Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: This movie was made for one person and one person alone: Quentin Tarantino.

Imagine porn. No, not the kind of porn that you or I would watch (Well, not the kind of porn that you would watch because clearly I would never watch porn). Imagine porn that Quentin Tarantino would watch. That’s the best description I can come up with for “Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood”. Like the porn that you (and not I) watch, it may be an hour long (or in this case two hours and forty-one minutes!), but you know where your favorite five minute segments are and that’s all you really need to get the job done, if you get my drift (which again, I do not because I do not watch porn). The good news is there are lots of excellent five minute segments. The bad news is there are thirty-two five minute segments to get through and it’s exhausting.

In general, I really like Quentin Tarantino’s films. He is a person who clearly loves his craft and it shows in all his movies including this one. The problem with “Once Upon a Time…” is it feels like it’s trying to be something but it’s not quite sure what it wants to be. I remember when I first saw a preview for the movie, there was no real hint at a plot, just some story about actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). I didn’t care about plot. I just saw two great actors in fascinating roles set during the golden age of Hollywood and knew it would be fun. Then I saw another preview which made it clear that this movie was also going to be about Charles Manson. This preview annoyed me because I assumed that Charles Manson was going to be a surprise in the movie, but the reality was that it is absolutely essential that you know not only who Manson is, but also what he and his followers did. If you see this movie without that understanding, a good 50% of the movie looks like absolute fluff. Any movie that requires this much foreknowledge is going to go right over the heads of most of the audience. And even if you know Manson and know his followers and are in on the “joke”, the payoff for the entire thing is completely not worth it. Since this is a Tarantino flick, it shall come as no surprise that the payoff is gratuitous violence.

i would be remiss if I did not reiterate that I am not kidding about those excellent five minute segments. There are so many fantastic actors in this film and all of them are absolutely wonderful. Despite my belief that this movie will likely alienate most of its audience, I would not be surprised if there were best actor/supporting actor nominations for the various roles.

I look forward to when people do edits of this film and simply show all the scenes with Rick Dalton in them. Then they release another of Cliff Booth. Then they release another of Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), etc. Those may be worth watching. I wonder if that’s how Tarantino started and then he just mashed everyone up together to make a feature length film. Pure genius.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: This movie is much better than it any right to be. Pretty consistent laughter from start to finish.

“Stuber” is a ridiculous movie based on a ridiculous premise. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, goodness was this a fun movie! The reviews for this movie have not been good and I can only assume that those reviewers were expecting a different movie because the movie I saw delivered a fairly consistent lineup of jokes and laughs even if some were pretty long in the setup. For instance, there is a scene where they are stocking up on arms for the big showdown and Vic (David Bautista) packs in some propane tanks which Stu (Kumali Nanjiani) exclaims are completely unnecessary. Fast forward to the end of the movie and Stu’s electric car explodes and Stu exclaims “It’s an electric car! Electric cars can’t explode! Oh, the propane tanks.” Somehow, and I cannot tell you why, that is absolutely hilarious.

Much of the humor revolves around Vic’s manliness and Stu’s unmanliness and exploring the nature of manliness, but it does so in a very constructive way. Vic is almost always wrong and Stu is almost always right. Vic’s manliness is toxic and gives him a skewed world view that makes him neglect his daughter Nicole (Natalie Morales) while still believing he’s a good father. Stu has his problems and Vic really only kind of sort of helps him solve them, not by “manning up” as Vic suggests, but by simply confronting them and having a conversation and firmly but politely saying how things need to go. Don’t worry, though, while these are pretty serious topics, you can rest assured that they are not handled in any serious way at all and the results are hilarious. The scene in the strip club for instance. Be sure to watch the background at all times during that scene.

“Stuber” was a delightful surprise. From the previews, I thought the premise had promise, but when the reviews started hitting I kind of assumed the premise failed. Fake news! I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t use Natalie Morales more than they did because she has a great straight person humor. As long as you aren’t looking for a plot that makes sense and are ok with a series of scenes designed for the humor material and not for the furthering of the plot, you’ll probably have fun with “Stuber” too.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Surprisingly lazy story but still fun in all the ways a Spider-Man movie should.

Alright, let’s do this one last time. His name is Peter Parker (Tom Holland). He was bitten by a radioactive spider. And for four movies, he has been the one, the only Spider-Man. This time, our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is off to see Europe on a class trip because that’s what science and technology schools do these days. This is sort of a coming-of-age story with Peter extremely uncomfortable with being an Avenger and his unwillingness to step up from being just the friendly neighborhood type. He is also still bummed about the death of Tony Stark and freaked out by Tony’s belief in him and the immense responsibility that Tony seems to be putting on him.

This is also a revenge film. The main bad guy is angry at Tony Stark for turning down his brilliant ideas and going a different direction than the villain wanted so he assembles a group of other brilliant people who Stark ignored to take control of the vast Stark weapons array. The Marvel Universe has stood apart from others like DC by creating realistic villains, but it fails with this movie. The biggest failure is the fact that the villain already seems to have both unprecedented wealth and much of the weapons array that they are trying to take over. The way the villain does so is also quite convoluted and relies on some serious 10-dimensional chess to make come true.

The good news is that Tom Holland continues to be a really awesome Peter/Spider-Man and does an excellent job of being the best mix of live-action and comic-booky that has always made Spider-Man fun. His awkward attempts at winning MJ (Zendaya) with the help of his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) are fun and amusing and it’s a shame that they didn’t just stick to that.

I hope that the laziness of the story is not a harbinger of things to come for the Marvel Comic Universe as we progress into stage four of Disney’s master plan for movie domination, but there’s still some good comedy and fun characters that pull this film up from mediocrity. I sincerely hope that they push for more things like the fantastic “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” and lean into more Spider-Man movie magic like that.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: A reasonable, if forgettable, denouement to the Toy Story franchise. Ah, who am I kidding, there will be a billion more stories.

“Toy Story 4” is a movie about letting go and moving on. In this case, it’s Woody (Tom Hanks) who is having trouble doing so. He is no longer the top toy in the closet and is often forgotten there, but he still is compelled to protect his kid even in his new unwanted status. When a new “toy” named Forky (Tony Hale) becomes the favorite toy, Woody must pull out all the stops to protect Forky and keep his kid happy.

The whole Forky story is an interesting sidebar about belonging and self-worth, but man does the setup for it go on for way too long. It is like every Saturday Night Live skit where the gag just keeps going on well after the laughs have died out. The movie is only an hour and forty minutes long and I think twenty minutes are Woody rescuing Forky from the trash can.

For a Pixar film, “Toy Story 4” turns pretty dark with the introduction of Gabby Gabby (Christina Hendricks), a 50s style doll with a broken voice box stuck in an antiques store. She rule the antiques store with a bunch of ventriloquist dummy henchtoys as her muscle. Those ventriloquist dummies are creepy as all get out. Added to the creepiness is the fact that they do not talk for some toy-logic reason that is not explained. And added to THAT creepiness is that they walk around like you’d expect a ventriloquist dummy to walk when it didn’t have a hand in it to control it.

Besides the creepy factor which may make it a bit too scary for younger children, “Toy Story 4” hits everything on the fun kids movie checklist. There is also enough adult enjoyment for parents or older kids at heart, but the fourth in the series is certainly the least in the series. Surprisingly and sadly, there was no short film at the beginning. Not sure if this is a move away from that tradition by Pixar or if the film was long enough by itself to not warrant a fun time filler.