Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: A fun movie that delves deep into Asian culture. And tells the story from a mostly female point of view! Boy, do I want to visit Singapore now!

Goodness, this was a fun movie! “Crazy Rich Asians” somehow perfectly walks the line of silly, serious, outlandish, and down to earth. And while I’m sure that there is so much more for Asians that uncultured white boys like myself couldn’t even fathom the context of, it is also completely accessible to us uncultured white boys as well.

“Crazy Rich Asians” tells the timeless tale of girl meets boy. Boy asks girl to go to a wedding with him. Girl finds out boy is rich. Girl finds out boy is obscenely rich. Girl has to meet boy’s obscenely rich and…colorful family. The girl in question is Rachel Chu (Constance Wu who you may recognize from “Fresh Off the Boat”), an economics professor born and raised in the United States, and the boy is Nick Young (Henry Golding), of the Singaporean Youngs, a real estate tycoon family whom everyone in Singapore knows. They are joined by an absolutely wonderful supporting cast including Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Chan, Awkwafina, Ken Jeong, and Ronnie Chang, just to name a few.

What’s great about this movie is it’s mostly about women and told by women, but at the same time there are men in it and they are also real men and not just comedy side pieces, though they are definitely eye-pleasing pieces. From start to finish, it’s just strong women being strong, but also living real life and going through real life predicaments. Well, also while being ridiculously rich, except for Rachel Chu who is just strong and not rich.

You will be forgiven if you sometimes wonder if you are watching a movie or a tourism commercial for Singapore. “Crazy Rich Asians” showcases Singapore in all of its beauty and glory and decadence. Goodness, did I have some travelers envy watching parts of this movie. Singapore has definitely moved up in places I want to visit soon.

“Crazy Rich Asians” is based off of book one in a series of books by Kevin Kwan. It has been a wonderful success and deservedly so. We can only hope that success translates into the other two movies being made as well. It is heartening to see that epic stories featuring an almost exclusively non-white cast be successful. There are so many of these stories yet to be told and so many worth hearing.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: A fun action movie that falls short of its “Mission: Impossible” brethren. Ugh, Henry Cavill.

I’ve always enjoyed the introduction to the “Mission: Impossible” mission. You know, the “your mission, should you decide to accept it” stuff. As if there were any doubt that Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) would ever turn down a mission. In “Fallout”, they go almost old school. The entire scene is very noir-ish and reminiscent of the old TV series. It was a great homage to the movie series’ roots.

Apart from the introduction, the rest of the movie is pretty standard spy thriller fare. There are acts of heroism and double crosses and masks and gadgets and villains on both sides and chase scenes and last second rescues. It’s all fun, but nothing really stands out. Well, except for the 15 minute timer that ticks down for what seems like 30 minutes. The problem with consistently producing a predictable product is that it becomes harder and harder to build tension. You know people will have bulletproof vests on. You know it’s going to be a mask. You know when the counter reads 00:00:01, the bomb will be defused. There is still cleverness to be found in the movie, but mostly, it’s all been done before.

And then there’s Henry Cavill. He plays August Walker, a CIA agent assigned to babysit the IMF team. There are tree stumps that have more personality than he does, though wooden does perfectly describe his acting. Cavill is who you call when the casting director says, “What this role needs is a man with a very square jaw.” The only way to give Cavill any sense of gravitas is to stick him in a Superman suit.

At two hours and twenty-seven minutes, the movie could certainly do with a trimming, especially in the second half. An action movie without an involved plot just doesn’t need to be that long. That the movie was still enjoyable despite its length says something about the longevity of the series’ formula, though. There will probably be even more sequels to come and I will probably continue to watch them because, while they’re not always the greatest, “Mission: Impossible” movies are always fun.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: A poorly developed plot interspersed with a bunch of pointless vignettes. Denzel is still Denzel, though.

“The Equalizer 2” starts out pretty strong with Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) kicking ass and taking names on a train to Istanbul. We are treated to McCall’s OCD tendencies and his smooth, calm fighting style against impossible odds. At this point, I believed I was in for a treat of a movie. The opening sequence is followed by a murder half way around the world that is obviously the set up for the main plot. It then moves to a montage of McCall driving people around Boston as a Lyft driver and helping out some of them with their problems. This is genuinely touching. But then he continues to be a Lyft driver and continues to be a Lyft driver and has moments with his friend Susan Plummer (Melissa Leo who I completely didn’t recognize and love) and continues to be a Lyft driver and beats some bros up and continues to be a Lyft driver and attempts to mentor a gang banger and continues to be a Lyft driver and FINALLY we get to the main plot of the woman and dude murdered in the second scene.

The biggest flaw in this movie is that the main plot is so poorly developed. We never learn why the people who were killed in the beginning had to die. It is extremely unclear why other people had to die to cover up the first murders besides a general “they were getting too close trope”. It is also frustrating that McCall basically solves the entire thing from his armchair at home instead of dashing around the world like he does in the opening scene. The main plot also uses the aforementioned gang banger (now reformed because McCall can do anything) in a way that makes zero difference at all to the story. Why they chose to include him in the main plot is beyond me. Oh, and there’s also a hurricane because why not? And the movie is two hours!

Denzel Washington is still fun to watch act and his “beat up the bad guys” scenes are fun to watch and well choreographed, but Denzel Washington and violence do not a good movie make. It is too bad this movie is so poor because the whole idea of an Equalizer is pretty good and you’d think there’s a lot of material to work with. Really, I think the movie would have been better off if McCall just had just driven around Boston and helped his fares for two hours.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: Fun and funny. Creatively choreographed growing/shrinking sequences. Yay, a female superhero who gets title billing! And another good and believable villain!

Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) is back and once again he is a delightful comedic escape from the more serious Marvel universe. This time he’s paired with the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly (I love that first name)), Hank Pym’s (Michael Douglas) daughter. After a brief interlude in which it is explained how Wasp/Hope van Dyne became the Wasp, since it was not alluded to at all in the first movie and basically is “your mother is lost in the quantum realm and we can save her and oh, here’s her suit”, we see Scott Lang/Ant-Man under house arrest after his antics in “Avengers: Civil War”. Unlike the first “Ant-Man” movie, this time establishment scene and the mid-credit teaser are all that we really see into the larger Marvel universe. This is a good thing. It lets Ant-Man be Ant-Man.

Once again, we are treated to a compelling villain! If Marvel keeps this up, I may start believing they’re getting good at it. This time it’s Ghost/Ava (Hannah John-Kamen) who is trying to create the quantum tunnel that Hope and Hank are also trying to accomplish, but by more villainous means. Everything she does makes sense. It’s refreshing. Not only that, but this movie is, I believe only the second film where a female superhero gets movie title billing. Only other one being “Electra”. Given, it’s shared title billing, but the dam is starting to break. Next up is “Captain Marvel” which is also about a female superhero! Yay!

Unlike the first “Ant-Man” movie, this one also features some wonderfully choreographed action sequences. The use of both Wasp’s and Ant-Man’s shrinking abilities is used to great effect and we are treated to Wasp running down the blade of a knife that is thrown at her and using a quickly enlarged salt shaker to prevent a bad guy’s escape. I guess most of it was actually Wasp. Ant-Man was in this movie too, I swear. More for comedy relief, I guess.

Hey, I just realized that I liked the sequel better than the original. That doesn’t happen very often. “Ant-Man and the Wasp” is definitely a worth watching movie and its comedy give it great replay value too. It’s not necessarily a need to see it in the movie theater type of movie, but you’ll be happy if you watch it now instead of waiting for, what is it these days, three months?

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: Exudes sexy-cool from every pore. A classic crime caper complete with a capable coterie of criminal con artists.

“Ocean’s Eight” has a lot going for it. Nowhere can this be seen more so than in the relationship between Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock) and Lou (Cate Blanchett). If con artists are capable of having best friends, Debbie and Lou are best friends. Their interactions are just so casual and organic. You just want to BE there with them. Soak them in. Revel in their interactions and their banter. You won’t have your watch, your wallet, your bank account, and quite possibly your house if you do so, but it would be worth it just to experience them. Cate Blanchett is just wonderful as Lou. She has this casual-cool to her with a sexy I-don’t-give-a-whit strut and a slightly stoned seen-everything-know-everything look. Even the way she chews her gum just exudes confidence.

The story is pretty standard heist film fare. In this case, an overly complicated plot to steal a ridiculously expensive necklace with a hidden other plot of revenge and a few bonus thefts thrown in. It’s fun watching them put it together and it’s fun watching them execute it. It helps that it’s all done under the grandiose backdrop of the Met Gala so it also features wonderful works of art both in the traditional sense and in the fashion sense. The only thing that didn’t quite work for me was the “catch”, that part where a wrench is thrown into the precisely planned caper. In this case, “catch” is both literal and figurative so maybe they did it just for that wink-nod, but it didn’t really add much to the overall enjoyment of the film and it was introduced and cleaned up without much fanfare.

What we have here is a pretty decent heist film and if you like heist films, you will enjoy “Ocean’s Eight”. If you like fashion, you will also probably like “Ocean’s Eight”. If you like an assembly of strong, confident women, you will also probably like “Ocean’s Eight”. In summary, you’ll probably like “Ocean’s Eight” and it is a worthy addition to the franchise. It has also done pretty good at the box office so I have my fingers crossed for more Debbie and Lou antics in the near future.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: You would think that a movie about a kid’s game being played by adults would be bad. You would be wrong.

Yes, this is a movie about a bunch of grown men playing tag. Yes, you should be wondering who in their right mind would create a movie about such a thing. Yes, it seems impossible that a movie with such a premise would ever be even remotely close to good. And yet, here we are. “Tag” is a super fun and funny movie that also has heart. Whodathunkit?

The movie starts with Hogan Malloy (Ed Helms) infiltrating his friend Bob Calahan’s (Jon Hamm) company and interrupts Bob’s interview with Wall Street Journal reporter Rebecca Crosby (Annabelle Wallis) in order to tag him and to get him in to the plot to get the gang together to tag the ever elusive Jerry Pierce (Jeremy Renner) who has never once been tagged it. Rebecca decides to drop her story about Bob’s company and follow this crew in their quest. The cast is rounded off by Randy Cillano (Jake Johnson) and Kevin Sable (Hannibal Buress) as the tag crew and Hogan’s extra competitive wife, Anna Mallory (Isla Fisher). All are a delight and have a great chemistry where you can actually believe that they were childhood friends.

Besides the laughs, of which there are plenty, this movie also has heart. It’s kind of emotionally manipulative the way it has heart, but it has heart nonetheless. Behind it all is the not-Ben Franklin quote, ““We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” Friendships are things to be treasured. Miles may separate you. Cities may separate you. States may separate you. Continents may separate you. Never forget who your friends are. They are the family you choose. Reach out to them today. Give me a moment, I’m all verklempt!

Yay for fun, silly movies! We can all use a bit more fun and a lot more silliness in our life and “Tag” fits the bill nicely. Get all your friends together and see this movie and rediscover what it is to go out and play! By sitting there. In the dark. In a theater. Watching a movie. I can’t remember where I was going with this.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Nothing great. Nothing horrible. Acting is meh. Except for Donald Glover. He rocks. Some scenes were cool. Some were annoying. Some made no sense.

So yeah, they did a Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) movie and it was fine. There’s really not much else to say about it. The movie puts to the big screen almost every throw away line uttered by Han Solo during Episodes IV-VI with some extra thrown in to show how Han met Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) and Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo).

The end.

Ok, not really.

The acting in the movie is pretty shaky all around except for Donald Glover’s Lando. Boy, did he Billy Dee the heck out of Lando! He had ALL that casual cool. I look forward to Donald Glover’s future Colt 45 commercials and they really need to do a Lando movie. The rest of the cast is effective at times and downright bad at times. They can be somewhat forgiven for this because the script can generously be called pretty good for a Star Wars script. There is one exception to the bad acting and that would be L3-37 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) who was just about perfect as a feisty droid’s rights droid. Though some people who shall remain nameless and are CLEARLY wrong thought L3 was annoying.

And speaking of annoying, here is an incomplete list of all the things that annoyed me about this movie: the entire beginning, the escape from Corellia, the Kessel run, that stupid space monster, whatever the heck that stupid sliding move was that they did to the Millennium Falcon, what they did to L3, the double crosses (ok, I kind of love/hated this), the Jedi that appears with absolutely no explanation, Han speaking Wookie (though in fairness, this was pretty hilarious).

I don’t really see this movie as much worth watching unless you are a Star Wars fan. It’s a good movie for the Star Wars universe, but there’s not much value add as a one off movie for someone to just go see. But yes, if you like the Star Wars universe, this is a pretty fun background story to one of your favorite characters.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Incredibly weird introductory short. Main movie has moments, but often feels lost. The Jack Jack stuff is fun and inventive as is the final fight sequence.

Let’s talk about “Bao”, shall we? There’s going to be some pretty big SPOILERS here because I don’t know how else to talk about this short without revealing the big moment so skip this paragraph if you’d rather not know. “Bao” is the introductory short that has become a mainstay of the Pixar universe. Boy, is it weird. And depressing. A Chinese woman makes bao (Chinese dumplings) for her husband who quickly devours them and leaves her to go to work.Feeling ignored and sad, she eats her bao alone. Her last Bao suddenly comes alive and anthropomorphizes. She raises the Bao from infancy to adulthood in a series of touching vignettes. When the Bao brings home a white girlfriend and is going to leave with her to start its own life. She begs and pleads with the Bao to stay, but the Bao insists on leaving. Instead of allowing this to happen, the woman eats the Bao. Holy crap, yes, she just ate the Bao! WTF?!?! She immediately regrets it and is super sad about it, but the damage is done. The Bao is gone. It is all then revealed to be a dream as her real son who looks very much like the Bao comes home with his white girlfriend and mother and son reconcile and they all make bao together. There is so much to unpack here. First off, let it be said that I am not remotely “Bao”‘s target audience; no kids, no plans to have any, and I abhor parental possessiveness as if children are something you own. But while the plot did not speak to me, there is a lot to learn from the short. Chinese culture permeates “Bao”. There’s the woman’s marriage, the woman’s possessiveness, the woman’s downright rancor at the son going out with a white girl, and I’m sure many other aspects that I just don’t understand. The best thing about “Bao” is how refreshingly honest it is. It is also the first Pixar short directed by a female, which is awesome/sad. Out of 20 films, just one woman. Maybe that will change now.

On to “Incredibles 2”! I have less to say about this one. It was, at points, fun, but there was a lot of setup and the plot is kind of see-through. It is definitely one of Pixar’s lesser endeavors. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth watching, though. Everything with Jack Jack is hilarious and well choreographed. The family dynamic is interesting, if a little stereotypical. They get into the inherent sexism of that stereotyping, though, which is nice. The final fight scene is pretty darned cool as all the various Supers use their powers in interesting ways. Of course, we have to ignore that there was a much simpler solution to the entire problem to see it all, but whatevs!

Somewhat surprisingly, the children in the theater (of which there were unsurprisingly many) really seemed to dig the movie despite what I considered slowness. At least one parent also really liked the movie as she laughed loudly at just about everything. Her laughter was often more funny than what was occurring on screen. So yeah, kids like it, parents like it, I thought it was fine and worth seeing. Even Pixar’s poorer attempts tend to be good enough to be worth seeing. What else is there to say?

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.