Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: Delightfully creepy. Wonderfully acted. Builds up the suspense well. Kind of falls flat at the end.

“Us” begins with a typical American family during a typical American outing until the daughter gets lost and something so scary happens to her that she loses her voice. It then transitions into the same daughter, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), now an adult, American Dreaming with her American Dream family all over the American Dream America. Summer vacation homes, delightful husband, coveting thy neighbor’s car, well adjusted kids, boats! The Wilsons may not have the perfect life, but it’s all anyone could really wish for. And then Us appears.

This is one of those movies that almost has to be talked about as two separate movies, which is unsurprising given the duality of almost everything that happens in “Us”. As a horror film, “Us” is pretty darned entertaining. There aren’t really any jump out of your seat scares, but there is plenty of tension building and the creepiness is sky-high. The first three-quarters of the movie had me. When the explanation of what was happening started to happen, things fell apart for me. Some things didn’t quite fit together for me. There seemed to be too much explanation, but not enough explanation, and by explaining just this much, it ended up confusing the horror story. All the explanations are necessary, not for the horror part, but because…

This movie is also rife with social commentary and symbolism. Curse you Jordan Peele for making us think! The main point being made is no matter how American Dreamy your American Dream is, it was and continues to be built on top of people you have either forgotten about or ignored. You’ll also see 11:11 appear constantly, among other symbols. The Jeremiah 11:11 in the movie refers to this bible verse: “Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them.”

Jordan Peele is now two for two with horror movies. First, the wonderful “Get Out” and now this. “Us” did fantastic in the box office raking in more dollars in the first weekend than any other original horror film. With two smash hits in a row, I expect people to backing dumpster trucks full of money into his yard to fund whatever his next 20 projects will be. I also have to add that holy cow is Shahadi Wright Joseph, who plays Umbrae, creepy as all get-out! Her cock-headed smile will haunt my nightmares. I have no idea how she pulled off that transformation, but yikes!

Jean-Paul’s rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: The recurring theme of airplanes flying overhead symbolizes my wishing I were anywhere else except watching this movie.

Ok, I will admit to “Roma” being a technically spectacular movie. Each background, each camera angle, each musical choice is painstakingly and lovingly chosen. It is a masterpiece in movie making. Cuaron, in this movie, emulates Michelangelo carving out the statue of David if he instead used all of his masterful talents to carve a turkey made of marble. What a turkey it would be! But it’s still just a turkey.

Here’s the main problem; the story is so incredibly boring. The action, the storytelling, the suspense is as thrilling as if you watched me typing out this review for an hour, only it goes on for two hours and fifteen minutes, two hours of which is looking at dog poop. The other fifteen minutes tells the story of a middle class family and their domestic worker who loves the children as her own, whose lives get turned upside down by the father abandoning them and the domestic worker becoming pregnant by her boyfriend who abandons her, all under the backdrop of the Mexican Dirty War with the Massacre of Corpus Christi playing a pivotal role, though none of it is mentioned by name. The Dirty War, by the way, was funded by the CIA, shocking no one. So what we have here is an everyday family’s everyday problems being told during an incredibly volatile and interesting time in Mexico’s history, of which we learn almost nothing about.

The acting in the film is wonderful. Or so I’m told. I’m not sure how one can measure the acting abilities of actors when one is busy reading the subtitles of a language one doesn’t understand. Yes, one can tell a lot from body language, but I don’t really much recall a lot of body language in Cuaron’s sweeping wide angle constantly moving and rotating around scenes, which I admit was a beautiful way to unfold scenes.

“Roma” probably deserves the Oscars that it won. Well, except maybe for Best Foreign Film, as I plead ignorance having not seen any of the others, but I have to assume at least one of them was a better film if not as technically masterful. If you get off on all those fancy movie making techniques, there’s a lot to love in this movie. Other than that, though, there’s not much there. Unless, I guess, you like watching paint dry.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: Empowering. Fun. Funny. Great chemistry. Flerkens!

“Captain Marvel” is three origin stories in one. First and foremost, it’s the origin of Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) as Captain Marvel. Brie Larson is very well cast in this roll. She exuded confidence and power as she slowly accepts her role as defender of Earth. Second is the origin of the Avengers itself. Captain Marvel is the spark in Nick Fury’s (Samuel L. Jackson) eye that leads him on his quest to start The Avengers Project and the events in this movie set up everything for the first “The Avengers” movie. Third is the origin story of Nick Fury’s eye patch. Oh, the horrors!

Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson are great together throughout the film. They have this natural chemistry, which I hear is true even off camera, and each plays off the other wonderfully. This may be one of the greatest film bromances in history. What I found most interesting is how Danvers never really talks down to Fury despite her being supremely overpowered and him being a normal human. There are moments of almost motherliness too, which work really well.

The mid-credits and post-credits scenes set up both “Avengers: Endgame”, which is up next in our time, and “The Avengers” which is up next chronologically in the Marvel Comics Universe. They are probably the most straight forward credits scenes in any Marvel movie and you don’t need an advanced degree in Marvel Comics literature to figure out what they mean if you’ve been following along with the movies thus far.

My only mild complaint about the movie is the special effects. It actually turned out much better than I feared when watching the previews for it, but there was still an overly CGI feel to many of the effects that was distracting at times.

“Captain Marvel” did, shall I say, Marvel-ously (yes I shall!) in the box office, raking in $455M worldwide, making it the 7th largest opening weekend of any movie and the second largest of any Marvel movie. Girl Power! All this despite a fairly concerted effort by misogynists to game online ratings systems to make it look like the movie was not worth seeing. That effort got a lot of decent press and backfired on the misogynists spectacularly.

I think “Captain Marvel” is probably in the top five Marvel movies so far. “Black Panther” still reigns supreme and probably one or both of the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies are better too, but “Captain Marvel” is worthy to be in their presence and is definitely worth repeated viewings. Whenever this chapter in the Marvel epic is through, it would be fun to have a Tesseract viewing party where we watch all the Marvel movies featuring the Tesseract in chronological order. Because the Tesseract is clearly the real star of the Marvel Universe.