Movie Preview: April 2017

As I expected, this past March was huge at the box office, becoming the first March ever to cross the $1 billion mark. In fact, its $1.17 billion is the second highest grossing month ever outside July and December. July holds all top five spots in that category while our yearly Star Wars tradition is making December a month to be reckoned with. But the $1.17 billion for March is phenomenal for a non-Holiday/Summer month and goes to show how far Hollywood has come in making the lesser movie months relevant. Although I should note that it's not really worth your time to praise me too much for seeing this coming. I just had to look at the calendar and see that "Beauty and the Beast," "Logan," "Kong: Skull Island" and "Power Rangers" were all on the schedule and it was a no-brainer. "Beauty and the Beast" of course led the way with nearly $400 million in the U.S. alone in just three weeks while "Logan" crossed $200 million and "Kong: Skull Island" is inching close to the $150 million mark. Not bad at all! Looking forward to April, this is where Hollywood takes a bit of a break. The silence before the storm with the official Summer movie launch coming in May. There's a whole host of smaller releases to talk about along with our one major title, so let's knock them all out!

April 7th - 9th- 

The final weekend of March saw DreamWorks' "The Boss Baby" shock the world and topple "Beauty and the Beast," ending Disney's hope for a three-peat. Now instead of Disney going for a four-peat, the two will battle it out again this week for the top spot, both looking to come in just under $30 million. Outside a second straight surprise, that should mean our biggest new release of the weekend is probably looking at a third place finish. That being Smurfs: The Lost Village. This is the third Smurfs movie in the recent reboot franchise of our popular blue people from Sony Pictures Animation. This third movie comes at a bit of a surprise given how few people older than five years old actually enjoyed the first two movies, this shown by their horrific critical reviews ("The Smurfs" - 22 percent; "The Smurfs 2" - 13 percent) and the huge drop-off at the U.S. box office ("The Smurfs" - $142.6 million; "The Smurfs 2" - $71.0 million). For whatever reason, Sony has decided that they're not giving up on this franchise, despite it also being four years since "The Smurfs 2." In an effort to make things new and refreshing, this third movie stands as a semi-reboot and is also the first of the three to be purely in animation as opposed to animation/live-action cross-over.

Looking to finish significantly behind the three aforementioned movies that will top the box office this weekend will be Going in Style. This is a remake of the 1979 movie of the same name, which was directed by by Martin Brest and starred George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg as three senior citizens living a dull life in New York City who decide, despite have no criminal record, that they're going to rob a bank. Their reasoning is that they need to do something that will spark a bit of excitement. If they succeed, they have a bunch of money. If they lose, they get free board for a few years and have a host of social security checks waiting for them when they get out. Seemingly a win/win situation. This 2017 remake has essentially the same premise with three of Hollywood's favorite older actors stepping into the lead roles, that of Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin. Certainly not a bad cast at all if you're going to remake an older 70's film that perhaps your average movie-goer may not have heard of. Directing this remake is Zach Braff, director "Garden State" and "Wish I was Here."

Our final wide release comes via Pure Flix as they present The Case for Christ in hopes of luring in the Christian crowd ahead of Easter, which arrives later than usual this year on April 16. This is our second Easter-themed movie of the season following "The Shack," which opened in early March and has performed rather well so far. It opened to $16.2 million and in five weeks of release has made $53.7 million in the U.S. so far. Pure Flix would be ecstatic to see a result like that, but a quick glance of some of their previous releases that have opened in just over 1,000 theaters might tell a better story. "Do You Believe?" opened to $3.6 million and made just under $13 million total while "Woodlawn" opened to $4.0 million and made $14.4 million total. Both in 2015. Just looking at the movie title, you can probably guess what "The Case for Christ" is going to do and you'd be right. This movie is about an investigative journalist and self-proclaimed atheist whose wife has just converted to Christianity and thus he starts on investigative search to disprove Christ. You can probably make a guess as to how his journey ends. The movie is directed by Jon Gunn, who also directed "Do You Believe?"

April 14th - 16th-

Being that it's April, a month that's not known for its high box office totals, studios seem perfectly content to hand over the monopoly for the month to Universal's The Fate of the Furious. With movies such as "Logan" and "Kong: Skull Island" not having much of an impact anymore at this point, the eighth movie and the Fast and Furious franchise enters the weekend with zero competition as our family affair that will still be doing well is a different target audience. As you'll find out for the ensuing two weeks of April, there's nothing left in April to slow it down. This is a month that the Fast and Furious franchise has done very well in as the fourth, fifth and seventh chapters all performed very well after opening in April. "The Fate of the Furious" will again look to increase the action, intensity and stakes with this story focusing on Vin Diesel going rogue. The movie brings back most of its major players, including Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Michelle Rodriguez, Kurt Russell, Nathalie Emmanuel, Elsa Pataky and Jason Statham while adding Charlize Theron, Scott Eastwood and Helen Mirren. F. Gary Gray from "Straight Outta Compton" and "The Italian Job" fame will direct. Given that "Furious 7" was a tribute to the late Paul Walker, don't expect "Fate" to come close to that movie's $1.5 billion worldwide total, but it still should do very well in its own right as it's guaranteed to be 2017's second $100+ million opener.

April 21st - 23rd-

With "The Fate of the Furious" set to open somewhere between the $97.4 million of "Fast & Furious 6" and the $147.2 million of "Furious 7," that means its second weekend should be between those two movie's $35.2 million and $59.6 million, a mark that none of our five new movies this weekend will even come close to. In fact, there's a good chance that they will all fall short of $10 million, but let's talk about them anyways! And how about we start with Unforgettable, the movie that has the most potential to breakout out of all of these. Despite the potentially ironic title, "Unforgettable" is a thriller surrounding a very angry ex-wife who is specifically targeting her ex-husband's new wife with the goal of making her life miserable. This is a Katherine Heigl vs. Rosario Dawson face-off, with Heigl playing the ex-wife and Dawson playing the current wife. This premise reminds one of a traditional September Screen Gems thriller ala "When the Bow Breaks," "The Perfect Guy" or "No Good Deed," movies that opened to $14.2 million, $25.9 million and $24.3 million. If Warner Bros. can hit the mark of the latter two, they'll be ecstatic here, but a total closer "When the Bough Breaks" might be more realistic, especially since both are similarly "Fatal Attraction" rip-offs or wannabees.

 Perhaps a slightly more memorable outing for filmmakers that could be the top new release if "Unforgettable" is a flop (which is entirely possible) is Free Fire. This movie is an R-rated British action-comedy starring Sharlto Copley, Armie Hammer, Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy and Jack Reynor that is set in Boston in the late-70's. The movie is about two gangs that meet in an abandoned warehouse to buy guns. Things go amiss and suddenly they all find themselves in a big shootout where no one is in control because they all have guns. "Free Fire" made it's debut at the Toronto International Film Festival last year and also closed out the BFI London Film Festival. It was released in the U.K. at the end of March with StudioCanal U.K. handling distribution over there while A24 will handle distribution in the U.S. A24 has become a very prestigious distribution company in the realm of independent films with last year's best picture winner "Moonlight" being one of many films they have handled. Yet despite that, this will be only their second movie that they've opened in more than 1,000 theaters after last year's "The Witch," which opened to $8.8 million. So either this will break a record for them or it will play out like "The Witch" and have a more conservative run.

Next up we have a movie attempting to play "The Blair Witch Project" card and that is Phoenix Forgotten. In 1999, "The Blair Witch Project" was a movie that claimed to be edited from actual camera footage found from three students that went out into the woods hunting a witch a few years previously and were never found again. It was a brilliant cinematic ploy that tricked millions of people and popularized the found footage genre. 18 years later, we're all sick of the genre due to its overuse, but "Phoenix Forgotten" is going to try it again anyways. In this, the trailers claim that the there have been multiple UFO citings throughout history that the government has repeatedly denied. "Phoenix Forgotten" tells the story of three students who caught UFO footage on their cameras in Phoenix, Arizona 20 years ago, then went out searching further and were never seen again. Sound familiar? One of the producers of this film is Ridley Scott, director of the 1979 classic "Alien." This coming a month after "Life," an "Alien" copycat movie and a month before "Alien: Covenant," which is again directed by Ridley Scott. So, you know, aliens are the cool thing in Hollywood right now.

It's been an April tradition around Earth Day for a new DisneyNature documentary to come out. This started in 2009, with the only years DisneyNature taking off being 2013 and last year. But they're back this year with Born in China, a DisneyNature documentary that explores the wildlife of China. DisneyNature claims that this is their most ambitious project to date with how difficult it is to get the footage of this area for several different reasons, high elevation being one of them. They specifically follow the families of a panda, a snow leopard and a golden monkey. For every ticket purchased on opening weekend, DisneyNature will donate $0.20 to the World Wildlife Fund to help protect the wild animals in China, with the minimum donation being $100,000. In case you needed some incentive to go see it. For context, opening weekends for past DisneyNature documentaries have been anywhere from $4.6 million to $10.8 million, with the average being $6.8 million and the median being just over $6 million. So that's the range we're looking at for "Born in China."

The movie with perhaps the least amount of promise this weekend is ironically The Promise. This movie is a historical drama that takes place during the last days of the Ottoman Empire and is centered around a love-triangle between characters played by Oscar Isaac, Charlotte Le Bon and Christian Bale. So in terms of cast, this movie is strong. But it reminds me a bit of last month's "The Zookeeper's Wife," a more low-key historical film with an A-list cast that Focus Features decided to open in just 541 theaters instead of their initial planned wide release, a strategy that worked well for them given how high the per-theater average was (it earned $3.3 million in 541 theaters). If Open Road Films wanted to use the same strategy here, that wouldn't be a bad idea given the number of films in the market this weekend. Either way, the reviews will be what carries this film. On that note, it currently carries an early 31 percent on Rotten Tomatoes after showing at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, which isn't a very good sign. Unless general audiences react differently, this could be dead on arrival.

April 28th - 30th-

Based on the third weekend totals of "Fast & Furious 6" and "Furious 7," "The Fate of the Furious" is looking at a third weekend total between $19.6 million and $29.2 million. This is a total that would be beatable if it weren't a weekend that's essentially cinematic suicide to release a film on, so studios don't usually try. Hoping for the best will be STX Entertainment with The Circle. The reason why the last weekend of April is such a bad weekend is that the first weekend of May is the big Summer opening weekend, which in this case means Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2," which is poised for one of the biggest opening weekends ever. Does any studio really want to release their movie the weekend right before that? And if they do, what does that say about their confidence towards the movie that they won't give it a little more breathing room? Now "The Circle" does have some positive buzz as it's a sci-fi thriller based on a popular novel from a few years ago and stars Emma Watson, Tom Hanks and John Boyega. Emma Watson takes a job at a powerful internet company and quickly rises up the ranks only to realize that this may not have been the best choice. James Ponsoldt from "The Spectacular Now" is the director of the film.

Finishing off the month will be a pair of releases that will go mostly unnoticed. Starting us off is How to Be a Latin Lover. This comes to us via Pantelion Films, a distribution company focused on delivering movies to the Latino audience. Recent films they've released include "Everybody Loves Somebody," "Un Padre No Tan Padre," "Compadres" and "No Manches Frida." "How to Be a Latin Lover" stars Eugenio Derbez, Salma Hayek, Rob Lowe and Kristen Bell and is about a man who made a career of career of seducing older women. After 25 years of marriage to a woman twice his age, he comes home one day to find that she has dumped him and now he has to start over and ends up moving in with his sister and her son. These movies from Pantelion usually open to a few million or so and play well over the ensuing weeks with their target audience, so this is likely to do the same.

Last and possibly least from the month of April is Sleight., a movie that initially premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year before being acquired by BH Tilt and WWE Studios and finally arriving in theaters over a year after its Sundance premier. The movie is about a young magician looking after his younger sister following the passing of their parents. When she gets kidnapped, he uses his magician skills to try to save her. At least one critic described it as "Chronicle" meets "Iron Man," which is an interesting comparison. Sundance films don't usually have the best crossover to general audiences. Out of the 2016 crop, "Manchester by the Sea" did very well thanks to its awards season buzz, but the others not so much. "The Birth of a Nation" and "Love & Friendship" led the way with a final total of $15.9 and $15.0 million respectively while most of the others that got an actual push landed between $1 million and $6 million, which seems like a good range for "Sleight." BH Tilt has released a total of five films over the last two years that finished between $2.3 million and $10.8 million.

The Boss Baby Review

From the studio that brought you "Shrek," "How to Train Your Dragon," "Kung Fu Panda" and "Megamind" now gives us... "The Boss Baby"? Oh man. What in the world has happened to DreamWorks Animation? OK, in fairness, DreamWorks has never really been on Pixar level when it comes to animation. Yeah, they've made some phenomenal movies like the ones I've mentioned, but they've never been consistent. I mean, they started out with "Antz" and scattered between their great movies are movies like "Shark Tale," "Flushed Away," "Bee Movie," the endless amounts of sequels in the "Madagascar" and "Shrek" franchises as well as nearly everything they've done in the last five years with a few minor exceptions. So them making a bad movie is nothing too surprising. But they've hit a new all-time low here with "The Boss Baby." Never have I watched a trailer for a DreamWorks movie and thought it looked like absolute trash. Never have I walked up to the ticket booth at a theater and been embarrassed to ask for a ticket to a DreamWorks movie. Rarely have I ever sat through a DreamWorks while writhing in pain, hoping it would end and put me out of my misery. Some are saying it isn't as bad as it looks. Unfortunately I'm saying it is. In fact, I really hated this movie.

Being perfectly honest, I almost skipped this movie. It didn't look bad enough to make it on my end of year worst list, but it didn't look good enough for me to care. And projections heading into the weekend had flop written all over it. Had it actually flopped, it would've signified that no one actually did care and thus rushing out to see it to get a review out didn't seem like a top priority. I would've probably seen it eventually because I'm planning on ranking the DreamWorks movies much like I did with Pixar and Disney, but that would've been on a random night a few months down the road when I had nothing better to do with my life. But no, even though projections had started to warm up heading into the weekend, people were still saying $30-35 million, making for a second or even third place finish. Yet it shocks the world by getting $50.2, dethroning "Beauty in the Beast" for the No. 1 spot at the box office? What in the frack? I guess we should've seen this coming. Fellow DreamWorks movie "Home" did practically the same thing two years ago as it came out of nowhere to earn $52.1 million. But at least "Home" was somewhat entertaining, even though I mostly forget it exists until I look at a list of DreamWorks movies. "The Boss Baby," though, I don't understand the appeal.

The plot of this movie is a weird combination of "Baby Geniuses" and "Toy Story." And if that's not strange enough, halfway through it feels like a group of 7-year-old boys took over and finished the screenplay for DreamWorks. For some reason, DreamWorks looked at that script and decided it was up to their new standard of quality and threw it in theaters. Then those same 7-year-old boys conned DreamWorks into turning "Captain Underpants" into a movie, but we'll get to that one in a couple of months. I actually was obsessed with those books when I was in Elementary School, so we'll how that turns out. But back to "The Boss Baby," if you've never seen or heard of "Baby Geniuses," I don't really recommend you fix that. It's a dumb movie from 1999 focused around a group of babies who are secretly super smart without their parents realizing it. For some reason it spawned a sequel and that sequel is currently No. 3 on IMDb's list of WORST movies of all time, behind only "Code Name: K.O.Z." and "Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas." That's the quality of film that we're replicating here. Sure, talking babies have been done before and done well, but our baby in "The Boss Baby" certainly isn't one of them. This baby was just super annoying and I wanted it to go away.

In terms of plot specifics, Tim is an only child whose parents give him all the attention in the world and he really loves it. Then one night they ask him, "How would you like a younger brother?" To which he replies, "Nope, I'm good." But then he starts to think, "Where do babies really come from?" A question that no parent is excited to answer. And of course, every kids movie that tries to answer this question does so in a super cliché way that they think is super clever, but is super not. In this iteration of that cliché, babies come from a factory called Baby Corp where they are sorted into family-ready babies or business-ready babies. The family-ready babies go down a fancy slide and are delivered by Baby Corp in a taxi cab? I think? Meanwhile the business babies are sent to baby business school where they have the potential to eventually run or be a part of Baby Corp. If they fail, they are punished by getting sent down to a family while forgetting everything about Baby Corp. Or something like that. The plot is actually kinda confusing and doesn't make sense especially since Tim's mom was visible pregnant, but her baby arrived in a taxi cab wearing a suit? So is all this in Tim's imagination or is it really happening in the world of this movie? I don't actually know.

But Boss Baby isn't here at Tim's house as a punishment. He's here to investigate because according to Baby Corp's statistics, parents are getting more obsessed about having puppies than having babies, so he is here to figure out why that is or else he is going to get fired and turned into a real baby. He and Tim really hate each other. Tim is jealous that Boss Baby is taking all the attention away from him while Boss Baby is leery of Tim because Tim has figured out his secret that he's essentially an adult in a baby's body and Boss Baby doesn't want Tim to tell his parents. So they make an agreement to go investigate Puppy Co. together because then Boss Baby can go back to Baby Corp and Tim can go back to being an only child and they'll be happy. And if you think I've just spoiled this whole movie, I haven't really. Last paragraph was the setup and this paragraph was our premise for the film. I suppose I could've left this premise a surprise, but in order for you to understand why I thought this movie was so dumb, you needed to know what this movie is about because this premise is just retarded. What I've described is just scratching the surface. The second half of this movie goes off the rails. I threw in the towel early and spent much of the film begging for it to end.

I suppose I won't spoil anymore of the movie, but I do need to describe to you the range of emotions that I felt while I was watching as we can split this into three parts. Part one of the movie literally annoyed the crap out of me. All this stuff with Tim and his parents were fine and dandy, but once Boss Baby came into the picture, I just couldn't stand this film. The premise that I described to you is so incredibly stupid that not for one second was I even remotely interested in what was happening. I had zero emotional investment. When Boss Baby came onto the scene, I found him so annoying and unfunny. I had the strongest desire to get up and leave, but I suppressed that urge and dealt with it, which was painful. It was like forcing myself to sit at a dinner table where everyone there has zero manners and are all chewing noisily in my ear. Those were the emotions that I was feeling during this movie. Part of the problem is that the movie relied so heavily on naked baby jokes. I wouldn't call them inappropriate like in "The Angry Birds Movie," they just weren't. But they kept happening. That and all the poop, fart, burp, throw-up jokes that will make your five-year-old laugh, but no one else. I hate it when it movie thinks it's so funny that it keeps using the same jokes, but it's really not.

Once I got through that atrocious first act, the second act was tolerable. But that's about it. The problem here is that it became so by-the-numbers and predictable that I just didn't care. Earlier in this review, I compared it to "Toy Story." In "Toy Story," Woody is the favorite toy who's loved by Andy. Until Andy's birthday comes around and he gets a new Buzz Lightyear. Then Woody becomes forgotten and thus becomes extremely jealous. Woody and Buzz then have their adventures at Pizza Planet and Sid's house and you know that all ends. Well, in "The Boss Baby," Tim is Woody and Boss Baby is Buzz. Boom. I don't need to say anything. Except "Toy Story" is a great movie while "The Boss Baby" is a lazy, annoying rip-off that literally brings nothing new the table. Except for a crazy third act that seemed like it was written by 7-year-olds. Because it certainly didn't seem like it was written by intelligent adults who have spent their entire careers writing movies for kids. The movie went completely off the rockers and somehow also manages to be both extremely confusing and super predictable at the same time. And it gives you the exact cliché ending that you know is going to happen the second you watch the trailer or the second the movie starts playing out.

But now for the question of the day. Will the kids like it? You can listen to the rantings of a 28-year-old adult male such as myself, but that might not be super helpful in determining if your five-year-old will enjoy the movie because they aren't quite as critically harsh as I am. Lucky for you, I ended up in a sold out crowd full of little kids and I paid close attention to their reactions. And while they didn't laugh as hard or long as in other animated movies I've seen, they all seemed to love it. So I don't know what to tell you. If you are willing to sit through and endure one of DreamWorks' worst movies to date in order to give your kids a good time at the theaters, then go for it. Just know that there are actually a ton of animated movies this summer that you and the kids might enjoy. So I'd say be patient and save your money now for a more enjoyable experience later. Buy "The Boss Baby" on DVD and let your kids enjoy it on their own so that you don't have to suffer through it. That's what I'd recommend. But it's up to you. If you aren't a parent with young kids, then this recommendation is a lot easier. Skip this one. It's not worth your time or money. It's a lazy, painful, confusing, predictable piece of trash that belongs in the garbage can. Epic fail for DreamWorks. I'm giving "The Boss Baby" a 5/10.

Life Review

Shall we sit here and talk about life for a second? Whose life you might ask? My life? Your life? The life of a random person? The life of people in space? Life on Mars? Or what about the game of Life? No? You want to talk about the movie "Life" that I'll put in quotation marks because it's the title of a movie? OK, you got me. Those last few sentences were me making fun of a the title of this movie for being so vague and generic. When I was initially trying to figure out what this movie was about, the trailers didn't really help either. A group of people in space have found life on Mars and they're all happy and joyful until jump scare, screaming and movie title. "Life." Coming March 2017. So I initially assumed this was a continuation of our trend of yearly space movies which have previously included "Gravity," "Interstellar," "The Martian" and "Passengers." A trend I quite like even though two of those are not good movies. I like space movies. Yet it wasn't until the rating for "Life" came out that the light bulb went off in my head. An R-rated space thriller involving an alien that is discovered? This is 2017's version of "Alien." After that sunk in, I went and re-watched the trailers with that in mind and suddenly it all made sense. And I was even kind of excited!

I won't spend too much time talking about the actual movie "Alien" here in this review, mainly because "Alien: Covenant" is coming out in May and that'll be my opportunity to talk about that franchise, but it's worth noting that "Alien" is a movie that is fairly simple, yet extremely effective at what it sets out to do. It relies on a great cast that you're able to get behind right from the beginning who bring this strange alien onto their ship that transforms into the classic Xenomorph that is both extremely terrifying, yet one of the best creature designs in the history of alien/monster movies. The Xenomorph spends the movie quietly lurking around the ship taking people down one by one, which makes for quite the terrifying, intense film. "Alien" was a revolutionary film that was replicated in one way or another time and time again in cinema. The fact that we still have movies in 2017 like "Life" that are again replicating the formula should be telling about how influential that movie was. Plus we still have "Alien" movies coming out, as I previously mentioned with "Alien: Covenant" next month. As far as the movie "Life" goes, I do think it does a good job at taking this formula and turning it into a thrilling little space movie that is worth your time if you are a fan of the genre.

Approaching this review is a bit tricky, though. This is yet another one of those movies where the experience is enhanced if you go in knowing close to nothing, so the more detail I dive into, the more it will take away from the experience. I won't reveal any spoilers here, in fact I will do my best to be extremely vague with things, but if you want to just close this review right here and go see the movie, I would be totally fine with that. Just know that while this movie is nothing terrific or revolutionary like the movie it's trying to replicate, it's an enjoyable little film if you enjoy thrillers. There you go. There's your quick review. If you want a little more detail than that or if you've seen the movie and want to compare notes, then continue reading. But still no spoilers. Just slightly more depth than what I've already given. What I like about "Life" is how simple it is. They don't spend a ton of time diving into the backstory of each character or setting up this journey. We don't spend half the movie travelling to Mars to get our soil sample. We jump right into the thick of things without wasting any time. We have a crew of six astronauts on this spaceship. They've already traveled to Mars and grabbed their sample and are now testing it in the lab. Then we go from there.

Paradoxically, the same things that work for "Life" in this manner are also what goes against it. No, I don't need long setup in a movie like this, but the simplicity of the movie also means that it's kind of forgettable. There's nothing special about this movie. There's nothing unique about this movie. There's nothing revolutionary about this movie. It's just kinda there as a movie to take up a couple of hours of your time if you have nothing else to do. While I do appreciate the fact that we didn't spend half of the movie setting up these characters, the fact that we have very little backstory means there's not quite as much emotional weight behind them, meaning we have to rely solely on the acting abilities of our cast to make them likable and give us that emotional punch in case there's any of them that don't make it out of this situation. Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds, Rebecca Fergusen, Hiroyuki Sanada, Ariyon Bakare and Olga Dihovichnaya comprise our six main characters and while all of them do fine, the ones I am familiar with out of the six don't exactly give career-defining performances if you know what I mean. Some stand out more than others and a couple of them were essentially "redcoats," but there's no one that I really had a deep emotional attachment to.

So yeah, this is kinda hard to judge as it's almost a lose-lose situation for the makers of this movie. Regardless of which direction they took, there's things to complain about, thus you can say the real problem here is the idea itself and the timing of this movie. With how many big budget space movies that have been released recently, you can say the market for this is a bit over-saturated as this doesn't do anything memorable. With the comparison to "Alien," if you have a movie in 1979 that's revolutionary enough to spark so many different replicas, then a movie like "Life" 38 years later that tries to do the same thing later won't have the same effect. The novelty has worn off and you walk out feeling like you've seen this before a hundred times. So if you want to take this formula and try it again, you have to bring something new and unique to the table and "Life" decides to instead play things super safe. Thus you can say that once the decisions were made with the screenplay to go in the direction that they did, they were doomed from the start to be a forgettable movie. There wasn't much that the director or the cast of the movie could do make this stand out, even though it's evident that they all try their best. There's no bad performances. It's the idea that was the problem.

With all that said, I'm not going to destroy this movie and tell you to skip it. If you're not a movie junkie like me and you're selective with the movies you see for whatever reason, this is not a movie I say is necessary for you to rush out and see. You can let it pass by and you won't be missing anything. However, if you do like heading to the movies quite often and you need to get your movie fix in, this is a good option, especially since our selection of movies to pick from in April is looking like it will be rather lacking in quality. If you especially like the horror and/or thriller genres, this will be an especially good fix. I don't want to dive into the specifics as to why because that will spoil the experience, but this is a decently intense thriller. I don't think it's really super scary and I'm not quite sure if I would classify it as horror like I would with "Alien," but if you think of "Alien" and the specifics of what made that movie work so well, those are your specifics for "Life." Although in every category that "Alien" gets a 9 or a 10 in for me, "Life" would get a 7 or 8. So not absolutely phenomenal, but decent enough to get a pass. In a month or two I might forget that I even saw this movie, but in the moment I enjoyed it enough to give it a pass. Thus my grade for "Life" will be a 7/10.

Ghost in the Shell Review

Today in Hollywood we are extremely obsessed with remaking everything. Sure, remakes have been happening since movies started being made, but it seems like the number of remakes has dramatically increased the last several years. This month alone, which has essentially been treated as an early summer month for Hollywood, we've had remakes of "King Kong," "Beauty and the Beast," "CHiPs" and "Power Rangers." You could also argue the lack of originality with movies like "Before I Fall," "The Belko Experiment" and "Life" as each of those, while not technically a remake, borrow specific ideas from other popular movies. So yeah, it's been a month of remakes, some working, some not. Continuing the trend of remakes to end the month of March, the latest property to get a remake is "Ghost in the Shell," a property that I haven't been super familiar with until recently. The big reason for that is that I haven't ever been huge into anime. Nothing against anime, of course. In fact, I've been trying to make more of an effort to get into anime because a lot of the anime I've watched has been excellent. Which is why I'm grateful for movies like this because, at the very least, it gives me stronger motivation to become familiar with the source material going in.

Yes, I'm at a slight disadvantage going into this review because I haven't had 22 years to let the original "Ghost in the Shell" movie sink in. But I did watch the movie about a month ago and it completely blew my mind. It's a very short movie at only 85 minutes, but it's one of those rare films where every scene, every moment and every word of dialogue felt important to the overall story and thus there's more packed into that 85 minutes than your average two to three hour movie. Even though there is plenty of fun action sequences in the movie, I wouldn't call it an action movie. It's a thought-provoking, futuristic sci-fi film. The themes in the movie were so deep and profound that I felt like I needed to watch the movie three or four times before seeing this new remake. I have not done that yet. I've just seen it the one time. But I can guarantee you that this is a movie I will be revisiting many times in the future. This has also given me the desire to dive into all the other "Ghost in the Shell" material, of which there is many as this series began in 1989 with the original manga and has since been adapted into various movies and TV shows, with the aforementioned 1995 anime film directed by Mamoru Oshii being perhaps the most well-known and well-liked of the bunch.

The big question here is how does this 2017 live-action remake hold up? While I can't speak for those who have been fans for 20+ years, I honestly think they did a pretty decent job here. Of course it's not on the same level of the 1995 film, but as I said with the "Beauty and the Beast" remake a couple of weeks ago, if your bar is that a remake has to be on the same level or better as the source material or else you will consider it a big piece of trash, well I don't think that's super fair. Yes, purely awful live-action remakes of beloved animated films or TV shows do exist, such as "Dragonball Evolution" or M. Night Shyamalan's "The Last Airbender," but rest assured that our current "Ghost in the Shell" is NOT on the level of those movies. In fact, when it comes to remakes like this, I think "Ghost in the Shell" is one of the better remakes. Sure, if I were to buy, watch and re-watch a "Ghost in the Shell" movie, it'll be the 1995 version and not the 2017 remake, but this is a solid choice if you are in need of a two hour escape into the world of cinema. This is a very beautiful world that has been set up with a lot of great characters and performances led by the great Scarlett Johansson. There's a lot of fantastic action sequences to enjoy and a solid story that gives you opportunities to think.

Let's start with this world that they setup. If you're unfamiliar with the anime, "Ghost in the Shell" is a futuristic world where the boundaries between human and cyborg are very thin. I believe the 1995 movie is set in Japan in 2029. I'm not sure if the 2017 movie said a date or not, but the point is we're in the future and there's the technology that has been developed where if you lose any body part, you can have it robotically replaced. Thus most people are at least partially cyborg while some are almost fully cyborg. The latter scenario is the situation for our main character, who for simplicity's sake, I'll just refer to as Major because that's what they call her for most of the movie and I'm not quite sure if our modern version kept her same full name. But nevertheless, the only part of Major that is human is her brain and her "ghost," which is essentially her soul. Hence "Ghost in the Shell." Her only connection to humanity is her soul, but the rest of her is in a mechanically created shell. And she has a hard time differentiating between human and cyborg as to what her true identity is. At least in the anime. I'll get to the themes of the movie in a bit, but this world that was set up is a brilliant and fascinating world, both conceptually and visually. I was really curious to see how they were going to pull this off.

At the very least we can say that visually speaking, this live-action remake hit a home run. They successfully pulled off this universe and is a visual masterpiece. The estimated production budget for this movie is around $110 million and they took advantage of every dollar of that budget to make this world look perfect. This with both the city itself and all the character designs. These part-Cyborg, part-human people are all really awesome. The scenes where we got to see them creating or fixing the people were fascinating. The interaction between everyone, from main characters down to the extras was fun to see. All the cinematography and lighting everywhere really added to the tone of the movie. The frosting on the cake for the movie in terms of the technical aspects was the score. The original score in the 1995 movie was very mesmerizing and almost haunting in parts, so there was a lot to live up to as far as that goes and I think they did a pretty good job matching that. This was a visually stunning movie with a mesmerizing score that did a great job of sucking you in. When you're adapting any animated film into live action, it's often hard to completely capture the magic of that world, which is why it's so impressive that this live-action managed to do so.

Lots of kudos to all the various teams in charge of the technical side of the movie. But what makes the 1995 film so good is not just the mesmerizing world, it's the themes of the movie. Movies about artificial intelligence have been done so often that they are practically a dime a dozen these days, but back in 1995 I don't know if that was the exact same story. I don't think "Ghost in the Shell" was the first ever movie to dive into the subject of artificial intelligence, but the ideas it brought up as well as the manner in which it did so, have been very influential to the sci-fi genre ever since its release. Fast forward 22 years and now we have a movie in a similar situation as "The Giver." As a novel, "The Giver" was very ahead of it's time, but it took them so long to do a movie adaptation that when they finally got around to it, so many other similar books had been written and movies made in that genre that the movie version of "The Giver" felt like an old rehash of something we've seen a thousand times, especially since they switched things up to make the story more modern and did more filling in the blanks that the novel left to one's imagination. Unfortunately the live-action version of "Ghost in the Shell" is a similar situation. It doesn't feel very revolutionary or any different than any other A.I. film.

Even if we were to pretend that both movies came out this year, given that I watched both of them for the first time this year, the way the live-action movie handles the depth and themes of the anime aren't nearly as compelling. The anime spends nearly the entire run time flooding you with various questions with the way Major acts and reacts in various situations as well as the way the story unfolds. And the great thing with all of these questions that the movie so brilliantly asks is that the movie never really answers them. Thus when the end credits roll, you are left stuck in deep thought about everything that you just watched. You want to study, ponder and reflect on everything followed by revisiting the movie time and time again in order to pick more things up that you missed the first time around in order to answer more of these questions that were asked. In the live-action version, most of this questions are a whole lot more subdued. I think the movie spent more time fleshing out the world that they created and putting together some fun action sequences while diving into the mysterious actions of this organization that Major is a part of rather than asking the same questions in the same way as the anime did. In fact, the overall story here is completely different.

I don't want to dive into too many details, but one of these instances for me where the live-action version didn't quite live up to the anime comes with Major herself. In the anime, you could tell that the line between human and cyborg was very blurred in the way she reacted to the world around her. In fact, she would often disrobe before going into battle. This was not done in a sexual way, but rather because it seemed more of a distraction for her to have them on and she didn't seem to fully comprehend this idea of privacy or even gender. There was a lot of confusion here. She also spoke in a very monotone way and never blinked. This complexity with her character was really fascinating. Many of these things were touched upon in the live-action film, but I felt it was more surface level as I didn't quite feel the complexity of this character. Like when she would disrobe, it seemed like it was done more out of necessity to follow the anime and didn't really fit in with the character. That and they made Scarlett Johansson look a lot more cyborg and fake to pull off the PG-13, thus if I hadn't seen the anime, I would be wondering why her character was even doing some of the things she did because I didn't get the sense of realism with the character or the depth of the story.

That said, the story they set up, which I won't dive into anymore than I already did, was good enough to entertain me for two hours. We had a well fleshed-out villain that was easy to get behind even if he wasn't quite as interesting as the Puppet Master for the anime. And all the drama and secrecy with Section 9 was intriguing enough. Scarlett Johansson as Major does a decent job pulling off this character. Any of the complaints I had that her character wasn't as interesting as in the anime certainly wasn't her fault. And yes, I did brush by this controversy of her being white-washed. In 2017 we search for ways to get offended and a lot of people hated the idea of an American actress playing a character that was supposed to be Japanese. Well, on one hand, this was a character whose complete physical appearance was created in a lab. On the other hand, the Japanese people don't seem to be bothered at all by this. In fact, they seem to prefer Scarlett Johansson as Major. So why should we Americans get so uptight? Another dumb 2017 controversy. Let's move on. In the end, will I watch and re-watch our new "Ghost in the Shell"? Probably not. But it's still a decent live-action remake of a masterpiece that's worth your time. I'm going to give our new "Ghost in the Shell" an 8/10.

Power Rangers Review

Once again in Hollywood I find myself reliving my childhood. The second time this month, actually. In fact, if there's any TV show or movie from my childhood that hasn't either been remade or given another sequel, then I'm sure it's coming. I'm at a point in my life where my childhood was 20 years ago and that's a good milestone in the minds of Hollywood people to start redoing things. This time around, we're discussing the Power Rangers! If you're a 90's child like myself, I'm sure that the Power Rangers was one of the staples of your childhood, especially if you were a male that grew up in the 90's. I'm not being sexist there. It's just that Power Rangers mainly appealed to young boys. If Power Rangers was a staple for your childhood, I'd also be willing to guess that your mom wasn't a huge fan of Power Rangers and in hindsight you probably don't blame her because watching Power Rangers makes you want to get in play fights with your siblings that sometimes turns into real fights if things get out of hand. But either you watched it anyways or your mom grudgingly let you enjoy. I can't say I was ever super deep into Power Rangers, but I certainly thought it was a lot of fun. The type of cheesy, dumb fun that you can sit back and enjoy because the show knows what it is.

When I heard that Power Rangers was getting the remake treatment, I immediately became nervous simply because Transformers and G.I. Joe were also fun shows that got absolutely butchered with their recent movie remakes. If I'm going to be forced to relive my entire childhood on the big screen, I want justice to be done. It doesn't need to be as good necessarily, but I want to walk out of the theater pleased and given that the Transformers movies have turned into complete abominations and the G.I. Joe movies aren't much better, I really didn't want Power Rangers to suffer the same fate. But when the trailers started coming out, I began having nightmares because it seemed as if my fears were going to be realized. I hated the trailers. I was crossing my fingers that the movie would turn out better than what was being advertised, but I didn't have much hope. Now to be clear, I wasn't requiring perfection out of this. The original Power Rangers were very cheesy and dumb, but the reason why the show worked so well is because they were very self-aware and they knew who their target audience was and they embraced all of it. That's all I wanted here. Cheesy, dumb fun, not over-bloated cinematic torture that people like Michael Bay think will be fun.

The result for me was very mixed. We can essentially split this movie into three different parts where my emotions towards each part were completely different. So let's start with part one. Horrendous. Awful. Bad. Cringeworthy. I absolutely hated the first third of this movie, which is strange because a lot of the reviews I've watched and read said the first part was the only part that really worked. I think it's safe to say that most people know about the Power Rangers, yet for some reason the filmmakers here decided they needed to start from ground zero and spend two-thirds of their movie going into an in depth origin story about how the kids in this movie become Power Rangers as if this was a new concept that they were introducing and there was no need for that at all. I'm very picky with my origin stories, especially when it comes to an origin story that we all know. It's like the Batman and the Spider-Man origin stories. We get it. We've seen it a hundred times. Don't do it again. If you go into this movie expecting a fun filled Power Rangers action movie from beginning to end, you're not going to get it because they don't even morph into their suits until the final act. I understand the need to spend some time setting up, but this movie dragged the setup way too far and I didn't like.

I especially didn't like the first half of our setup. Our group of five kids that I assume are young adults in real life and not actual teenagers I think do a fine job and I'll get more into them in a second, but the problem here is the screenplay. The movie is essentially a high school drama with a group of misfit teenagers that experience every cliché in the book for these movies. We have the high school quarterback that ruined his football career with a series of dumb mistakes that don't even make sense. We have the kid this is a social outcast due to his lack of social skills. We have the useless bully who's an idiot for no real reason. We have the girl who gets rejected by her girlfriends and decides to cut her hair with scissors in the bathroom, which magically gives her the sexiest hair in the school. We have the new girl in school that can't fit in with everyone else. Then we have the Asian dude who, well, we don't learn much about until later. Not only is there zero creativity with this setup, but it's also executed in the most horrifically painful way possible that makes it a whole heck of a lot worse than just about every other teenage drama out there. Most of this consists of painfully awful dialogue and decisions that are either super convenient to the plot or straight up dumb.

Not helping this at all is the attempted humor in the film. If you've seen the final trailer and cringed as much as I did at that, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. But in the movie it's even worse and even comes close to Transformers 2 level of awful humor that is super dirty and unfunny. It's not quite as bad as Transformers in that aspect, but there are some moments where I cringed in my seat at what was happening. There was also a lot of other humor that, while not cringeworthy or dirty, just fell flat. There were many attempted jokes where I thought to myself that it seemed like they trying to be funny, but I didn't even crack a smile. And while I'm on the subject of Transformers, we also had to do our best to sexualize the females in the movie. I mean, why did we have to show our main teenage girl strip down to her underwear and dive into the lake? And why did Elizabeth Banks' villain have to wear weird, skimpy outfits for the entirety of the film? I don't understand. And on top of all of that, the movie had no idea what tone it wanted to take. It tried to balance being super serious with being super cheesy and instead of getting the right balance, they just fumbled the tone the entire film and even had out of place horror moments with the introduction of our villain.

So yeah, this wasn't going well at all for me. I hated our kids. I hated the setup. I hated the humor. I hated the undecided tone. I hated the dialogue and most of the screenplay in general. I was painfully sitting in my seat just hoping for the movie to go by quick and put me out of my misery so I could go home and completely trash it as a worthless piece of garbage that deserves to flop hard. But then something happened. I don't know if there was one defining moment where the movie turned from completely awful to tolerable or even good at some moments, but I think it was a gradual thing. We started off painfully awful, but the movie got slowly less and less painful to the point where I was enjoying the drama that was taking place with these kids. They still hadn't become Power Rangers, but they started to connect as a group and gain a lot of chemistry. Then there were moments of honest emotion where they opened up to each other about their life and experiences and I got all of the honest feel-goods with this group of kids that showed me that sometimes in life we feel like outcasts, but if we look deep inside ourselves, we can gain a sense of belonging. Suddenly I didn't hate these kids. In fact, I actually really loved them as a group. I was excited for them to become the Power Rangers and fight this evil villain!

And then we have our final transition of emotion as we head into the final act. I suppose I won't give any spoilers, although being that this is a Power Rangers movie, there's really nothing to spoil. But after getting through two acts of setup, the first act of which I hated while the second half being truly good, this is where the movie finally becomes a Power Rangers movie. It's dumb, predictable and cheesy, but kinda fun. And it brought back a lot of nostalgia to my days watching the show. I mean, if we're being honest with ourselves, every episode of the Power Rangers has the exact same plot and formula and the movie follows that to a "t" in order to pay tribute and make fans like me happy. And I kinda dug it. Rita Repulsa wants to destroy the world and the Power Rangers, but starts by sending a giant monster thing to the small town that the rangers live in and they have to go fight it. Elizabeth Banks plays our useless, throwaway villain that has zero depth, but she plays the character in such an over-the-top way that she's practically in a different movie. The kids in the movie are trying to make a name for themselves while she's just taking a break and having fun for a film. I can't blame her for this, but I wasn't madly in love with her villain. Although there's also been worse.

Overall, if you're a Power Rangers fan, I think this movie is worth seeing because there will at least be parts of the film that you really enjoy. In giving a final grade, this is really difficult because this is the tale of three movies. I went from feeling like I was experiencing a living Hell to really enjoying the journey our kids were going on to being mildly entertained and nostalgic at our ending when this finally became a Power Rangers. If this does well enough to get a sequel, I honestly think the sequel will be much better now that this setup is out of the way and I finally grew to enjoying our cast of kids. The movie is thankfully better than most of our Transformers movies and far superior to both of the G.I. Joe disasters that happened. A perfect comparison might be the recent Ninja Turtles movies that I didn't love, but also didn't hate as much as I thought I would and was even entertained at times, especially during the sequel. That's the level of quality we're looking at here, for better or for worse. Other random tidbits, I didn't care for Bryan Cranston's Zordon or Bill Hader's Alpha 5, but I kinda loved the purposefully over the top Krispy Kreme product placements that surprisingly became essential to the plot. For my final grade, I think a fair average would be to give "Power Rangers" a 6/10.

Beauty and the Beast Review

Last year I released my list of my favorite films from Walt Disney Animation Studios and topping that list was the 1991 classic "Beauty and the Beast." That's a movie that I watched a lot as a child and have always loved. While many Disney movies admittedly carry a lot of nostalgia, I can promise you that "Beauty and the Beast" has a lot more than nostalgia going for it. In fact, it gained new meaning for me when I saw it as an adult because I was able to discover the deep meanings and themes to the movie that hit me right to the core. In fact, many times when I watch it I become an emotional wreck due to how powerful it is and that doesn't happen often for me. Everything about the movie is simply perfect with what it sets out to do and say. Now that Disney is on a mission to remake all of their old classics, "Beauty and the Beast" is the latest in what is going to be a long line of Disney movies to get the live-action treatment. Given how beloved "Beauty and the Beast" is to me, you would think I would be a lot more nervous about this given my relationship with remakes, but you might be surprised to know that this is a movie I've been excited for every step of the way for reasons that we will discuss here and I'm happy to announce that it did not disappoint.

Before we dive into the movie, we need to dive into the controversy. Because we live in 2017, a year in which many people seem look for new ways to be offended. This is actually the fourth major movie this year that has been buzzing in controversy that I think have been unwarranted. "Split" was accused of putting mental illness in a bad light. "A Dog's Purpose" was accused of on-set animal abuse. "The Great Wall" was accused of being a white savior movie. All three controversies were pretty bogus. And now we have everyone throwing a fit over some comments that director Bill Condon made that "Beauty and the Beast" has Disney's first ever "exclusively gay moment." Mr. Condon probably learned the hard way that many people are super sensitive about their Disney movies and that you should probably be careful about comments you make about the movie. There's a lot of people that don't like the idea of Disney pushing a gay agenda which will cause parents to have to talk to their kids about why two men love each other and if that is normal or not. These are very legitimate concerns that have people passionately arguing both sides that range from boycotts of the film to high praise. I braced myself for this and was ready to make a passionate stance depending on what happened. And guess what? Yeah. It's nothing. Like, literally.

Do you want to know exactly what this "exclusively gay moment" is? If not, feel free to skip this paragraph. Because I'm going to tell you. Minor spoilers coming your way. In the end fight, there is a moment where three men approach our wardrobe lady and she dresses them up like girls, like in the animated movie. Two of them scream and run away. A third one looks in the mirror, smiles and walks away happy. At the final ball, this man and LeFou share a dance that is shown on screen for a grand total of like two seconds. That's literally it. LeFou makes some comments throughout implying that he has affection for Gaston, but nothing that I would define as an "exclusively gay moment." These are very subtle moments that are so subtle that your kids aren't even going to notice. For better or for worse, there will be no explaining that you will have to do. If you want to get mad at this, well, just know that Disney has subtle moments like this in just about every movie they've done. There's a lot of Disney moments that are a whole heck of a lot worse than our two second dance in this movie. If Disney does something major like giving Elsa a girlfriend in "Frozen 2," then let's talk. But right now there's nothing really to talk about. Go see the movie and take your kids.

Shall we talk about the movie now? In case you've been living in outer space for the last 80 years or so, you should know that Disney is very good at making money. They always have been. When they find something that makes them money, they keep doing that until it stops working. When they do something wrong, they are very good at learning from their mistakes and keep on trying to improve until they find success. Basically the movie "Meet the Robinsons" is analogous for Disney themselves. In 2010 they discovered that they can make live-action remakes of their classics and make a lot of money off of it. In fact, Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" that I reference made over $300 million in the U.S. and over $1 billion worldwide. "Light bulb!" That's exactly what they studios execs probably said when that happened. Since "Alice in Wonderland," we've had several studios join in on this party, but Disney themselves have now made "Maleficent," "Cinderella," "The Jungle Book," "Alice Through the Looking Glass" and "Pete's Dragon." Many more of these are on the horizon and I can now say I'm excited for this future because Disney is getting better. They're learning from previous mistakes in those movies and learning how to make a proper remake.

"Alice in Wonderland" may have made a lot of money, but the movie was a disaster. "Maleficent" tried to take "Sleeping Beauty" and twist it in a clever way. Nice idea, but lousy execution that turned into an awful movie. With "Cinderella" they decided to make a movie that was faithful to the source material while enhancing a few story elements. Boom! They struck gold with that idea. I had a few minor issues with "Cinderella," but I was overall pleased with this result and this formula. Last year with "The Jungle Book" and "Pete's Dragon" they stayed with that formula. Enhance and update some story elements that may have not made a whole lot of sense, but overall stick with what worked. Both movies were great. "Alice Through the Looking Glass" was an atrocious mess, but we can chalk that up to a minor bump in the road and move on with life. "Beauty and the Beast" follows the same successful formula that made "The Jungle Book" and "Pete's Dragon" work. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This is an extremely faithful adaptation that plays the exact same notes as the original while taking the opportunity to enhance a few elements of the movie or explain certain things that were left unexplained. They take an 85 minute movie and turn it into a 130 minute movie and it works.

As we were going through this movie, I really appreciated the fact that they took the time to fill in the gaps. This is not a fault of the original, really. It's a fairy tale that was meant to be short, yet powerful. Many of Disney's animated movies are less than 90 minutes. Again, that's something that worked for Disney, so they kept doing it. But if you are going to make a live-action movie, 85 minutes isn't going to cut it. So they take the time to add more exposition about the castle, the kingdom and this curse that was placed on the Beast and many of his fellow castle mates. I liked that. When we finally have Belle and Beast in the castle together, they take more time to develop the relationship. Belle has some realistic reservations about the whole situation, but as time goes on, they are able to develop an honest friendship that stems from them realizing that they have several common interests. With the animated movie, this relationship moves really fast and for the sake of that movie, that worked. This time there's more development with the characters and a few minor things are changed in or to get us from Point A to Point B that work really well. And we have a villain in Gaston whose motivations are mostly the same, but partially enhanced to give us a very well rounded story.

All I wanted from this movie is for the magic of the original to return. Because of Disney's decision to remain faithful to the story, that's exactly what I got. This is a tale as old as time that is as timeless as can be. The Beast's character arc is one that many of us go through. We begin our journey as prideful human beings and the end goal is hopefully for us to learn how to truly love, which requires a lot of humility and patience. It's a character arc that is beautiful. Added onto that is the lack of confidence that we may feel that we're never going to find affection from another human being, a female in the case of the Beast, because of our physical appearance. Then we have the character of Belle who is very down to Earth and respectful of everyone. She is headstrong, fearless and progressive. She abhors many cultural traditions such as treating women unfairly or not seeing them as equals to men. She doesn't like the fact that the Beast has made her a prisoner, but at the same time she is able to look past his fierce, repulsive appearance and see him for what he really is, which is something that many aren't able to do, not even the Beast himself at times. Not only are these two relatable a romantic level, but these principles can be applied to a lot of aspects of life.

Emma Watson and Dan Stevens both do an excellent job at encapsulated these two characters. Sure, they don't quite compare to Paige O'Hara and Robby Benson from the original movie, but in fairness not many people would be able to. Yet Emma Watson and Dan Stevens do a pretty dang good job at capturing the magic these two characters. Yes, it's true that I had a hard time seeing Belle in the movie instead of Emma Watson. She doesn't disappear into this role. But I love Emma Watson as a person. I love what she stands for. I love how down to Earth she is. I love her acting. While she doesn't necessarily look a whole lot like Belle or sound a whole lot like Paige O'Hara, the character of Belle and the real life person of Emma Watson have a lot of similarities in personality, so because of that I buy her as this character and I enjoyed seeing her on screen. We'll talk about her singing in a second, but she certainly fit the character. Speaking of characters, though, completely stealing this show was Luke Evans as Gaston. Gaston is one of the best Disney villains with how manipulative he is and how despicable he is. Luke Evans knocked it out of the park. He is a manipulative and atrocious human being with motivations that are completely believable.

Holding the glue together are all of our side characters. There's a lot of them and I enjoyed all of them. Ewan McGregor was hilarious as Lumiere. Ian McKellen did a great job balancing him out as Cogsworth. Gugu Mbatha-Raw does a great job as Lumiere's love interest who has been turned into a feather duster. Then we have Emma Thompson who does a great job stepping into the shoes of Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Potts and her boy Chip is very quick and witty, which I loved. We also have Stanley Tucci playing a new piece of furniture named Maestro Cadenza, who I believe is a harpsichord. He was a great addition to our cast of characters. By the way, all the furniture looks fantastic. It translated a lot better into live-action than I was expecting. In fact, while we're at it, all of the sets in the movie are gorgeous. Our castle especially is breathtaking. All the visual effects and cinematography to go along with the set design is cinematic perfection when it comes to the technical aspects of the movie. Back to the characters, on Gaston's side of things, Josh Gad is perfect as LeFou. In addition to Gad's perfect comedic timing that he brings to this role, LeFou is given more of a conscience in this movie. He's not just the dumb idiot blindly following Gaston. He has a lot of depth and emotion to him that I wasn't expecting. Major props to Gad and the writing team there.

Finally we need to talk about this music. Because the other thing that Disney did here in addition to being faithful to the story and to the characters is keeping this a musical, which is something they didn't do with "Cinderella" and "The Jungle Book." Thus more experimentation. And it worked. I really loved the music. I was going to do a in depth segment at the end of this review discussing each song, old and new, but I have decided against that. I listened to the soundtrack early in the week and really liked it. It took me a second to get used to new voices singing the songs I love, but after several listens it really grew on me, thus when I saw the movie, it connected seamlessly. In fact, there were a few songs that I was nervous about that when I saw them in context of the movie ended up being a lot better. No, the songs don't compare to the original animated film and they aren't Broadway level of perfection. Yes, Emma Watson's voice is enhanced a bit and you can tell at certain moments. No, Luke Evans doesn't have as deep of a voice as Gaston. But I didn't find any of it distracting. The songs weren't great and phenomenal, but they were good enough for me to give the music a pass. I enjoy the soundtrack and I'm going to go back and listen to it many times in the future.

This sparks a completely different discussion that we could go on for hours debating. But I will try to keep it brief. Is "good enough" an acceptable standard for our Disney musicals? Is it OK to hire big name actors and actresses and give them a few months of vocal training so that they can pull off the music while slightly enhancing their voices in post-production in order to give the music a pass? Or should we bring back voice dubbing, which is something Disney themselves used to do all the time? The problem there is finding voice doubles that not only can sing really well, but sound like the actor. If I can tell that the talking voice and the singing voice are two different voices, that takes me out of the movie. Thus it requires a lot of extra casting effort to make it work. Another option is to simply hire trained musicians via Broadway or elsewhere for these roles, but is it OK to sacrifice star power and rely on the brand name recognition alone to do this? I can guarantee you that casting Emma Watson as Belle helped a lot in building anticipation. If we hired someone who was a smaller name that could sing better, the movie may have sold less tickets. Would that have been worth it? I don't necessarily have answers to all of these questions. But they are interesting discussion points.

Overall, this was a longer review, but I felt like it was necessary in this case. "Beauty and the Beast" is a movie that I hold very close to my heart and this was my opportunity to talk about it in more depth than I have before in previous posts. Yet if you can believe it, this was also a very restrained review. I could probably go on for twice as long as I already have talking about just the animated "Beauty and the Beast" and comparing it line for line with this remake, just with the story, themes and characters alone. I barely even touched on the set design, cinematography and visual effects and I don't think I even mentioned the actual score, which is one of Disney's best scores that they brought for this movie. Then there's all the controversies that needed addressing and the debate on the music that needed to be discussed. So yeah, this was a restrained review. Simply put, I am picky with my remakes, yet I have been excited for this remake for a long time as I thought it would make a beautiful transition into live action and I was right. This is a faithful adaptation that recaptures the magic of the original while also enhancing the story and filling in many of the gaps that were left unexplained. It's not as perfect as the animated movie, but I think it would be unfair to expect that or claim it's awful because it's not perfect. My grade for "Beauty and the Beast" is a 9/10.

Kong: Skull Island Review

We now live in a day of cinematic universes. Thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe being so successful, everyone is trying to copy that formula to create their own cinematic universes. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. The movie industry is a business and the purpose of a business is to make money. When you see something that works, you do your best to replicate that to find success on your own. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Personally I think crossover movie events are fun, if done right. My big problem is that sometimes studios of late have been so focused at setting up a cinematic universe that they forget to make a good movie. The reason that Marvel has found so much success is that they were patient and focused on making one good movie at a time before bringing everyone together in "The Avengers." That's how it should be done. And if we do it right, I'm down for it happening. Our most recent continuation of an attempted cinematic universe comes with the King Kong side of things in the King Kong and Godzilla cinematic universe which started with the 2014 Gareth Edwards "Godzilla" remake, a movie that I really enjoyed. So I was excited to see what they had up their sleeves with everyone's favorite giant ape, King Kong!

King Kong is a character that first showed up in the 1933 classic "King Kong" and has since made his way to various forms of media since, including several different movies and remakes throughout the years, the most recent being the 2005 remake by Peter Jackson. How does this movie hold up to all the previous King Kong material? Well, I'll let you be the judge of that. I wasn't expecting it to live up to any previous movie. I just wanted to see a fun movie with a giant ape wreaking havoc when some dumb Americans decided to trespass on his island. As far as expectations go, I went in not sure what to think. I loved the first trailer. I didn't like the second trailer. I heard mostly negative things from the YouTube critics I subscribe to, but the movie was certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes despite all of that (79 percent currently with 195 reviews counted), so there is apparently some sort of disconnect. But that's exactly what happened with the 2014 "Godzilla" and I landed on the positive side of that train, so I still had plenty of hope despite bracing for potential disappointment. Turns out I had quite a bit of fun with this iteration of King Kong. It has it's fair share of flaws, but it's a perfect movie to just turn off your brain and enjoy. Your typical summer blockbuster. Released in March.

The biggest complaint I've heard about this movie is that, while the scenes with Kong are a lot of fun, the movie spends most of the time with its human characters, who are not very interesting. So in other words, the 2014 "Godzilla" debate all over again. People want their "Pacific Rim" style of movie where 95 percent of it is just giant monsters fighting, forgetting that the best monster movies save the big reveal for the second half of the movie. Sure, Godzilla didn't show up until the end of the movie, but other monsters did show up early and the movie spent most of the time building up the terror and panic before delivering an epic finale. It worked. I was kind of expecting that again, but actually Kong shows up quite a bit in this movie. He's in the opening scene. He's there to attack the helicopters when they first arrive. He's there at various moments on their journey through the island. And he's also there for another epic finale. So I don't get what the complaint there is. But yes, we do spend plenty of time with our humans and I do agree that the humans have to be interesting or else there isn't much of a movie. I actually liked our human characters in "Godzilla." Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen did a great job in that. And, despite what everyone else is saying, I didn't hate our humans in this movie either.

I will admit that I was a bit bored during the setup. That being the events between our opening scene and our arrival on the island. Because that opening scene is pretty great. And the arrival on the island is also pretty great. In between that, though, not so much. John Goodman is obsessed that monsters exist and no one believes him when he claims he found a mythical island that he wants to explore, but he gets support anyways for some reason. They find Loki in a bar and for some reason decide that he needs to be their guide. Brie Larson, our future Captain Marvel, is a photographer that is along for the ride for some reason. Then they are given a military escort to tag along that is led by the extremely stubborn, stuck-up military commander commander in Samuel L. Jackson, aka Nick Fury. So yeah, we have a group of random people led by some Avengers characters and John Goodman, none of which have much depth to them or much of a background that is explored. I don't like simply going with the flow and saying the same thing everyone else has been saying, but as things were moving along, I was beginning to understand where everyone was coming from and I was actually dozing off a bit because I was bored, when suddenly... BOOM!!! I'm awake!!

That "BOOM!!!" is when they got to the island. I wasn't expecting an attack right away. I was thinking they would fly in, land on the island, explore a bit, meet some exotic creatures, then accidentally run into Kong. Nope. That's not what happens. They're flying in with their brigade of helicopters and get attacked right away before they can land. They've pissed off the beast to begin with and he starts smacking their helicopters around, swatting them like flies and then crushing them like ants when they're trying to escape. We lose quite a bit of "red coats" right from the beginning and it was freaking epic. Once the dust settles and Kong is gone, that's when the journey begins in a few different parties due to their helicopters being swatted around like flies. Quite honestly I loved Skull Island, which is the name of the island they are on. It's rather entertaining when they are walking through a bamboo field and one "red coat" looks up and gets jabbed through the mouth with a giant piece of bamboo that turns out not to be a piece of bamboo, but rather a leg of a Kong-sized spider. And that's just one of many fancy creatures on this island. It was a fun journey that did a good job of keeping me entertained throughout the movie. The CGI on all of these creatures was great!

One major aspect that I was worried about was the character of John C. Reilly. He was featured quite a bit in that second trailer, which is why I didn't like the second trailer. The trailer had tonal inconsistencies as it tried to be serious like "Godzilla," but John C. Reilly was nothing but off-the-wall humor that made things clash and I was worried that the movie would have the same issues. Nope. John C. Reilly was actually one of my favorite characters. His humor wasn't out of place. Rather he plays a guy that has kinda gone insane after being trapped on the island for like 30 years, so it fit. As far as the rest of the characters go, yeah they don't have much depth or emotion to them, but they grew on me. Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson and John Goodman do a great job in their roles despite not being given much and they make it work. There were also plenty of "red coats" that I enjoyed. The character I actually didn't care for much was Samuel L. Jackson. He does a good job of being angry, bitter and mean. You're supposed to hate him and you do, so props there. But there's a lot of stupid decisions that he makes that don't make any sense and thus derails the movie a bit.

Overall, though, the characters were fine and the journey was fun. And the visual effects and cinematography were phenomenal. There's a lot of epic camera shots. Every time Kong shows up, the movie is fantastic. And he shows up more than some people are giving him credit for. He makes the opening scene great. He makes the arrival on the island jaw-dropping. He makes the final showdown epic. And he shows up in small doses throughout outside those scenes to make things work. Yeah, the journey to get to Skull Island was boring and the characters don't have much depth to them, but once they get to Skull Island, the movie is really entertaining. Whenever Kong isn't there, various other creatures show up to fill space, thus keeping the journey exciting, the best of which being the skull crawler creatures they have to avoid. Yeah, there's some decisions made by certain characters that don't make sense. There's also a few elements of the movie that didn't actually do much to help or hinder the plot. They're just there. But overall this is a fun movie. And different from the other King Kong movies as this tells a different story with different characters than the 1933 and 2005 versions. It does its own thing and it works. I'm going to give "Kong: Skull Island" an 8/10.