Rocketman Review

Last year was a very educational experience for me when it came to the musical biopic. Oftentimes my reviews don't spark a ton of reaction, especially if I'm in the majority, but when you dislike a huge crowd-pleaser that goes on to get nominated for best picture, that sparks a lot of discussion. People don't like it when I burn a movie to the ground that they loved, especially when it has anything to do with music. Yes, I'm talking about the Queen biopic "Bohemian Rhapsody." I'm sorry to dig up old wounds so soon, but my hands are forced. I have no choice but to bring it up because right now we have to discuss the Elton John biopic "Rocketman." I was honestly really nervous going into this movie because I didn't want another experience like "Bohemian Rhapsody." It gets stressful, especially when it comes to a popular musical-related film. I mean, I still have people jumping on my case about "The Greatest Showman." And I don't even dare mention the name of a certain 2012 musical. So adding "Bohemian Rhapsody" to the mix of popular music-related movies that I didn't like wasn't fun. The thought of adding "Rocketman" to that list had me crying inside, but luckily this movie is phenomenal, so it's time to present my case as to why it worked.

Now when I say that last year was a very educational experience when it came to musical biopics, it's because I learned that a lot of people have very different expectations going into them than I do. When it comes to ANY biopic, musical or not, my number one priority is that it's accurate. Now if you have to take creative liberties because certain events aren't known or there's disagreement on how things went down, then fine. Fill in the gaps the best you can. But when you straight-up don't even try to be accurate, like Adam McKay with "Vice" last year, that drives me crazy because you're presenting a false story about someone's life. The other thing I expect from a biopic is for the narrative structure to be interesting. If your movie is as boring as tar, despite being historically accurate, I'm still going to take issue because I want an interesting movie. If the subject of your movie doesn't have a life that makes for a good movie, pick a different subject or make a documentary instead. When it comes to "Bohemian Rhapsody," they failed on BOTH of these aspects. They made a movie that was as boring as tar that was also mostly fictional, which drove me crazy on so many levels, especially since Freddie Mercury had a fascinating life that didn't need to be changed around.

"But Adam, you're just not a big Queen fan. That's why you didn't like it." Oh my fracking goodness. I've had multiple people tell me this. Although I think I handle myself in a civil way when I'm accused of not liking Queen because I didn't like their biopic, inside I'm ready to slap said person in the face. I LOVE Queen. I may not be a huge Queen nerd. I don't know all of their albums by heart. In my defense, though, there's very few bands where I've listened to all of their albums. I usually just pay attention to singles. With Queen, they helped define my musical taste. I love music from the 70's and the 80's. If I were to create a list of artists and bands that were most influential in that, you better believe Queen would be high up on that list with the likes of Journey and U2. So don't anyone dare accuse me of not liking Queen. In fact, I'd argue that it's because I like Queen that I didn't like their biopic. I knew what it had the potential to become. I didn't want a lazily strung together sequence of concert scenes and song creations. I wanted a story. And when they decided to do story, it angered me that said story was a fictional creation in order to fit a formula. And I know the actual band members were influential in deciding, but maybe the band members shouldn't have a say.

That last statement might sound heartless, but when band members and musicians are heavily involved in the creation of their own movie, they often tend to paint themselves in a perfect light, which restricts the movie from diving into the drama. Just look at "Straight Outta Compton." The moral complexity of the rappers involved in that story could've made a great film. But since they were the ones making their own film, they painted themselves as heroes and victims, while completely leaving out all the bad things that they actually did. It wasn't an honest movie. And if you go watch "Bohemian Rhapsody," do you notice how all the band members who are still alive today never had any sort of drama in the movie? Now I know we're several paragraphs into this review and I haven't said much about the film I'm actually reviewing, but I consider this important for me to set the stage. I want to do my best to describe to you why "Rocketman" really worked for me while having fresh on your mind as to why "Bohemian Rhapsody" didn't. Even if you disagree with my assessments, at least you can understand where I'm coming from and you can know what I expect from a musical biopic because "Rocketman" proved to me that this genre can be done right.

An interesting comparison to start things off here is that I'm not a huge fan of Elton John. Don't get me wrong, I've never had any problem with him. Anytime I've listened to his music, I've really enjoyed it. But if you tie me to a chair, point a gun to my head, and tell me to name five of his songs, I will resign and tell you to pull the trigger because I just don't know. Maybe that helped my case because I didn't have any preconceived notions as to what this movie should be. But I also think it could be a disadvantage because I didn't geek out every time one of his songs started playing like a lot of people did when any Queen song started playing in "Bohemian Rhapsody." There was no added nostalgic element that was there to boost my opinion of the film. Flipping it back to a positive, that ultimately was a good thing, I think, because it made me focus on the actual movie with the narrative and the character arcs. I think some people were so blinded by Queen nostalgia that they lost their mind every time a Queen song started playing to the point that they didn't care that the rest of the movie was crap. They were satisfied with their Queen concert. I didn't mind that element. I'll agree that the Live Aid performance was fun. But the rest of the movie still sucked.

That's why "Rocketman" was such a breath of fresh air for me. The focus of the movie wasn't on how Elton John came up with every big hit of his. The movie wasn't meant to solely be an Elton John concert. The focus here was the story and the themes surrounding Elton John's life. The movie starts with Elton John going to a support group and telling everyone of all the problems he has. It's at that point that we go back into the past as if he's telling his story of how he got to this point in his life. Yeah, there were times where it seemed like the movie was just happening and I began to get frustrated because I'm not that interested in simple montages of people's lives that don't have much of a point. But I was patient with this movie and it all ended up having a great point. There was a stark contrast to when he was a young boy striving to be a good musician as compared to when he was a successful superstar yet had an absolutely miserable life. He didn't know who he was. He had no feelings of love and care. He was very emotionally unstable. Yeah, he was a great performer and great singer. His unique style and fashion helped separate himself from the rest of the world, but behind the scenes he was a miserable human being and the movie did a great job of painting that picture.

The further we dove into this, the more emotionally invested I became in Elton John himself and everything that was happening around him. And I have to give major props to Taron Egerton for pulling off a truly moving performance. Now I've liked this guy in everything I've seen him in thus far. He was excellent in "Kingsman: The Secret Service," which was where he initially grabbed my attention. I've been following him ever since and he's brought it in every movie, from "Eddie the Eagle" to the animated movie "Sing" to "Kingsman: The Golden Circle." I even hear he was the one good thing about that awful "Robin Hood" movie last year that I skipped. So if he wasn't already on people's radars, "Rocketman" definitely will put him out there and maybe this helps him get even more dramatic roles in Oscar-baity films. I don't know if he'll get an Oscar nomination for "Rocketman" since this movie came out in the wrong half of the year for that, but if Rami Malek can win best actor for lip-syncing Freddie Mercury, you would think Taron Egerton should at least get nominated for nailing Elton John, especially since Taron actually did all of his own singing, which was great. Plus, I think he got all of Elton John's mannerisms down equally as well as Malek did for Mercury.

It wasn't just Taron Egerton, though. There's a decently size cast of supporting players around him who also did fantastic in their roles, whether they are big or small. Now if we're playing this game of what if "Rocketman" gets a lot of awards season love (it's happened before with movies from the first half of the year -- "Get Out," "The Grand Budapest Hotel" and "Mad Max: Fury Road" are examples), then I'm not really sure who has the best chance of getting supporting actor/actress nominations, but there's some good contenders. We have Jamie Bell as his best friend and writer. Richard Madden as a love interest and manager. Bryce Dallas Howard disguised rather well as his mother. Gemma Jones doing great in limited time as his grandmother. Whether big or small, all of these people in his life played integral parts in making him who he is, whether for positive or negative, and a bit of both in some cases. The whole cast really came together to make this story work and a round of applause is warranted. My hats off to director Dexter Fletcher for putting this all together. Coincidentally, Fletcher was the director who came in and finished "Bohemian Rhapsody," but with "Rocketman" he got the sole chance to make it his own.

Speaking of directing, there were a lot of unique decisions made in terms of narrative that sets this apart. Several of the scenes get cleverly blended together with some unique editing. Some of the montages through time were very stylistic. This mostly goes in chronological order, but not always. I mean, we start from the end and often jump back to that support group for some cleverly done exposition. Sometimes the pacing is slow in order to give detail to the story, but other times things move super fast. I thought there was a good balance there. A lot of choices like that combined to make for a film that doesn't feel formulaic or tired at all. But the best decision, in my opinion, was how they used the music. This was a straight-up musical at times. There was a lot of fantasy elements that "Enchanted" pokes fun at in their movie with the line, "They know this song, too?" If you know what I mean. People just break out into song and dance with playful choreography, bright colors and outfits, floating pianos, Elton John launching into space. There were even times during somber moments where Elton John was singing and wandering while no else acknowledged his existence. I expected music with this, obviously, but I didn't expect full-blown musical in this manner.

In that note, this almost felt less like a musical biopic and more like "Mama Mia!" That's a strange comparison, but "Mama Mia!" crafts a fun musical around the music of Abba. "Rocketman" essentially does the same by crafting a fun musical around the music of Elton John. It just happens to be telling his story at the same time. Thus it was more than just concert sequences strung together to play his music. The music anchored the story and often came in to support the emotions happening at the time. It felt magical. Every time an Elton John song was played or performed, it felt like it had a direct purpose for the plot rather than feeling obligatory because they had to include the popular songs of the artist. Thus this made it a very unique and clever way of doing a musical biopic. Turn the thing into an actual musical. Based on some of the trailers, I had anticipated an element of fantasy and I wasn't sure what to think about that. But in this context, this was absolutely perfect and was the frosting on the cake of what was already a well done movie. All things said, this very well may be the movie of the summer for me so far (not counting "Avengers: Endgame"), which is saying something because I liked a lot of our May releases. Thus I will confidently give "Rocketman" a 9/10. 

Ma Review

While Godzilla is the king of the box office this weekend, there were two other major films that hit theaters this weekend and my plan is to get to all of them because they all looked intriguing. Despite opening in third place among the new releases (and fourth overall since "Aladdin" was the runner-up), it was the horror/thriller "Ma" that was the most profitable of the bunch when compared to its production budget. Even though "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" made the most money, an opening of $47 million wasn't the best when considering its $170 million production budget. Overseas totals helped it with $130 million, but it also wasn't as big in many countries as it was expecting to be. Meanwhile, "Rocketman" will ultimately be fine with a $40 million production budget, but it only opened to $25 million, half as much as "Bohemian Rhapsody" did last year. Meanwhile, Blumhouse scored yet another win as "Ma" made $18 million on just a $5 million production budget. Low-budget horror films that sprint past their budget early on is Blumhouse's specialty. The reason why "Ma" did so well was that they had this genius idea of casting Octavia Spencer as a creepy psychopath, which is totally not her normal thing. Personally I was on board the second I saw a trailer.

Despite this being one of those trailers where I immediately needed to share with all my friends, I also had a bad feeling that I had just watched the whole movie in the trailer. I crossed my fingers that I was wrong, but unfortunately I wasn't. Thus this makes for a bit of a tricky movie to talk about. I could say that you should go see the movie and we can come back and talk, but the disappointing thing here is that this isn't a movie worth seeing. So I'm going to do my best here to talk about this without spoiling too much, but I might be forced to dive a little further into the movie than I would normally like to, given the movie that was presented to me. I'm just going to throw that out there and you can do what you want with that information. As advertised, this movie follows a group of teenagers who are wanting to go out to drink and party. Because, you know, that's all that teenagers do these days right? Go to school, then go home and get drunk. OK, maybe not in the real world. But that's all they do in this world. And these teenagers have found the perfect person to facilitate this. Octavia Spencer's character named Sue Ann, who we simply refer to as Ma. The problem is that there's a lot more to Ma than these teenagers realize, which gets them into a lot of trouble.

Me describing that plot to you shouldn't be that big of an issue. But that's the thing. There's almost nothing to this movie. It's like someone had a great idea for a movie, but when they went to write the screenplay, they only had enough story to fit a short film, so they stretched it as far as they could. Yet I think they stretched the wrong part of this movie. The movie is only around 100 minutes long, but for some reason they decided to take forever to set this up. There's a lot of drama with our main girl named Maggie moving into a new city. They have to play out the drama with her parents. They have to set up her with a new group of friends. The friends have to spend a while figuring out where they are going to drink. When they finally get to Ma's house, they have to build up that relationship to make the friends trust her. This includes not going back just once, but multiple times to the house. Then we have to get to the point where the whole school loves going to Ma's house. Then we start to slowly introducing suspicious activity from her with the main teenagers slowly starting to not trust her. Then amidst all of this we also spend a ton of time setting up Ma's backstory with a series of flashbacks that slowly describes why she is off and my goodness this movie had the wrong focus.

I kid you not, it wasn't until like the last 20 minutes of the movie, maybe further, that the kids finally get trapped in the home and Ma starts to do super crazy things. Yet that was most of the advertising. Given the unbalance here, I don't even blame the people in charge of the advertising. Are they supposed to advertise something that is as boring as tar for 70 minutes with little to nothing of great importance happening? In fact, I commend them for coming up with a fantastic trailer from a movie that offers so little. Maybe the people in charge of the trailers should've been the people in charge of editing the film itself. As I see it, there's another horror/thriller of this style called "Don't Breathe" that did this right. The kids make it to the house of this crazy old blind man within the first 20 minutes of the film, then the rest of the film is them trying to figure out how to escape. They didn't spend half of the movie setting up all of the characters and building this group of friends. The movie also spent very little time setting up the blind man or how the kids got to the point of being at his place. It just all happened. They were already friends. They made a decision to go rob a blind man. Then they spend the rest of the movie trapped in his house. Boom. That's it.

Had "Ma" copied that style with their movie, this could've been a fun and intense horror film. Cut out most of the crap in the first half of the film and just have a group of friends discover a nice lady who is willing to buy them beer. The kids might be dumb enough to go to her house just once to party, but have that be it. Make them get so drunk and wasted that they all kinda fall asleep or whatever, maybe Ma secretly poisons their drinks with some sort of sedative that quickly puts them to sleep, then before they know it they are trapped by Ma. They wake up and they are tied to the couches or poles with the house all locked up and no way to escape. Doing that would allow you to dive deeper into the actual horror/thriller elements of this. There's more room for crazy twists and turns. Maybe have one of the kids get killed or badly injured early on to set the tone of this not being a safe place. If you absolutely need Ma to have a backstory, perhaps she briefly explains it at some point, telling them why she's kidnapped them specifically. That would give Octavia Spencer time to shine because she's having an absolute blast with this role, but doesn't really have anything to work with. Some of the kids could've also had a breakout role with a better screenplay, but they're held back, too.

The other problem here is the tone. If this movie would've been completely self-aware of the fact that it was a silly horror film where kids get trapped by a crazy woman in her house, I could've suspended disbelief enough in order to have a good time with this. But as is, they tried to be super serious and realistic with this. Because I had nothing better to do with my time as the movie had a horrible time getting my attention, I spent my time nitpicking. The tone that they ended up with was more along the lines of a crime drama thriller rather than a horror film. Given that I've watched over 300 episodes of "Criminal Minds," I know what I like when it comes to that style and this movie missed that mark by a mile. The traumatic experience that Ma has in her younger years isn't crazy enough to justify the actions she takes later. Said experience is really kinda bogus in the first place. If we blindly accept that, it wouldn't turn her into serial killer based on that alone. But then she's not broken enough in the present day to just randomly flip a switch and committing these extremely over the top crimes that are only there for the sake of shock value. And then she's able to successfully convince a high school full of kids that spending hours at her house is a great idea? None of it made any sense, which I found frustrating.

When I try to figure out what went wrong here, I'm certainly not going to point any fingers at the cast of the movie. Octavia Spencer is brilliant in this movie. The fact that she always plays such a lovable character in her movies makes this even more fun. I even liked some of our high school cast. Diana Silvers playing our main girl Maggie is great. Some of her friends are annoying, but Andy, played by Corey Fogelmanis, and Darrell, played by Dante Brown were both solid. This means the pieces were in play here. But then I look at the director and I see Tate Taylor. Yes, he's made good movies. He directed "The Help" and that got a best picture nomination. But he also directed "The Girl on the Train," which was another thriller that was a boring mess. So maybe this is just not his genre. And the screenplay was written by a guy named Scotty Landes who had not even written a screenplay for ANY feature-length film before this. So there you go. A great concept and some great performances elevating this higher than it deserved, but a writer and director duo who had no idea what they were doing. I didn't hate this movie, which is why I'm going to be a bit nice with my score, but I just saw so much potential here that got wasted, hence my disappointment. My grade for "Ma" is a 6/10.

Movie Preview: June 2019

The crowded summer continues as we head into the second month of the summer. Despite the heavy competition, May fared pretty well, to say the least, as it became the second straight month in 2019 to cross the $1 billion mark. Holding the fort down was Disney in the top two spots as "Avengers: Endgame" took in another $380 million domestically in May as it inches towards the $850 million mark while "Aladdin" enjoyed a huge $116 million 4-day Memorial Day weekend and has now crossed $180 million after its second weekend. Meanwhile, "Detective Pikachu" took in a respectable $125 million and "John Wick: Chapter 3" is already the highest grossing movie in its franchise with $117 million. These titles helped May to a $1.077 billion domestic total, which is the second largest May ever behind only 2013's $1.141 billion. It wasn't all rainbows and butterflies, though. The jury is still out on "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" and "Rocketman" as they only had one day in May, but both are coming in below expectations. Meanwhile it was a rough month for comedies as "Long Shot," "The Hustle," "Poms" and "Booksmart" all failed to find much of an audience. And now we turn our attention to June, which, again, is extremely crowded. So let's explore everyone's options!

June 7th - 9th-

Starting things off strong is our first major battle of the month. Likely to come out on top is not our latest X-Men movie, but rather The Secret Life of Pets 2. The latest from Illumination already held early screenings via Fandango and has a healthy 71 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, which is so far in line with the first movie's 73 percent score, suggesting that fans of the first will be satisfied with this sequel. And believe it or not, there was a lot of them. Despite all the success that Illumination has had with the Despicable Me franchise, their highest grossing domestic release does NOT come from there, but is in fact "The Secret Life of Pets," which roared onto the scene with a $104 million opening, finishing with $368 million, just $300,000 ahead of "Despicable Me 2." So this is a sequel that shouldn't be underestimated, especially since Illumination has an excellent track record. Their previous six films, dating back to 2013, have all made at least $260 million at the domestic box office. The big elephant in the room here is that "Toy Story 4" is released just two weeks after "Pets 2," which poses an obvious problem. Although the first "Pets" managed to coexist with another huge Pixar film, opening three weeks after "Finding Dory," so this will be a storyline to monitor.

All previous 11 X-Men movies have opened in first place at the domestic box office. Unless "Pets 2" vastly underperforms, that streak looks to be over as Dark Phoenix will most likely have to settle for the runner-up spot. Now it's been a wild ride for both of Fox's final two X-Men movies with this and "The New Mutants" having been pushed back multiple times. In regards to "Dark Phoenix" specifically, this was initially set for a November 2018 release, then got pushed to February 2019, then again to this current date. The movie will be the second attempt at the popular Dark Phoenix saga, with Simon Kinberg looking to redeem himself after he helped write "X-Men: The Last Stand," which was the first attempt at the Dark Phoenix saga. Kinberg also helped write "X-Men: Days of Future Past" and "X-Men: Apocalypse," so he's no stranger to this franchise, but this will be his first time stepping into the director's chair. As far as the movie's opening, 2013's "The Wolverine" is currently the low mark for X-Men with $53.1 million. Right above that is the original "X-Men" in 2000 with $54.5 million and "X-Men: First Class" with $55.1 million. So that's the mark that "Dark Phoenix" will need to hit to avoid being the lowest opener. All things considered, there's no guarantee it succeeds.

June 14th - 16th-

With at least one major blockbuster every weekend this summer thus far since "Detective Pikachu," history says that something is bound to get lost in the crowd. "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" was already a bit of a casualty of that while "Dark Phoenix" has potential to follow suit. And thus things don't really bode well for this week's attempted blockbuster in Men in Black International. In fairness, though, the previous three movies in the franchise all opened in the $50 million range and became huge summer hits. "Men in Black" was the second highest grossing movie of 1997, behind only "Titanic," while "Men in Black 2" was a top 10 grossing film in 2002. "MIB 3" also fared pretty well in 2012, despite opening in the same summer as "The Avengers" and "The Dark Knight Rises." So that means there's a loyal fan base here that has the potential to show up. But will the lack of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones keep some of them away? That's quite possible. However, "International" does have Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson teaming up again following "Thor: Ragnarok," so that's a bright spot. But ultimately this one might come down to how well the movie is received. Negative to lukewarm reviews will most likely cause this one to get lost in the shuffle.

Speaking of getting lost in the shuffle, the prospects also don't look super bright for the sequel to 2000's "Shaft," very creatively titled... Shaft. The 2000 "Shaft" was technically a sequel to the trio of 1970's films, which began with the 1971 film... "Shaft." So you see that the creativity level is very high with these movie titles. In their defense, though, the original two sequels do have different titles, "Shaft's Big Score" (1972) and "Shaft in Africa" (1973). But when they did a TV series that lasted only one season, it was also just titled "Shaft." Anyways, "Shaft" (2000) stars Samuel L. Jackson as John Shaft II, the nephew of John Shaft I, who was played by Richard Roundtree in the original films. "Shaft" (2019) brings back both Jackson and Roundtree to reprise their roles, while also adding Jessie T. Usher as John "JJ" Shaft Jr. So we have a family of John Shafts all with the same name, all from movies with the exact same title, uniting in an adult-targeted action film where the Shaft family are all detectives. They are brought together in this film after JJ has a friend of his suspiciously die. "Shaft" (2000) opened to $21.7 million, finishing with $70.3 million. Those seem like good targets for "Shaft" (2019). With a budget of just $30 million, there's less pressure for this one to do huge numbers. 

Although Box Office Mojo currently has Jim Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die scheduled to open in limited release, I'm covering it here because the heavy marketing push suggests that this may expand wide before too long. It might even start in 600-1,000 theaters. We'll see when official theater counts get released. Regardless, Jim Jarmusch isn't a mainstream film director. Most of his films are smaller indie/art house films, with the biggest titles being "Broken Flowers" (2005), "Only Lovers Left Alive" (2013) and "Paterson" (2016). But this time around he's doing what seems like a more mainstream film as "The Dead Don't Die" is a very self-aware zombie horror/comedy with a very dry sense of humor as the tagline in the trailers is "The road to survival could be a dead end." The movie has a huge cast that includes Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Chloe Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, Rosie Perez, Iggy Pop, Sara Driver, RZA, Carol Kane, Selena Gomez and Tom Waits. The movie debuted back in May at the Cannes Film Festival and that crowd weren't huge fans of the film as it left there with just a 52 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, so this isn't looking like a huge breakout hit, but it could find a bit of a niche audience.

June 21st - 23rd-

As I've presented, June has a lot of uncertainty coming with it, but the one surefire tentpole blockuster hits theaters in the third weekend and that is Pixar's Toy Story 4. After "Toy Story 3" seemed to perfectly wrap up the series, the idea of a "Toy Story 4" wasn't met with universal praise while the reactions to the trailers and the social media engagement have also left a bit to be desired for. All that might become dust in the wind when this hits theaters, though, at least in terms of the box office. Fandango reported that the movie has shattered their pre-sales record for an animated film, previously held by "Incredibles 2," and that movie opened to $182 million. What that specific stat means is uncertain as there's a lot more to a movie's success than early numbers from Fandango, but it does suggest that an opening somewhere between "Finding Dory" ($135 million) and "Incredibles 2" is in play as fans seem generally excited to see Woody, Buzz and co. back in theaters. The nostalgic Disney/Pixar magic may be too much to resist for many people. This time around the adventure seems heavily reliant around a new toy Forky as said custom-made toy has ran away, making Bonnie sad, so the gang is out to find him and bring him home. The return of Bo Peep will also be a major focus.

As crazy as it sounds, "Toy Story 4" isn't the only movie this weekend where toys come to life as we also have the remake of Child's Play hitting theaters this weekend. This release date is mostly certainly intentional as advertising has even paralleled "Toy Story 4," with a recent poster even having what looks like a Woody hat in it. While it may seem foolish to compete directly against "Toy Story 4," with two vastly different audiences, this could provide decent counter-programming. A bigger worry for the movie will be what comes out a few days after with "Annabelle Comes Home," but we'll get to that in a second. While the popular Chucky doll from "Child's Play" certainly didn't invent the idea of killer dolls, it's safe to say it popularized the idea. "Child's Play" was released in 1988 and made $33.2 million on a $9 million budget. It also spawned six sequels, so it has a solid legacy. This remake probably doesn't need much to be considered a success. In fact, an opening above that of the $11.8 million of 1998's "Bride of Chucky" would make this the highest opening weekend of the franchise, although that obviously changes when you adjust for ticket price inflation. That honor goes to "Child's Play 2," whose opening weekend adjusts to $22.8 million with 2019 ticket prices. 

Adult audiences not interested in "Child's Play" will also have another option this weekend if they're not interesting in checking out "Toy Story 4" and that is Luc Besson's Anna. This is Luc Besson obviously trying to replicate the success he had with his 2014 film "Lucy," which opened to $43.9 million and made $126.7 million overall at the domestic box office. "Anna" is obviously coming nowhere near that, especially since awareness doesn't seem super high at this moment. But if it gets a good late push in the next few weeks, some other realistic female-led action movies include last year's "Red Sparrow" ($16.9 million opening) and 2017's "Atomic Blonde" ($18.3 million opening). Although those two movies were led by Jennifer Lawrence and Charlize Theron, respectively. "Anna" doesn't have star power that big. While Helen Mirren, Luke Evans and Cillian Murphy have supporting roles, Sasha Luss plays the lead role of Anna and she's fairly new the acting game, so this movie is going to rely on Luc Besson's name alone or perhaps word of mouth if audiences like it. Going into October 2014, "John Wick" also had minimal buzz, but great reviews lifted it to a $14.4 million opening and a long life afterwards. Luc Besson will probably need a story like that to get this movie noticed.

The final movie of this weekend is something that may be more of a late addition to the wide release schedule and that is Neon's Wild Rose. Neon's most recent wide release was back in March with "The Beach Bum" opening in a moderate 1,100 theaters, earning $1.7 million, so that's probably the range we're looking at here for "Wild Rose," if it gets that much. This could also be the type of movie that starts in 500-600 theaters and relies more on word of mouth to find success rather than a strong opening weekend. So far the buzz seems to be positive. "Wild Rose" premiered back at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival in September and has also hit various other festivals, including this March's South by Southwest Film Festival. Through all that, the movie is currently certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with an 89 percent score following 54 reviews. The follows the recent trend of musical dramas as it stars Jessie Buckley as a young mother who moves from Glasgow to Nashville in an attempt to become a country music star. It's hard to say this movie is simply cashing in on a trend given that it initially premiered before "A Star is Born" last year, but the popularity of this subgenre at the moment could very well be why Neon is going for a wide release here.

June 28th - 30th-

We're not done yet with toys coming to life this month as the final weekend of June also has the horror film Annabelle Comes Home. Concurrently, if your name is Anna, this is also your month (well... maybe) as this is the second movie with the name Anna in the title. "Annabelle Comes Home" is the sixth movie in The Conjuring franchise, not counting April's "The Curse of La Llorona" which was loosly connected, as well as the third Annabelle movie. The other two Annabelle movies, "Annabelle" in 2014 and "Annabelle: Creation" in 2017, opened to $37.1 million and $35 million respectively. Said $35 million opening is actually the lowest in The Conjuring franchise, with the highest being last September's "The Nun," which exploded with $53.8 million. So it's hard to bet against this franchise. "Annabelle Comes Home" unites the Annabelle franchise to its parent franchise as the central location of this movie is the home of Ed and Lorraine Warren after Annabelle is locked in their room of cursed objects. Annabelle of course escapes and starts to haunt the Warren's 10-year-old daughter Judy, played by Mckenna Grace, and her friends. All things considered, it's hard to project this at anything less than $30 million, although a Wednesday release on the 26th could mute its total a bit.

The final wide release of the month is another musical drama with Yesterday. Although not a musical biopic, this movie dives into the music of The Beatles as a young musician has an accident and wakes up in an alternate dimension where The Beatles never existed. Starring in the lead role is Himesh Patel in his feature-length film debut. Prior to this, he's done various work on TV and some shorts, but he'll be hoping that this will be a breakout role for him. Helping him out is a bit of star power with Lily James playing his love interest who becomes upset that he seems to be loving his newly found fame more than her as well as Ed Sheeran playing himself, helping him out with his new music career. Danny Boyle is the director here. Some of his previous work includes the best picture winning film "Slumdog Millionaire" as well as some other highly acclaimed films in "127 Hours" and "Steve Jobs." In the non-Oscar realm, Boyle has also directed films like "The Beach," "28 Days Later..." and "Trainspotting." So this has a lot of key ingredients for success. But I'm thinking a bit smaller for this one given the June release and high competition. Thus a potential comparison that comes to mind is the 2014 film "Jersey Boys," which opened to $13.3 million in June 2014.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters Review

Godzilla roars into theaters this weekend for what seems like the upteenth time. Like seriously, there's a lot of these things. A quick Wikipedia search tells me that Japan has made 32 Godzilla movies with Hollywood having now done three. That's 35 Godzilla movies that have been made. And I've seen three of them in theaters in the last five years, the 2014 "Godzilla," "Shin Godzilla" in 2016 and now "Godzilla: King of the Monsters." OK, fine, I don't know how many of the 35 have actually hit theaters, but still. That's a lot of Godzilla movies. I'm certainly not going to call myself a Godzilla aficionado, but I enjoy myself a good Godzilla movie. There's a lot of people who complained about the 2014 "Godzilla." I thoroughly enjoyed it, though. In this now connected Monsterverse, I also enjoyed "Kong: Skull Island" in 2017. I'm excited for the two to clash in "Godzilla vs. Kong" coming March 2020. And yeah, I was pumped for this one. The trailers promised me a clash involving Godzilla, King Ghidora, Mothra and Rodan and I was sold. Those three are some of the more iconic Godzilla enemies and seeing them all come together in a glorious, high-budget, modern, CGI clash sounded like the perfect summer blockbuster. I mean, what more can you want?

Now I've seen a lot of negative reviews aimed at this movie. I've looked through a lot of them and watched plenty on YouTube and they all seem to be saying the same things. The plot is boring and the human characters are uninteresting. Yet most of them who have given it a negative review because of that will openly admit that monster fights were spectacular. I try to process all of that and I ultimately end up facepalming. I mean, what did they all expect going into a fracking Godzilla movie? An Oscar-winning drama? The next "Jurassic Park"? Nope. Not me. I just wanted to see some spectacular monster fights and all the reviews, both positive and negative, told me that I was going to get that. So I was excited. I mean, sure. I like myself some intricate plots, complex characters and deep themes. In comparing for my Christopher Nolan ranking coming soon, I just barely watched both "Inception" and "The Dark Knight" in the same day. But when it comes to watching movies, I feel like like I'm very good at compartmentalizing my expectations. Want to watch a romance? Sure. Let's melt my heart. An action movie? Perfect. Let's have some great choreographed actions sequences. A Godzilla movie? Great! Let's get some good monster fights. It's that simple.

But OK. You want to talk about characters in this movie? Fine. Let's do that. At the center of this film, we have a family. They lost one of their children during the events of the previous Godzilla movie, which has put a rift in their relationship. The parents, played by Kyle Chandler and Vera Farmiga, have split and also have different ideals as to how to deal with Godzilla and the other Titans that are showing up. This leaves their daughter, played by Millie Bobby Brown, in an awkward position as she tries to figure out how to make sense of everything. Meanwhile we have some mustache twirling villains who want to destroy humanity by giving the planet back to the Titans while the dumb military people are still stupid enough to think that they stop the Titans on their own, despite the fact that none of their ammunition has done a dang thing. This makes for a whole heck of a lot of side characters that include Ken Watanabe, Ziyi Zhang, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, Charles Dance, Thomas Middleditch, Aisha Hinds and O'Shea Jackson Jr. in various roles among all this. But that trio of Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga and Millie Bobby Brown are our main three that we care about and three of them do a fine job. I don't see the big issue there that so many have been complaining about.

Perhaps I didn't have many complaints in that regard because I didn't need much out of them. The human characters are there to fill space in a Godzilla movie since you can't have the movie be 100 percent monster fights. That would be a bit overkill. Thus as long as the humans are serviceable, I'm typically not going to have a whole lot of complaints. In fact, Millie Bobby Brown owned it in this movie. I kept expecting her to use her telekinesis powers from "Stranger Things" when things got intense, but alas this was the wrong franchise as she's just a normal girl here. But all was well. She was fantastic regardless. And everyone else was perfectly serviceable. Yeah, sure, there were people making dumb decisions, some there solely to be the monster experts to clue the audience in on the background and history of our monsters, while plenty of others were there to be monster fodder. But there wasn't any characters who particularly annoyed me. They all did their job of filling space until we got to our next monster fight. And that's that. There's no one here giving an Oscar-worthy performance. There aren't a lot of noticeable character arcs. This isn't a character study by any means. But they did their job. They collected their paycheck. And I am perfectly satisfied.

Enough with all of this boring human nonsense, though. Onto the monsters. As I was sitting here watching this grand spectacle take place, the biggest thought that came to my mind was that we live in a very privileged era of cinema. There's so much technology at our hands that we often take for granted what an incredible opportunity it is to see a Godzilla movie like this. Yes, a lot of the older Godzilla movies are a lot of fun and have their own unique charm to them, but in this movie Godzilla is more than just a puppet or a badly animated creature that everyone is pretending to be scared of. He looks like a real thing. Like an ancient mythical monster came to life and we captured real life footage of him. It's incredible. When you go watch this movie on the biggest screen possible, my hope is that you can take it all in and truly appreciate how far we've come with modern cinema. Don't sit there and whine like a privileged American that the screenplay writers didn't make the human characters as interesting as they could've. Marvel at the fact that these animators have created some of the best CGI monsters in the history of cinema with this film. And not just Godzilla, but monsters that are as beautiful and majestic as Mothra while also being as terrifying as King Ghidora.

Speaking of the latter monsters, I loved how each of them got their moment to shine. We start by seeing the evolution of Mothra. She starts by being this giant larva thing. After our eco-terrorists burst onto the scene, Mothra manages to escape and cocoons herself under a giant waterfall. Then we shift gears to Antarctica where King Ghidora is frozen in some ice. For some reason the eco-terrorists think it's a good idea to free this terrifying three-headed monster. They'll come to quickly regret that, I think, but before we get to the others, we get a quick battle between Godzilla and Ghidora. Then it's off to Mexico where we free Rodan from a giant volcano. This guy might be my least favorite of the four major Titans in this movie, but he's still pretty awesome and the sequences of him emerging from the volcano are awesome and we get some fantastic fight sequences with him as well as the destruction of this poor Mexican city. After freeing Rodan, the focus is back on Mothra where she emerges from her cocoon, becoming the majestic queen of the monsters. I was in pure awe at this. She was so gorgeous and I loved her. But now with the three of them, along with Godzilla, getting their proper introductions, it was time to let them free and watch this movie soar.

The rest of this movie is pretty basic and simple. I'll state the obvious that I'm not going to spoil anything, but at the same time there's honestly not a whole lot to spoil here. Hopefully you've come to this movie to watch these monsters all fight and you're going to be vastly rewarded in that regard. I won't say who is on whose side, but there's some teaming up to stop a certain Titan that is the main antagonist. There's also plenty of inter-Titan drama that makes this movie really intense while life for the humans is probably feeling like the Apocalypse is happening. While these four Titans are the main ones in this movie, there's plenty more around the world who rise up and thus a lot of destruction, especially in Boston where the brunt of the action takes place. Those people who are Red Sox fans are certainly not going to be the happiest people on Earth as Fenway Park ends up being the center of everything. Let's just say that in this reality the Red Sox will be looking for a new stadium to play in following the events of the film, at least on a temporary basis, if you know what I mean. But yeah, all of this is phenomenal. They did a great job of setting all of these Titans up, then giving them all plenty of screen time in some extremely entertaining fight sequences.

All in all, this movie delivered exactly what I expected from it. Godzilla squaring off against a bunch of other giant Titans in breathtaking fashion. Is it a cinematic masterpiece that I'm going to watch every month for the rest of my life? Of course not. But it didn't need to be. I just wanted it to be a fun Godzilla and that's exactly what it is. No Godzilla fan expects an Oscar-winning screenplay or Oscar-worthy acting in order to be entertained. So people can whine and complain about that all they want, but I'm fairly confident that a Godzilla fan is going to get exactly what they want out of this Godzilla movie. Like several other movies from this summer already, this is a fun summer movie that was meant to reward fans of the franchise. Do you hear Marvel fans saying that "Avengers: Endgame" was a horrible movie because their time travel rules are confusing? Do you hear Pokémon fans saying "Detective Pikachu" was a horrible movie because the plot was a bit generic? Of course not. Just like those two movies, Godzilla fans shouldn't be too stressed out about how amazing the human characters are in a Godzilla movie. They just want to see Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan and King Ghidora square off in epic fashion. So if you're a Godzilla fan, go see this. My grade for the movie is an 8/10.

Brightburn Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aladdin Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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