Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: The strangest topic for a comedy possibly ever. Legitimately funny after a slow start, though probably not for everyone.

“The Death of Stalin” is a black comedy that portrays the real life events of the behind the scenes rush to power after the, well, the death of Stalin. All the key players are portrayed as conniving and bumbling idiots and sycophants who got to where they were more because of their ability to kiss Stalin’s ass than their actual abilities to run a country. Very much like the Trump Administration only with actual death lists instead of fantasy ones.

The movie needs to lay some groundwork so it takes a bit of time to get going. There are a lot of characters and setting the tone of the movie is important if what’s to come is going to be actually funny. By the time Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) dies, the stage has been set and the rest of the movie is pretty darned funny as Beria (Simon Russel Beale), Malenkov (Jeffery Tambor), Krhushchev (Steve Buscemi), and Molotov (Michael Palin) scheme and betray their way to fill Stalin’s shoes. You would not suspect that this chain of events would make for great comic appeal, but it is done with heavy doses of irony and satire which is highly appropriate for the events of Russia during this time.

Despite a few of the cast members, this is very obviously not a U.S. made movie, but a British one. As a result, its comedy is pretty British. For those that don’t know what that means, go watch the British version of “The Office” then watch the U.S. one. One is uncomfortably funny and the other stars Steve Carell. l I am pretty sure this movie could not have been made in the U.S. because of this. Our teeth are much too perfect to write comedy like this.

This movie is not for everyone. Especially if you do not like British comedies. If you do not like British comedies, you are wrong, but comedy is very subjective and you are wrong. I was amused to discover that this movie was based on a comic book, also not made in the U.S. It makes me wonder how much good media we are missing because we live in our super-media-saturated little corner of the globe where people like Transformers movies.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: More superheroes than you can shake a Chitauri Scepter at. I feel like I have made this joke before… Does a good job of still not making the movie feel crowded, though. Does your favorite hero survive? Almost assuredly, yes. Unless your favorite hero happens to be…nope, not going to hear it from me!

Correction: I have been told by friends much dorkier than I that there are six infinity stones. This is an egregious error and I ask the forgiveness of all dorkdom. I have also been told that this is not the end of Marvel’s Phase 3. That will occur with the next Avengers movie. Those responsible have been sacked.

It is kind of astounding how long and good of a run the Marvel Movie Universe has had. There were a few not good movies in there, but they were also not bad. Many were terrific. “Infinity War” comes very close to the terrific scale. That they could create such an engaging movie with a scope as large as this one has is a Marvel in itself. See what I did there? Almost every Marvel Movie superhero is in this movie and while many obviously have secondary or tertiary roles, they all fit in to this giant jigsaw puzzle of a movie in an important way. Sure, you’ll probably wish that your favorite superhero had more screen time, but you have a favorite superhero and are a dork. Everything fits and everything is fun. That is kind of amazing.

For the second movie in a row, and for three out of the last four, Marvel has an actual interesting villain in Thanos. Thanos has the laudable goal of wiping out exactly half the living things in the known universe. Like any job you love, the drudgery of everyday population culling can get to you from time to time. Tired of wiping out half of the universe one planet at a time, Thanos embarks on a quest to unite the five infinity stones which, for reasons, will allow him to wipe out half of the rest of the universe in a blink of an eye, allowing Thanos to retire early and enjoy the rest of his life. And who doesn’t want to retire early? I am all for anyone who is pursuing that dream!

I wonder if all of Marvel Universe Earth is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. First, the Chitauri attack and lay waste to a good portion of New York. Then, Ultron lifts the entire city of Sokovia up in the air. And now, Thanos is on a mission to wipe out half of the universe. And that’s just the Avengers movies! Heck, 9/11 happened 17 years ago and the U.S. is still struggling through its own collective PTSD and that wasn’t even an attack by aliens! Most of Marvel Universe Earth must be complete basket cases by now!

I know somewhere out there is someone or likely thousands of someones who embarked on a quest to watch all the Marvel movies back to back in anticipation of “Infinity War” coming out. Those people are now dead from sheer exhaustion. This is a shame because “Infinity War” is a good cap to the Marvel Movie Universe. That cap will assuredly explode in more Marvel Movie goodness, but thus ends phase three of Marvel’s ultimate plan to dominate the movie box office.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: A wonderful comedy with a wonderful story and a whole bunch of wonderful actors.

Oh, Amy Schumer is a national treasure! In “I Feel Pretty”, she plays Renee Bennett, your average American woman with your average American woman’s self-esteem issues. Having been bombarded since childhood with messages that tell her she should be thin and perfect at all times, Renee wishes that she were so. A very unfortunate and hilarious bump on the noggin later and Renee believes that she has been magically transformed into a bombshell even though she looks exactly like she always did. This gives her the confidence that she needed to do whatever she wants while also teaching us all valuable lessons about beauty and confidence and image and how even the most beautiful of women are poisoned by our absurd demands from women.

While Amy Schumer is hilarious in this movie, as she always is, if you are paying attention to her at any time when there are others in the scene you are missing the movie. Everyone around her is equally hilarious and while they definitely don’t have as many speaking lines, their facial expressions are absolutely priceless. Vivian (Aidy Briant) and Jane (Busy Phillips) are the most remarkable and have the best expressions as Renee’s best friends. Smaller, but equally emotively funny parts are played by Sasheer Zamata, Emily Ratajkowsi, Rory Scovel, and Tom Hopper. The person who absolutely steals the show is Michelle Williams as Avery LeClaire. After the movie first introduces her character, I was grinning every time she showed up on screen. Her speech, her mannerism, her movements, all absolutely golden. This is not a movie that garners awards, but Michelle Williams’ role should be up there with the best supporting comedy roles ever acted. She is such a delight!

The movie does suffer some in the comedy cliche part where Renee becomes her worst enemy, but it doesn’t last too long and gets back on the laugh track soon enough. The main message is also kind of diminished by the fact that Renee works for a makeup company and her breakthrough moment comes as she’s hawking a makeup line for average women while at the same time saying women don’t need those things, but I look at that as an ironic choice by the writers than a flaw.

The movie appears to be going through a very heavy disinformation campaign by what I can only assume are incels and misogynists so please ignore any poor ratings you may see. This is a wonderfully funny movie and I believe it will stand up to repeat viewing and still be funny.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Wonderfully acted. Beautifully portrays small town USA life. Jumps the rails. Goes places it shouldn’t have gone. Never comes back.

Watching “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”, I was thinking to myself that this is the best movie I have seen in a long time. I loved all the characters. They were real. Their motivations were understandable if not logical. It felt like life in small town USA feels. I felt that way all the way up until a very specific point in the movie, which I won’t mention because spoilers and all that, where suddenly nothing made sense anymore. My suspicion is that, up until that specific point, the movie followed fairly closely to the real events that inspired it and that after that specific point they needed a way to continue the story and give it some sort of ending so they just threw stuff together, but in a way that made it feel like a completely different movie with completely different characters.

More about that specific moment. It is jarring. Having discussed the movie with a few people, they all admit it exists. It is different for everyone, but it is there. This is fascinating to me. Even more fascinating is there is a split on which half of the movie everyone liked more. I really want to take a poll and see if everyone falls into these categories. For me, the last half almost ruined it for me. The characters went from realistic to, well, characters. Their motivations went from grounded in reality to a bit off the wall. It came close to ruining the whole movie for me.

Hands down, I will say that you will love the acting in this movie. Frances McDormand is absolutely wonderful, not that I would expect anything less from her. I have not seen all the Best Actress movies, but she deserved to be there. I am a bit unsure as to why Sam Rockwell was Best Supporting Actor, but that is more because I think he was upstaged by Woody Harrelson than anything else. Though, I do think Rockwell’s character also had the most unlikely of story arcs out of all of them, which did lead to my three stars rating the most.

Nobody I know did not like this movie, including myself. So from that perspective, I guess I would recommend it. I do love how everyone that watches it seems to get something different out of it, whether they thought it was just ok or whether they loved it. It is a wonderful movie to talk about no matter what you think of it and that is not an easy thing to come by.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: An incredibly stupid movie. Still lots of fun, though. Credit The Rock and a CGI gorilla. Oh, and the destruction of Chicago.

There is one thing you should know going into the theaters to see “Rampage”: There is more stupid in this one movie to fill up tens or hundreds of movies. How I came to still enjoy this movie is a bit beyond me, but I left the theater both laughing at its stupidity and looking back fondly at the camp and over the top acting. This isn’t even one of those “so bad it’s good” movies either. It’s more a movie where everyone seems to be in on the joke at how bad a movie it is and is just enjoying the heck out of hamming it up and somehow the formula works.

Based extremely loosely on the 80s arcade game of the same name, “Rampage” is about three poor animals who are accidentally transformed into monstrous versions of their previous self after an experiment in space (conducted, of course, by an evil corporation who can’t perform the experiments on land because they’re illegal, of course) goes awry and comes crashing down to Earth and miraculously spreads across 3000 miles of the United States depositing a sealed container that can easily withstand both reentry and crashing to the earth without being destroyed, but somehow pop open when the animals look at them funny. Yes, true to the arcade game, those animals are a gorilla, a wolf, and an alligator. No, not true to the arcade game, The Rock does not turn into the gorilla and there are zero scenes of him reducing down from super-gorilla form to naked man slinking off the side of the screen. More’s the pity. That would have been hilarious. No, Dwayne Johnson is a primatologist who hates humans and loves animals and takes care of the albino gorilla named, yes, George. It is George who turns into the monster. For reasons that also make no sense, the evil corporation people lure the monsters to Chicago in a way that also makes no sense so that they can gloriously make rubble out of downtown Chicago.

For fans of “The Walking Dead”, first off, I pity you. Second, you’ll be happy to see that Negan makes an appearance and you get a lot of his back story which was completely missing from the show. It turns out that before he came to rule an enclave in a zombie apocalypsed wasteland, he was an agent in a secret governmental group who, to quote Negan, “When science shits the bed, I’m the one they call to change the sheets.” From this, I can only surmise that Negan knew much more about the zombie apocalypse than he ever led on. Perhaps that knowledge led him to who he would ultimately become…

Yes, I know that wasn’t really Negan. No, there really isn’t any way to tell the difference between Jeffery Dean Morgan’s portrayal of Negan vs his portrayal of Agent Harvey Russell besides the name.

No, spilling words onto a blog has not helped me understand why I liked this movie. Just know that it’s fun and ridiculous and you get to see Chicago get destroyed. Including the Willis Tower! I have decided that it is ok to call it the Willis Tower if and only if it is getting destroyed. Otherwise, it remains the Sears Tower.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Has what you want from a horror film and not much else. Very effective at that, though.

There are so many holes and so many random chance moments in “A Quiet Place” that you should see, but the movie throws you right into the action and then turns the knob to 11 and then ends so quickly that you think you actually saw a good movie. It’s not until afterwards when you think about what you just saw that you realize you’ve been duped, but duped in the same way a magician makes you believe he sawed his assistant in half. You know how the trick works, but you fell for it anyway.

The premise of “A Quiet Place” is terrific. Monsters came from who cares where. They’ve decimated the population of Earth. They hunt by sound alone. You must always be quiet. This allows director and star John Krasinski to use silence and noise interchangeably in inventive ways that really ratchet up the tension and make for fun scary moments. The movie follows the Abbott family, one of the few survivors, as they continue to make due in this new and scary world. In another awesome tactic, daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds) is deaf, which adds another layer to the silence. (As an aside, I learned that Millicent Simmonds is actually deaf which makes it doubly awesome! She plays a great angsty teenager.)

The movie spans hundreds of days, but almost all of the action occurs over about one day during the horror cliche I like to call “the day you’d rather forget”. This “day you’d rather forget” is quick and fun and absolutely ridiculous if you had any time whatsoever to think about it. Good news is you don’t. Any sort of thought and you’ll realize that the system that they have devised to guard against the monsters makes no sense and the way to defeat the monsters makes even less sense. Yes, I know it’s impossible to make less than no sense, but this movie does it somehow.

“A Quiet Place” is a fun, empty horror film and sometimes that’s exactly what you want. It comes up with some inventive ways to scare you, which is commendable. It breaks a little bit of new ground, but is still, at it’s bloody ripped out heart, a horror film. You will enjoy it if you like the genre. You will not if you don’t.

*dons flame-proof apron, adjusts heat resistant goggles, puts on oven mitts* Let’s do this!

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: Two and a half hours of every teenage boy’s masturbatory fantasies. Every bit as juvenile as that sounds.

Ah, nostalgia! Clouding people’s better judgement since…well, forever. Nostalgia is the only thing that “Ready Player One” has going for it and is the only reason I can think of why so many people seem to like this movie. This movie is what happens when you take a book written specifically for adults that love young adult fiction and then water down to nothing whatever weak social commentary was contained in the novel then bulk it up with CGI and special effects. Yes, “Ready Player One” is homeopathic to its core and yet millions still claim it works as a movie.

Where to start? The Girl! Nothing in this movie pissed me off more than The Girl. In fact, all I have to say is The Girl and you probably already have her entire story arc developed in your head, but let’s dive into this shallow pool of character development, shall we? In the virtual OASIS, she is Art3mis, in real life, she is Samantha (Olivia Cooke). Is Art3mis preternaturally cute and elfish? Does The Boy fall in love with The Girl in the virtual world inconceivably fast? Does The Boy want to meet The Girl in real life? Does The Girl warn The Boy that she’s not the same in real life as in the virtual world and possibly kind of ugly? Does The Boy screw up and really piss off The Girl? Do they end up meeting in real life anyway? Is Samantha also preternaturally cute and still kind of elfish? Does The Girl have a “flaw” that makes her ugly the same way Cindy Crawford’s birthmark makes her ugly? Does The Boy get The Girl in the end? You know the answers to these questions. You knew the answers to these questions before I even asked them. That is how little originality there is in this movie when you strip away its shiny veneer.

Then there’s The World. That it is both futuristic and dystopian goes without saying. No one at this point in time is going to believe in a future that ISN’T dystopian. You mean 20 years from now, everything’s still going to be ok and half the people hate our President? Nonsense! It’s going to be anarchy and everyone’s going to hate our conservaliberfascist President. Everyone knows that! That it was painted with such a broad and cartoonish brush is unforgivably lazy. Yes, let’s stack trailers on top of each other in some haphazard way in the middle of a junk yard and only allow access via some assortment of weird Rube Goldberg contraptions. Yes, let’s make all the poor people except The Boy stereotypical white trash yokels. Yes, let’s make the villain an ultra-wealthy corporation hell bent on taking over and monetizing everything that is good and fun in this world. Ok that one rings pretty true…moving on! Yes, let’s have this evil corporation have this really weird monetization model that consists of somehow getting people into debt to them and then kidnapping those people and having them work by earning fake money in the OASIS that can then be turned into real money by some ill-defined process. I think… Maybe…

Then there’s the Big Bad. In this case, the CEO of said evil company, Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn). Never has there been as cartoonisly incompetent of a villain as Sorrento. To give you an of how incompetent, a major plot point entails him leaving his password on a post-it note attached to his impossibly state of the art and top dollar virtual reality rig that some how doesn’t have retina scans or fingerprint sensors or, oh wait, it had both of those things. Hope nobody notices! There is some legitimately funny humor in this movie (though, the stuff people were laughing about had me scratching my head at times), but with this bad guy, the epitome of humor is reduced to the virtual reality equivalent of football to the groin. Actually, I think it was a kick to the groin. And of course there is going to be a sensory cod piece for the CEO to actually feel that for…reasons? And it gets all shiny and lighted up in real life so you can know that he was hit there and it hurt! Disturbingly (and this might have just been my imagination, I am really not sure), Sorrento rips off just the cod piece and I swear they filmed it so it looked like he had an erection underneath. It happens way too quick to be sure, but I was left with the distinct impression of WTF did I just see?!?

I will admit, the effects are pretty cool and the nostalgia stuff is fun. Overblown and not nearly enough to make a decent movie out of, but cool and fun. Other than that, maybe just go play those video games and read those books and watch those movies again instead of watching this movie. Perhaps then you will come to the stark reality that most of that stuff was crap and things are much better now. Well, except for “Ready Player One”.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: An effective Cold War II spy thriller that keeps you guessing until the end.

Yay! Russia is our enemy again! Back to thrilling Cold War spy movies but now set in modern day! Well, Russia is everyone’s enemy except our President’s and a majority of Republicans in Congress, but whatever, we still get the cool movies and maybe another “Manchurian Candidate” to boot!

“Red Sparrow” is not what I thought it was going to be. Well, I mean, it was, but it gets there in a roundabout way that I wasn’t expecting. Instead of the normal “agent by birth” scenario, Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) is an accomplished prima ballerina in the Bolshoi ballet company.  She is also cold and calculating in many respects. A perfect spy and a very unique way to become a spy.

The movie does a good job of playing its cards close to its chest. Because of this, it’s difficult to describe without giving away possible hints to the ending. Jennifer Lawrence plays cold and calculating well and portrays a wonderful “slightly dead inside sophistication” (1) that plays really well for a Russian spy. She has a few moments of weakness with her Russian accent (hilariously, usually when she swears), but she is otherwise perfect for the role. It would be awesome to see a “Red Sparrow II” with her reprising this role.

A word of warning, there is a fairly graphic rape scene and moments of brutal violence and torture, sometimes bordering on gratuitous, so weaker stomachs may need to look away at times. Nothing was well outside the realm of your usual deep cover spy violence, but it could still be disturbing nonetheless.

At two hours and twenty minutes, there’s a bit of fat that could be cut off the movie, but it is mostly well paced and enjoyable. There’s nothing that screams big screen so fear not if you end up watching it from the comfort of your own home. It is definitely worth watching, though, so don’t let it pass you by just because you can’t see Jennifer Lawrence as a spy. She’s a great one.

(1) Chat with Persephone, March 24th, 2018, 3:13 PM