Jean-Paul’s Rating: 1/5 stars

Bottom Line: Like “Apocalypse Now” only massively more boring. But at least it has killer space monkeys? Also, spoilers galore because screw this movie!

The vast, unforgiving nothingness that is space is apparently full of ridiculous coincidences in this abysmally thought out movie. Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) plummets from space to Earth after the antenna he’s working on blows up in a “surge”, runs into space pirates on the moon, killer space monkeys on his way to Mars, another “surge” as his ship is landing on Mars, hijacks a ship bound for Neptune, runs past a satellite on the way to Neptune, and is somehow able to find a tiny ship orbiting Neptune in the middle of its rocky rings. This movie’s science is weak.

The so-called “surge” is coming from a Lima Project spaceship orbiting Neptune and McBride is tasked with stopping it and it’s captain, who happens to be McBride’s father, H. Clifford McBride(Tommy Lee Jones), before it somehow destroys the solar system. The Lima Project is a deep space mission to find extraterrestrial life by going to Neptune for some reason. The giant space antenna McBride is working on when it is destroyed is also dedicated to finding extraterrestrial life. There is a one sentence throw away line near the end of the movie that tries to draw a moral from this extraterrestrial search so you can’t say absolutely nothing came of this movie.

For reasons that are completely unclear or that I completely missed, the Lima Project space ship orbiting Neptune was thought lost because no one had heard from it in sixteen years. Then the surges start and the Lima Project is all “surprise muthaf@#!ers, I’m still alive!” and Earth is like “geez, what are you doing? Why are you trying to destroy us?” and the Lima Project gives it the silent treatment and the Earth is like “oh yeah, well we’re going to send this dude McBride to the moon so that he can go to Mars so that he can try communicating with you and if you don’t respond, he’s going to Neptune to blow you up! And this is totally a sequence of events that has to happen because we need this movie to be two hours!” and the Lima Project goes all “oh yeah, I’d like to see you try!”. It is later revealed that Earth somehow knew exactly what happened to the Lima Project all along and completely destroys any need for any of this movie. I mean why send a human to do what a nuclear missile can do just as easily?

If this film can be said to have any intent whatsoever, I’m sure it was supposed to be about the father-son relationship. For the entire movie, parallels are drawn between Roy and his father. There’s a nature vs. nurture lesson which definitely leans on nature as Roy and Clifford are shown to be the same person despite Roy not growing up with Clifford at all. Roy also internally struggles with whether the sins of the father should be visited upon the son as he continues to do the exact same stupid things his dad did. The most important and mindbogglingly stupid parallel drawn between the two isthat both kill their entire crew out of fear that the crew is going to jeopardize the mission. And when Roy gets back to Earth, he is greeted as a hero even though he, a member of the armed forces, hijacked an armed forces spaceship and killed its entire armed forces crew. And this wasn’t clandestinely done either. Because nothing can be done right in this movie.

I got much more enjoyment writing this review than I did watching “Ad Astra”. Is this what happens when a good idea for a movie gets away from you? Did some movie executive come in and say “Do you know what this movie needs? Killer space monkeys!”? Did George Clooney dare Brad Pitt to pitch this movie to see how crappy of a movie can be made on his name alone? The world may never know.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Adults just aren’t as interesting as children. Especially when their tale is told as disjointedly as in this movie.

Chapter Two is finally here and you might want to see what I thought of Chapter 1 before you read further.

“It Chapter Two” starts 27 years after Chapter One with a hate crime against two gay adults, one of whom eventually gets killed by Pennywise. They are never talked about or referred to again. I believe this scene is supposed to establish the evils of small towns that Stephen King often encapsulates in his books and to let the audience know that Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) can also feast on adults even though both dangers seems so far removed from the main characters for the rest of the movie. So begins a series of muddled messages that comprise and compromise most of the movie.

There are still plenty of hair raising scares and chills to be had in Chapter 2 and Bill Skarsgård once again proves that he may be the creepiest man on the face of this planet. Even the scares feel a bit disjointed at times, especially when Mike (Isaiah Mustafa) tasks the adults with going it solo to find their “tokens”. The tokens seem kind of random and maybe there are ties to the first movie that I don’t recall, but the frights the adults encounter often don’t seem tied to the tokens or to anything that was previously explained.

The chemistry between the adult characters is also sorely lacking compared to the chemistry of the kids. The only time where the adult chemistry rings true is when they all originally return to Derry and meet for dinner and drinks at a Chinese restaurant, which they then trash with little concern from the other patrons or owners of the restaurant. Then there’s the two love stories that go nowhere. One, is a lover’s triangle that the movie spends a decent amount of time on the three dancing around each other to no real result and the other is a barely hinted homosexual attraction which you would think would be played up a bit more given the beginning of the movie.

Despite being a massive disappointment considering how well done the first movie was, “It Chapter Two” still delivers where you’d expect it to deliver. I just wish there were some way to both do Stephen King justice and keep it to one three hour movie, or heck, even a six part streaming service spectacular. Still, the combination of the two movies did a pretty decent job of bringing a creeptacular book to the creeptacular screen.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: Starts out fairly effective. Ends up laughingly stupid.

The biggest question in my mind after watching this movie is: What is the shark horror movie equivalent of jumping the shark? Because this movie did it. Which is too bad, because up to that point, it was a fairly effective horror movie.

“Uncaged” takes place in the Yucatan where a bunch of teenage girls at an all-girls school decide to play hooky from a planned shark-watching tour and go to a remote swimming spot that one of the girls knows about. And apparently, there are no actual Mexicans living in the Yucatan because I don’t think this movie features a single one. Like not even in the background. Maybe this movie takes place in Donald Trump’s fever dreams where he’s conquered Mexico and caged them all. It certainly would explain a lot. Anyway, after a, thankfully, not terribly gratuitous T&A session of the teens frolicking in the water, they decide to take the scuba gear that is there and fits them perfectly even though it wasn’t meant for them and explore the Mayan underground burial city that has since been flooded with water. And there are blind Great White sharks there. The end.

Ok, not quite the end. There is actually some really good film making in the forward sections of this movie. I mean, of course, you have to accept that these giant sharks can swim around in all these caves that the scuba divers often have trouble navigating, but still. The camera makes great use of the claustrophobia of being underwater in caves and very effectively uses light and dark and silt and rocks to scare the bejeezus out of you as these impossibly large creatures pick the protagonists off morsel by tasty morsel.

John Corbett is in this film. I do not know why. But he very effectively gets Samuel L. Jacksoned out of this film (see “Deep Blue Sea”) and you should really stop watching it at that point. From then on, it’s a film of nonsense and incredulity as the remaining survivors are subjected to a series of sharks crashing into things just as they escape and magic currents that consistently push you down to the abyss below and getting chomped by sharks but somehow surviving. I will say, though, that whoever thought up the whole starting with hooky from a shark-watching tour and finishing up with the girls being ejected into the ocean right where the shark-watching tour boat was chumming the waters is a genius and should be our next President.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Stupid. Fun. Stupid fun.

I have only seen one or two of the actual “Fast & Furious” movies and this is very clearly not one of them. “Hobbs & Shaw” is just a vehicle for getting Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Shaw (Jason Statham) together in a movie so they can riff off of each other for two hours while all sorts of unlikely action is happening around them. Throw in bad guy Brixton (Idris Elba) and cameos by the likes of Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds and you have all the makings of a stupid fun movie.

The plot is virus…something something…supervillain…something something…work together…something something…hate each other…something something…family…something something…happy ending. Yep, this is one of those movies where the plot doesn’t matter. It’s all about the improvisational riffing of Johnson and Statham on each other while things explode and gadgets are gadgeted. I am just guessing on the improvisational aspect of the movie, but many times it certainly feels improvised and Johnson is a much better improvisor than Statham. Or maybe he’s just a much better actor. Or maybe both. The important thing is it works. So don’t worry about the plot and just enjoy the ride in all the highly improbable vehicles.

The final act of the movie was kind of meh for me. It throws in a weird and pointless Hobbs family plot line and often felt more like a infomercial for Samoa than a coherent piece of film making. It wasn’t until after watching the movie that I discovered they didn’t even shoot in Samoa, but on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. So go there if you want to experience the beauty around the bullets of “Hobbs & Shaw”. Obviously, a movie like this relies highly on improbability and suspension of disbelief, but the whole Samoa part kind of crosses that line into non-enjoyment, which is too bad because up to that point it’s lots of fun.

Despite the disappointing third act, I would likely see another “Hobbs & Shaw” adventure. It’s entertaining and fun and silly and stupid and as long as you don’t care about things like plot and character development and all that other boring stuff. Obviously, steer away from this movie if you care at all about all those things that make a compelling and unforgettable movie, but if you’re up for stupid fun, “Hobbs & Shaw” delivers.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 5/5 stars

Bottom Line: Touching and awkward and loving and uncomfortable. Just like a family.

“The Farewell” is an interesting movie on many levels. It is a movie about family and about culture and about morality. It is billed as a dramatic comedy, but it is funny not in the joke sense but in the way all families are funny, very awkwardly. It is painful at times as the silences stretch as family members decide what to say next, if anything. All this makes “The Farewell” a strange movie.

The coolest aspect of “The Farewell” is the East meets West factor. The movie is about a Chinese family whose grandmother Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhou) in China is dying of lung cancer. The family is spread across the world and they all return to China to see her under the guise of a family wedding. In Chinese culture, it is common to not tell a loved one that they have been diagnosed with life ending disease and Nai Nai is not told she has terminal lung cancer. The family has many discussions on whether that is the right thing to do. There are also discussions about what it’s like to be Chinese in the United States. Billi (Awkwafina), who is from New York, gets asked multiple times about the United States, sometimes by strangers, always to humorous results.

It is a very interesting moral question, whether to tell someone they are dying. One of the family members explains it as the family taking on the collective emotional burden of death from the dying. We, with our Western individualist philosophy may instant balk at the idea of not being told we are dying, but I can understand the appeal, being able to live what remains of your life without the Damocles Sword of Death hanging over you at all times. The individualist counter-argument is that there are so many things one might want to do with that knowledge in hand and that one would not be able to do without that knowledge. The collectivist retort would be that one would already have done what is expected and there is only the need to continue what is expected. The individualist would complain that they didn’t get the chance to do any of that because they were too busy working 40 hours a week for the last 40 years with the belief that there was always plenty of time for those things later, always later. Or something like that. I may be a little rusty in my individualist vs. collectivist philosophy.

I will admit that I am a sucker for well written movies whose premise is an interesting moral question and that “The Farewell” is firmly in that wheelhouse so maybe I liked this movie more than most people would. Even saying that, though, the views into how family life is pretty much universally family life despite the culture it came from are poignant and endearing and I believe would appeal to all. There is also a lot about Chinese culture to be gleaned from the movie as well. And oh yeah, Awkwafina is wonderful. She just has this delightfully awkward attitude that makes her perfect for bridging the gap between East and West. I seriously wonder if the Awkwa in Awkwafina came from her awkward attitude.

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.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: You’ve got monsters. You’ve got monsters fighting. That’s all you need to know. Either it appeals to you or it does not.

I spent so much time discussing this movie with a friend who can only be described as a Godzilla super-fan that I completely forgot to write my review about it. For shame!

Clearly, anyone who is going to see a Godzilla movie for the plot is woefully ignorant of every Godzilla movie that has come before. If it can be called a plot, “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” wants us to believe that a well-respected scientist has proven scientifically that the only way to save the Earth from environmental destruction is to release all the monsters and balance will be restored to Earth by science. Also, science. It’s absolutely ridiculous. If the entire dialogue just consisted of people saying “Science science science” to each other, it would have made more sense. But those monsters aren’t going to release themselves so we have to suffer through the plot. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as stuff has to be loosely tied together somehow, but G:KOTM spends entirely too much time on the plot and not what it’s supposed to be: big bad monsters duking it out for supremacy.

When the movie does actually get to the big bad monsters duking it out for supremacy, it’s pretty good. The fights are as epic as you’d expect from monsters the size of skyscrapers. Special attacks are peppered throughout in order to keep the fighting spicy. The only time the fighting gets annoying is when they continually show the ant-humans foolishly traipsing underfoot of the titans. I mean WHY?!?! I mean, I get you can’t predict where they are going to decide to throw down, but when commence fisticuffs, run! AWAY! Not back and forth. Maybe it would have been worth it if they showed more stupid humans being splatted, but there are woeful few of those too.

A lot of the Godzilla mythos is pretty cool and it is explored fairly well in this movie, enough to appease both Godzilla novices and superdorks. The fights really are super fun so if you think that’s enough of a reason to go see a movie, you will likely enjoy G:KOTM. If you want a movie with plot, stay reasonably far away unless you also like making fun of bad plots.