between him and his wife and that love story wasn't very interesting, which in turn made the sequences at the end with their marriage falling apart less emotionally impactful given that I wasn't as invested.

That said, I walked out of this film having been much less offended at the final result than the first movie. Yes, Angelina Jolie made a better film on a technical scale than Harold Cronk did in this sequel. But whereas Jolie and company ripped the heart and soul out of Zamerini's story, Cronk and company actually had good intentions and stayed true to the full story. It's a lower quality film, but it's a more accurate film that does a better job at doing justice to the story and to the book that I have come to love. In a perfect world, perhaps we could combine the two films into one proper "Unbroken" film that tells the whole story of Zamperini as told in Hillenbrand's and does so with proper cinematic qualities, as in good acting, good directing, good cinematography and good storytelling abilities. And maybe the perfect person for that would be Mel Gibson, who has proven to be great with his war films in accurately capturing the horrors of war, but also being able to do justice to the religious side of things, like he did with "Hacksaw Ridge." Given that he also directed "The Passion of the Christ," I think he'd be the perfect director to make a proper "Unbroken" film. But alas, we'll just have to live with what we have. My grade for "Unbroken: Path to Redemption" is a 7/10.