Jean-Paul’s Rating: 5/5 stars

Bottom Line: Possibly the best Marvel movie to date.  Well crafted, well choreographed.  A lot going on but it is all done in an amazingly controlled way.

There is a lot going on in “Captain America: Civil War”.  I mean a whole lot.  Tons of old favorite superheroes.  A few new superheroes.  Complicated plots.  Wonderfully choreographed fight scenes.  Pitch perfect humor.  In less capable hands (*cough* Zach Snyder *cough*), it could easily lead to an amalgam of scenes thrown together without much cohesion to tie the movie together.  Anthony and Joe Russo somehow avoided this trap and spliced together a wonderful movie.

The primary driver of the action is the simple premise that the Avengers are a group of beings who, for better or worse, have caused some serious collateral damage in their quest to “save” humanity and yet are unanswerable to anyone but themselves.  The nations of the world think that needs to change.  Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) agrees with them.  Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) disagrees.  This causes a rift in the Avengers and they take sides.  It’s a pretty heavy premise to hang a whole movie around.  That it succeeds in making both sides so believable that you can empathize with both is a minor movie miracle.  It’s a heady topic, but this is a serious movie that knows not to take itself too seriously.  It is interspersed with spiffy one-liners and visual gags which do not detract from the story or the action at all.

Added to all of this are some beautiful fight scenes.  I mean, superheros vs. superheroes, yes please!  I’m sure someone dorkier than I can point to a plethora of tag team moves taken straight from the comics, but the way they all worked together was so much fun.  Sure, some of it is silly, but, uh, did I mention they are superheroes?

I have only a few minor quibbles.  The biggest of which is the fact that this is a movie about the unintended consequences of the superheroes’ actions and yet they decided to take the easy way out and make sure this didn’t apply to the superheroes themselves.  I get it, they want to protect their intellectual property, but superheroes come back from the dead or are replaced all the time in the comics.  It would have been nice to see that happen here.  Also, the only scene that didn’t really work too well for me was the part when Tony Stark recruits Peter Parker (Tom Holland).  It felt a little too gimmicky.  Tom Holland, by the way, appears to be a great choice for Spiderman.

If you’re a dork, you have already seen this movie and likely mostly agree with me as to how good it was.  If you’re not a dork, you should go see this movie as well because it is that good.  If you’ve not seen the other Captain America/Avenger movies, I’d recommend seeing it with a dork so they can fill you in on some of the finer dorkness that might not make sense to a neophyte.  Of all the movies that have been made in the Marvel universe so far, this is probably the best introduction even if you are picking it up in the middle of the action.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: A perfectly enjoyable kid’s movie, though not much for adults.  Beautiful effects.  Mostly wonderful acting.

I was wary going into seeing Disney’s retelling of their classic “The Jungle Book”.  The whole “everything is computer generated except Mowgli” thing was a tough sell.  The CGI was fairly seemless and gorgeous.  Neel Sethi, who plays Mowgli, does a pretty good job interacting with thin air.  This is a pretty challenging role for someone so young and he mostly pulls it off.  The rest of the generated animals were pretty well done as well.  The dark, deep voice of Idris Elba makes for a convincing Shere Khan.  Stately and aloof Bagheera is voiced by Ben Kingsley.  Bill Murray plays himself as Baloo.  Lupita Nyong’o, who has the best name ever, is motherly and protective as Raksha.

There were a few disappointing performances.  Kaa as voiced by Scarlett Johansson, I felt, was not menacing enough.  Although, she did do the slipperiness of his voice quite well.  Then there was King Louie.  Ugh, King Louie.  Didn’t like that part of the movie at all.  First, they make him monstrously large to the point he towers over everyone including Baloo.  Then they give him the voice of Christopher Walken who does not in any way evoke the presence of a larger than life figure.  Then they make King Louie sing in pretty much the same timbre as the cartoon version.  All sorts of bad decisions.

There is very little singing in this version.  Mowgli and Baloo do a fairly organic rendition of “Bear Necessities” in that it really fits with their personalities and neither of them can sing very well at all.  And King Louie’s “I Want to Be Like You” just feels completely out of place.  So, of course, they decide to do the whole song during the closing credits.  It would have been nice if they had made “I Want to Be Like You” more menacing to fit King Louie’s personality during the movie and then do the light, fluffy version of the original cartoon during the credits.

If you have kids, I’d say it’s worth taking them to see “The Jungle Book”.  It’s pleasant and light and has enough eye candy to keep them entertained.  If you don’t, meh.  If you like kid’s movies, it’s worth your time.  If you don’t, you should probably find your entertainment elsewhere.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: The only thing criminal about this movie is the script.  Takes a good, if preposterous, premise and turns the preposterousness up to 11.

This movie is a lot like Ted Cruz.  I want to punch both in the face.  But while my reasons for wanting to punch Ted Cruz in the face don’t go much beyond “Look at that face!”, my reasons for wanting to punch “Criminal” in the face are well reasoned.

The movie starts out pretty well.  Bill Pope (Ryan Reynolds) is a CIA agent who was tortured and killed by an unknown assailant and has information vital to an operation the CIA is trying to pull off.  They contact Dr. Franks (Tommy Lee Jones) who has been working with ways of transferring memories from one rat to another.  Dr. Franks chooses as the recipient of these memories Jericho Stewart (Kevin Costner), a sociopath whose brain damage at an early age makes him uniquely qualified for said memory transfer because…because.  The reason doesn’t matter.  It’s a pretty cool sci-fi-ish setup.

So now you have a sociopath of the variety with absolutely no filters and no ability to feel emotions with the memories of a CIA agent slowly leaking into his consciousness.  What do you think is going to happen?  Chaos of course.  Wild escapes.  Chases.  Plots.  Schemes.  Jericho falling in love with Bill Pope’s wife Jill (Gal Gadot).  The works.

It is with the latter, Jericho falling for Jill where all semblance of agency are lost.  Not for Jericho, but for Jill.  It totally makes sense for Jericho to become flooded with Bill’s memories of his wife and experience some of the love Bill felt for Jill.  The problem is Jill freakin’ reciprocates.  After Jericho breaks into her house, ties her up, menaces her daughter, and breaks into her house a second time.  All because Jericho can touch his nose just like Bill did to indicate that he loves Jill.  You can stretch credulity some with this setup and, say, have her help Jericho escape his pursuers, but reciprocating his love?  WTF, script writers?  This utter nonsense continues all the way to the closing credits.  Thus my desire to punch this movie in the face.

Besides the part that makes Jean-Paul want to smash, it’s a decent story.  It’s a shame that I couldn’t get Jean-Paul smash out of my head for almost the entire second half of the movie.  Cut all that BS out and you might have a pretty decent movie.  With it, ugh, go see something else.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Great premise.  Great build up.  Complete let-down of an ending.

What we have here is a failure to resolve anything.  Or, to be fair, things are resolved but not in a terribly satisfying way.  It is hard to explain why without saying things that I would consider ruining the enjoyment of the movie.  This is definitely one of those movies that is best to enter into with a tabula rasa.  I will point to one inconsequential tidbit as an example.  At the very beginning, Alton Meyer (Jaeden Lieberher) is kidnapped by his father Roy (Michael Shannon) and Roy’s friend Lucas (Joel Edgerton).  An Amber Alert goes out telling everyone to be on the lookout for them.  Not once is it explained who called in the kid as missing.  It is explained why various parties wouldn’t have done so, but never who did.  It’s a minor point, but there are major points galore that are never explained by the time the closing credits roll.

Where he’s going he doesn’t need roads.  “Midnight Special” is a journey.  Along the journey, the questions pile up as you try to figure out the role each person plays and wonder what’s up with the kid.  It is effectively done.  Much of this is due to the wonderful ensemble cast including Kirsten Dunst (who is one of maybe three women who have a speaking role in the movie) and Adam Driver (who I still don’t understand why women find attractive).  It is also a really good story.  All of the elements are there for a terrific movie.  It probably says more about the type of movie I want to see than it does about the quality of the movie that the ending was like a giant balloon being deflated and had me leaving the movie with a sense of emptiness which ruined my enjoyment up to that point.  Also, if you can explain to me why the movie is named “Midnight Special”, you win the grand prize.  It didn’t even have the Creedence Clearwater Revival song in its soundtrack.  Or even better, the LedBelly version.

If you want answers or the truth, you can’t handle this movie.  But if you want a slickly built, tension building chase movie, “Midnight Special” is worth your time even if you are disappointed with the ending.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 5/5 stars

Bottom line: Another excellent rules of engagement movie.  Lots of excellent British actors and a few American ones as well.  Plus the Somali pirate dude from “Captain Phillips”.  OMG!  Sell your bread already!  Ahhhhh!

“Eye in the Sky” both begins and ends with a young Muslim girl from an unnamed (I think) socially repressive Muslim country fluidly and effortlessly playing with a hula hoop in the privacy of her parents’ yard away from the view of the morals police that patrol just outside their house.  I am so jealous of that girl.  Not for her social predicament, obviously, but for her ability to, with a tiny flick of movement, command a plastic hoop with a few ball bearings to sway and undulate in hypnotic fashion.  The purpose of this opening shot is to let the audience feel empathy for this unknown girl who, while not a key player in the drama, is instrumental in establishing the emotional intensity of the movie.  It is quite effective and an indicator of the quality of film making you are going to be treated to.

Like “A War” which I reviewed just a few weeks ago, this is a rules of engagement movie.  This one, however, has an international bent to it.  The action takes place in four different arenas; a command center in Great Britain where Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) leads a task force charged with capturing a British national who has become radicalized; the aforementioned Muslim country where said British national is thought to be and where poor hula hoop girl also happens to live; an Air Force base outside of Las Vegas where drone operator Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) is the eye in the sky for the operation; and a board room in some British governmental building where Lieutenant General Frank Benson (Alan Rickman) is talking through a few high level officials through the operation.  As the operation continues, the rules of engagement quickly change and the rest of the movie is dedicated to that process of how/if the rules should change.

This may not sound like the basis for a 5-star movie, but trust me it is.  The resulting bureaucratic kerfuffle that erupts is equal parts maddening, comic, and endearing.  And throughout it all, there’s little hula hoop girl on the outskirts just living her life as best she can.

“Eye in the Sky” is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a while and it would be a shame for you to pass it up.  it has a wonderful cast and a brilliantly told story.  Everything about it feels realistic.  Even when the story could have taken the easy way out, it continues to stay true to the world as we know it instead of the world we wish we had.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: No, it’s not THAT bad of a movie.  Sloppy?  Yes.  Lazy at times?  Yes.  Worth your time to see?  Meh.

Maybe it’s just the soft bigotry of low expectations I had going into the movie because of all the atrocious reviews, but man calm down people.  This movie wasn’t THAT bad.  I mean, it is a Zack Snyder movie so it’s going to be lazy and style over substance and chock full of outdated machismo, but it still has its moments.

I think a lot of the hate comes from the irrational dislike of Ben Affleck.  Comic geeks had it in for him ever since he was cast as Batman.  Guess what?  He’s a very effective Batman and I would pay to see him in a stand-alone Batman movie.  Henry Cavill has always been a mediocre Superman through no fault of his own as he certainly looks the part, but Superman’s not a terribly interesting superhero to begin with unless you have a good story writer which hasn’t been true for Cavill.  Amy Adams as Lois Lane is criminally underused in any practicable way except for damsel-in-distress.  Jesse Eisenberg was an effective Lex Luthor even if I don’t quite like the insane genius where the emphasis is more on insane than on genius.

Yes, there are glaring problems with the movie as many reviews have pointed out, but much of these problems are usually forgiven in other superhero movies.  Much has been said about how Lex so easily manipulated Batman into wanting to destroy Superman.  Folks, it didn’t take a lot of convincing.  Lex didn’t set Batman down that path.  Batman had pretty much decided for himself from Superman’s own actions that Superman was a menace.  Lex just kind of goaded him a little.  Now, how Batman and Superman finally face off is incredibly silly and lazy film making, but how they got to that point wasn’t.  Wonder Woman’s story line?  Held together by spit and baling wire.  And the whole experimental bullets thing was beyond stupid.  And the dream sequences?  WTF?  Seriously, WTF?  Then there’s the gratuitous insertion of scenes that set up the next couple of DC superhero movies, but that’s forgivable.  There is also the fact that the movie is subtitled “Dawn of Justice” and there’s not much Justice going on in the movie.  It refers to the establishment of the Justice League, but besides a brief blurb about Batman wanting to set one up right at the end, it played absolutely no part in the movie.

A masterpiece this movie is not.  You will also likely miss nothing if you skip the film completely.  That said, don’t be scared away from seeing it just because of all the hate springing up around it.  Yes, it is a deeply flawed movie, but it also succeeds at being entertaining if you sit back, take a deep breath, and say to yourself, “It’s only a superhero movie, not ‘Gone With the Wind'”.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: An effective telling of war and its consequences.  What’s right in war and what’s a crime?

Set under the backdrop of the War on Terror in Afghanistan, “A War” follows a Danish patrol as they do sweeps of the countryside, focusing on the actions of the commander of the patrol, Claus Michael Pederson (Pilous Asbæk).  A secondary story follow Pederson’s wife, Maria (Tuva Novotny) as she struggles back home to juggle job and family while her husband is at war.

If you can’t tell by the actors’ names, here thar be subtitles, so be warned.  The movie is in Danish with English subtitles.  If that scares you, you’re missing some great movies.  The EU is producing some great films these days.  And by “these days”, I mean the last few decades.  They’re not high budget blockbusters, but there are more than a handful of low budget gems.

But back to the movie.  Say you’re in active combat with unknown enemies.  You’re pinned down and can’t see where the active fire originates.  There are not many options, though.  You know your terrain and you know your enemy does as well.  Do you call for an air strike on the most obvious enemy position in an attempt to save your people?  If you answered yes, congratulations, you have just committed a war crime.  But the firefight ended immediately after the air strike, you argue?  Doesn’t matter.  Did you or did you not establish that there were enemy combatants in the area you just had bombed?  No?  War crime.  This is the shit people at war have to deal with on a daily basis.  This is also why countries like the U.S. unilaterally declare any male who has gone through puberty as an enemy combatant.  To protect their people in the shit.  Because by the book war crimes happen on a daily basis when a country decides to go to war and we might as well offer our soldiers some sort of protection while they’re fighting for us since we sure as hell don’t offer it to them when they return.

“A War” is a movie that has lots of questions and very few answers.  This is on purpose.  It’s meant to make you think and it does an admirable job of accomplishing that goal.  If you prefer your movies a little less thought provoking, you might want to look elsewhere.  But if you want a smart, well thought out view of life at war, “A War” is well worth your time and treasure.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: Well told. Well crafted. Legitimately funny. Recommended for all ages.

I knew I wanted to see “Zootopia” when I saw a preview for it featuring a scene where they go to the DMV and it was run by sloths.  It was hilarious.  The scene did not get old when seen again during the movie.  It may never get old.  The same can be said of all of “Zootopia”.

There’s just so much “there” there.  Every scene is meticulously and lovingly put together with so much attention to detail and so much happening in the background.  Given, there’s a very large pool to choose from when you can choose from every single animal and show how they interact in the bustling metropolis of Zootopia.

Since it would be a really boring movie if it were true, Zootopia is no where near the utopia claimed in the brochures.  The entire premise of the movie revolves around both soft and hard racism and the myriad places we find it in society.  That they are able to do it in such a way that elegantly gets the point across without beating you over the head with it is a credit to the writers.  They handle the topic with both aplomb and humor.  Well, for most of the movie they do.  There’s a little bit of shoe-horning from act two to act three, but that doesn’t detract too much from an otherwise solid movie.

Another thing I am glad for is that the main characters, a female rabbit and a male fox, do not form any sort of romantic entanglement because inter-species marriage is just plain wrong.  Wait, no, I mean because that’s what every other movie under the sun does even when it adds nothing to the story.  So kudos for that.  And if a rabbit and a fox decide to get married that’s nobody’s business but their own.  Their marriage does not in any way detract from your marriage and if it does, your marriage was pretty rocky to begin with and you should really consider getting a divorce because I guarantee you your children will be better off for it.  Or maybe the producers nixed the idea of a fox and a rabbit together because they are against inter-species marriage.  It all makes sense.  Every other movie would have done it, but this movie did not.  Shame on you, producers!  A fox and a rabbit are entitled to all the same happiness that you enjoy!

Ahem.  “Zootopia” is a really good movie and you should go see it.  It has that perfect mix of humor and storytelling and morals the doesn’t come along very often in animated movies.  It will likely become standard in the collection of DVDs that breeders amass for their broodlings.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: Mr. Owl, how many genres does it take to get to the center of “10 Cloverfield Lane”?  One, twhoo, three. *crunch* Three.  Wait, no, four, five, six?  WTF?

It is very difficult to put fingers to keyboard and describe exactly what you’re in for when you go to see “10 Cloverfield Lane”.  Every good description I can come up with requires revealing things that are best left shrouded.  One thing I will say is that it miraculously succeeds in keeping you guessing from start to finish.

“10 Cloverfield Lane” is about Truth.  As Agent Mulder would say, “The Truth is out there.”  But how do we know Truth from lies and how do you piece together that Truth when the information you’re fed is limited to your sheltered world view?  The answer is you don’t and you can’t, but you need some sort of Truth to spur yourself to action unless you want to supplant your will to those who claim to speak Truth.  So you follow your own Truth and you see where it leads and when your Truth shows cracks, you alter your Truth and fix those cracks and when your Truth explodes around you, you abandon that Truth all together and form another Truth to fit the new narrative.  In “10 Cloverfield Lane”, everyone has their own Truth and no one has the incorrect Truth.  It’s up to us, the viewers, to decide for ourselves what the true Truth is.  I am still unsure of the real Truth.  That’s effective storytelling.

All of that is accomplished with a minimalist cast and setting and, I assume budget.  The whole movie is basically three people; Howard (John Goodman!), Michelle (Mary Elisabeth Winsted?), and Emmett (John Gallagher, Jr.?!).  ! = John Goodman is great in everything and this is no exception. ? = never heard of her but she’s in a lot of stuff and does an excellent job in this movie.  ?! = this dude looked so familiar and I couldn’t quite place it until I looked at his IMDB page and recognized him from “The Newsroom”.

It will be interesting to see if the movie holds up on a second viewing.  There are certainly enough mysteries left to piece through where you might be able to catch something you missed the first time.  Regardless, “10 Cloverfield Lane” is definitely worth a first viewing.