Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: Colorful and lively. Magical and whimsical.

I have not been much of a fan of the Disney live action retellings of their classic animated films. One was horrible and the others range from just fine to decently made. So when I saw that the blue cartoon genie made popular by the voice of Robin Williams was going to be reprized by and equally blue live Will Smith, I, like the rest of the interwebs, met the news with mockery. To be fair, the early previews really did make Will Smith look silly in the completely wrong way and there are still moments in the movie where there is a bit of creepy weirdness to CGI Genie, but for the most part Will Smith absolutely nailed it. He gets back to his roots as a singer and dancer and hams up Genie just so in a way that would surely have made Robin Williams proud.

The story of this “Aladdin” is pretty much the same as the cartoon one only with an added Oscar bait original song (and it will likely be nominated) and a much more woman empowering theme throughout. There are plenty of other minor changes, but nothing terribly important. The only real disappointing part is that Jafar (Marwan Kenzari) seems more watered down than I remember him in the cartoon. The third act where Jafar’s evil plans come to fruition seems kind of hurried and anti-climatic. Besides that, though, everything was absolutely delightful! The musical numbers were incredibly well choreographed. Aladdin (Mena Massoud) was remarkable in all acting and singing and dancing. Jasmine (Naomi Scott) was maybe a bit off at times, but still brought lots of magic and strong-willedness. Dalia (Nasim Pedrad), the handmaiden to Jasmine who wasn’t in the cartoon was also a wonderful addition to the story with her comedic touches.

The movie was directed by Guy Ritchie of all people. Not remotely who you would expect to be directing a Disney musical, but he did quite a wonderful job. The movie also pretty seamlessly blends true live action with CGIed moments throughout, not just with Genie, but all the moments where Aladdin is doing his acrobatics that even stuntmen couldn’t pull off. It would be very interesting to slow motion parts to see if the transitions are more apparent.

If you haven’t taken your kid to see this movie yet, you should. It is a wonderful delight and will hopefully replace “Frozen” (ugh) as the movie of choice for children everywhere for the next few days. The movie is beautiful in both costume design and art direction and the scope and color of the scenes make it well worth watching it on the big screen with a good sound system.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: All the excellent stylized violence you’ve come to expect from John Wick movies. Gets a bit too bogged down in trying to develop a plot.

John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is back and movie number three starts out where movie number two left off. John has just been declared excommunicado for violating the rules of The Continental, a hotel for assassins, and killing the bad guy from the second movie on Continental grounds. A $14 million bounty has been put on his head and he has just a one hour head start before all the assassins will be after him.

The first “John Wick” movie was the essence of stylized violence. The second “John Wick” added 20 minutes of plot that detracted from its core mission, but was still quite fun. The third “John Wick” movie adds yet another 20 minutes of plot that makes much of the movie drag. There is some more good John Wick backstory that is interesting, but the whole rigamarole with The Table is a little boring and doesn’t really go anywhere interesting. There is also a switch from the up close quick takedown violence of the first two films to more elongated fights that tend to go on for uncomfortably long minutes. The quick violence is still there and when the show sticks to that it really shines. Imagine John Wick getting into a fight in an antique store filled with knives or fighting in a horse stable. The extended violence stuff is mostly people getting smashed into glass case after glass case and passing up on the easy and quick kill opportunities for..reasons.

The end of the movie sets up an obvious fourth “John Wick” movie. I can only hope that they return to the roots of the first movie and keep it at the hour and forty minutes length and cut out much of the boring extras. There’s still a lot of fun in this movie, but with each successive one, the quality slips a little.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Yes, I went to see this movie. No, it wasn’t bad at all.

I do not know how this movie was made. I imagine a pitch meeting where someone had spiked the water with LSD. The entire premise is ridiculous. A guy loses his father and discovers that he and his father’s Pikachu Pokemon can talk to each other and they team up to solve the mystery of his father’s death. Oh, and this all takes place in a live action environment. Oh, and we’ll somehow get Ryan Reynolds to play Detective Pikachu. It’s preposterous on its face. Yet, it kind of works. This is not stellar movie making by any stretch of the imagination and it is clearly marketed as a vehicle to stretch the Pokemon brand into a new generation of young minds, but it’s kind of fun for what it is.

The star of this show is clearly Ryan Reynolds. He seems to know he is in something silly and just goes with it. He has lots of asides and comments that are easy to miss between the rest of the dialogue that is happening, but you really want to pay attention to him. Imagine Deadpool were a sweet, innocent Pikachu and you have Reynolds’ performance in this movie. The rest of the cast is fine. Justice Smith is a bit uneven as Tim Goodman and is more believable talking to a fake Pikachu than when talking to other actors. Kathryn Newton does an acceptably over-the-top job as Lucy Stephens.

The story tries to throw some plot twists into the mix, but none of them land terribly well and much of that is even thrown completely away when the final evil plan is revealed. None of it really makes sense and it detracts greatly from the movie, but up until that point, it’s pretty fun.

If you’ve got nothing else to do, this is a fun and stupid movie to go see. Not being a Pokemon person, I cannot say if they got all the Pokemon references correct or if there were lots of little Easter eggs for Pokemon fanatics, but they give you enough information so that even if you’re a Pokemon novice, you can tell what’s going on with all the different creatures. Pika pika.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: A satisfactory ending to a sprawling epic. Ugh, time travel.

Here we are at the end of a Marvel era. “Avengers: Endgame” is kind of a reset point for the Marvel Universe. Some stories are ending and some are just beginning. The journey to get here has been a lot of fun. Let’s dig into it and see what “Endgame” has to offer.

When last we left our hero, Thanos (Josh Brolin) had used the Infinity Gauntlet to snap half of the universe’s population into non-existence and retired to live out the rest of his existence in peace and harmony. A renegade group of super-powered individuals took exception to this new utopian universe and plots to find Thanos and steal the Infinity Gauntlet from him and reverse what he has done leading once again to the overpopulation of the universe and all the societal ills that go along with it. These “heroes”, as some misguided people call them, selfishly concoct a scheme using time travel that could put the entire universe at risk and will drastically alter the lives of the trillions of people that have been living the new reality for years. All because they think their own sorrow at missing their companions is greater than all the others’ happiness that they have newly discovered.

What’s great about the Marvel universe is that while the stars are superheroes, they are only nominally so. Mostly they’re just vain and self-important and only play well with others when it suits them. Clearly, Thanos isn’t the hero, but wow does it take some major lack of introspection to think that bringing back everyone five years after they were all turned to dust and everyone still alive has lived five years of existence without them is a good idea. And they do this mostly because they want their own people back.

What’s not great about “Endgame” is the time travel. I mean they do a decent enough job as far as time travel plots go, but there are just so many things that don’t make sense and so many questions left about how everything turned out. But that’s time travel. The biggest flaw with the time travel in this movie was how they spent so many lines of dialogue talking about how the vagaries of time travel aren’t at all like they are in the movies (and they mention a bunch of time travel movies that get it wrong) only to make their time travel exactly like those movies.

This was a fun movie and a fitting ending. It will be interesting to see where The Avengers go from here and what new adventures await. At least one baton has already been passed and a few others are left to be received.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: Fun and entertaining fluff. DC finally gets a good villain. And a good story. And a good hero. Ok, that’s not entirely fair, Wonder Woman was good too.

DC Comics has gone the comedy route with “Shazam!” and has largely succeeded. It is a very welcome change to their all-darkness-all-the-time motif that they have been following. The movie takes a very silly premise and recognizes that it is silly and runs with it. Serial foster home runaway Billy Batson (Asher Angel) is a teen who is whisked away to a lair where a Wizard (Dijmon Hounsou), the last of 5, tells him that he is the pure of heart person necessary to wield the wizard’s power and defeat the Seven Deadly Sins. Somehow, this transfer of power turns him from a 13 year old boy into a prototypical adult superhero complete with silly costume instead of a wizard, but who cares. Given zero instruction on how to be a superhero, Billy, along with the help of his foster brother Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer), proceeds to do what any teenage boy with superpowers might do: run amok.

As I have often commented on the good Marvel movies, what makes a good superhero movie is a good villain and Dr. Thaddeus Sivana (Mark Strong) is wonderful. Thaddeus met the Wizard when he was a child too, but he was incredibly meanly rejected which sent him on a quest to find the Wizard once again and get the powers he believes he should have been given. Childhood trauma informs both Billy’s and Thaddeus’ world view, but only Billy was given the nurturing to overcome that trauma even if he routinely rejected it. Morals. This movie contains them.

Another moral and my personal favorite of morals in movies is that of family. You bilogicals may suck. You have no control over that. Screw them. Find your family where you can find them. The ones that treat you well and you want to treat well back. If that’s a foster family, so be it. One of my favorite parts in the movie is a throwaway scene in which the foster mom Rosa Vasquez (Marta Milans) and foster dad Victor Vasquez (Cooper Andrews) swing into action and back mom’s car out of the driveway to reveal a closeup of the bumper sticker “I’m a foster mom: What’s your superpower?” which is just perfect.

“Shazam!” also happens to be really funny. It takes a while to get going as it seriously develops the villain and establishes the plot, but once it gets going, it’s all smiles. I mean, come on! Think of being a teenager and discovering you have superpowers. That’s not the only source of comedy, but it’s an infinite well of which they tap wisely.

It may somewhat be benefiting from low expectations, but “Shazam!” was a delight. The re-watch value is strong with this one, methinks. A good mixture of story and comedy and morals. Is it just me or has the last year or so been a goldmine of comedies of varying sorts? Regardless, “Shazam!” is fluffy fun for the whole family. Ok not really, it’s kind of violent and deserves its PG-13 rating.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: A heartwarming true story of a victory against racism in the Deep South when segregation was illegal, but still widely practiced by racists. Brilliantly acted. Could use with some trimming of length.

If you aren’t going to watch “The Best of Enemies”, do yourself a favor and read about Ann Atwater (Taraji P. Henson) and C.P. Ellis (Sam Rockwell). Atwater was a single mom and community activist fighting for equality in a place where doing so was still pretty dangerous. Ellis was a father and gas station owner and unabashed racist and president of the local social club known as the Ku Klux Klan. When the Black school burns down, they are both chosen to represent their side as the community decides whether to integrate the remaining school. Both are absolutely fascinating individuals and their similarities brought them together at a fortuitous moment in history to bring some good to the world.

“The Best of Enemies” is wonderfully acted and both Taraji P. Henson and Sam Rockwell deserve nominations for their portrayals. The movie could have portrayed Ellis as evil, but Rockwell and the script bring out his humanity and show that he’s really just another human being trying to get by in the world. That’s the big secret. Racists are like you and me, only racist. It may seem incongruous, but you can be a decent person and a racist and C.P. Ellis is just that. The difference between C.P. Ellis and most racists, though, is when Ellis is confronted with the sheer incongruity of his racism, instead of doubling down on his racism or denying his racism, he does some real honest to goodness soul searching and knows that his views cannot stand up to scrutiny and he does the most amazing and difficult thing a human being can do: after a lifetime of being wrong, he accepts that he is wrong, he changes his views to what is right, and he actively expresses his changed views despite enormous social pressure and ostracization. We should all try to be like C.P. Ellis. This is not at all to take away at how amazing of a human being Ann Atwater appears to be. She fights the fight and has absolutely no fucks to give. She grows as an individual too throughout this ordeal, but she started clearly on the side of right so her story is slightly less dramatic than Ellis’.

The movie does run a bit longer than it needs to. There are some weird montages throughout that don’t really much serve a purpose. There are also a couple “women in danger” scenes that don’t really add to the story and are of questionable authenticity. This shouldn’t take away from the amazing story but it does take away from the movie, though it is still easily worth watching.

Depressingly, this movie can be seen as how massive an effort the people on the right side of an issue need to attempt to change just one person’s mind. That’s all that happened in this movie. One person changed his mind. In this case, that person happened to be in a position to actually effect positive change. This is an exception. This is why we are at where we are.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 1/5 stars

Bottom Line: Towards the end of the movie, Alan Arkin exclaims, “This is a disaster! Let’s go get some hot dogs.” This summarizes my take on the movie better than anything I could write. Of course, this is not going to stop me from writing about it anyway.

How do you make a live action film out of a beloved Disney classic cartoon? Well, first you take everything good about the cartoon and throw it out the window and now that you have the skeleton of the original story, you fatten it up with a whole bunch of good actors in really crappy roles and have them act as over the top as possible while throwing in some lessons about science or something. There you have “Dumbo”! On the plus side, while they were throwing everything out, they also threw out the casual racism.

There isn’t a single character in this film that I didn’t wan’t to punch in the face at some point or another in this film. Including the child actors. They, at least, can be forgiven because they are too young to know any better. All the adults, I am just going to assume that their own children forced them to take their roles under punishment of ostraciization from the family. It is the only explanation. The best of the bunch, such as it was, is Eva Green as the trapeze artist Collette Marchant. The rest? Ugh. Danny DeVito: horrible. Colin Farrell: revolting. Michael Keaton: 2,000 feet over the top. I like to believe that the only person cognizant of how bad a film they all were in is Alan Arlin and his “This is a disaster!” line was adlibbed and he refused to do another take so they had to leave it in.

There are quite a few homages to the original cartoon which ranged from appreciated to crimes against nature. Timothy Q. Mouse is present, even though he doesn’t have a speaking role. They do a short tip of the hat to the racist crows, replacing them with a Black jazz band. They also completely bastardized “Pink Elephants” into a gaudy and stupid CGI-ed circus show, which I really could have done without. Some of the original soundtrack was remade for the movie, most prominently “Baby Mine”, but also “Casey Jr.”, “When I See An Elephant Fly”, and “Pink Elephants”. Danny Elfman did the rest of the score and, well, he’s Danny Elfman so you know it’s enjoyable.

This movie was directed by Tim Burton, but I can only imagine that Disney kidnapped him, shackled him, and waterboarded him any time he came up with any uniquely Tim Burton idea that didn’t fit with the Disney persona. This is all Tim Burton ideas so I don’t understand why he was captured to direct.

The elephant was legitimately cute and the off-the-wall-ness of all of the characters might be something that kids these days go for, I guess. The kids in my showing seemed to be enjoying themselves, at least. There is certainly better children’s entertainment out there, though. Go see that instead.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: Delightfully creepy. Wonderfully acted. Builds up the suspense well. Kind of falls flat at the end.

“Us” begins with a typical American family during a typical American outing until the daughter gets lost and something so scary happens to her that she loses her voice. It then transitions into the same daughter, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), now an adult, American Dreaming with her American Dream family all over the American Dream America. Summer vacation homes, delightful husband, coveting thy neighbor’s car, well adjusted kids, boats! The Wilsons may not have the perfect life, but it’s all anyone could really wish for. And then Us appears.

This is one of those movies that almost has to be talked about as two separate movies, which is unsurprising given the duality of almost everything that happens in “Us”. As a horror film, “Us” is pretty darned entertaining. There aren’t really any jump out of your seat scares, but there is plenty of tension building and the creepiness is sky-high. The first three-quarters of the movie had me. When the explanation of what was happening started to happen, things fell apart for me. Some things didn’t quite fit together for me. There seemed to be too much explanation, but not enough explanation, and by explaining just this much, it ended up confusing the horror story. All the explanations are necessary, not for the horror part, but because…

This movie is also rife with social commentary and symbolism. Curse you Jordan Peele for making us think! The main point being made is no matter how American Dreamy your American Dream is, it was and continues to be built on top of people you have either forgotten about or ignored. You’ll also see 11:11 appear constantly, among other symbols. The Jeremiah 11:11 in the movie refers to this bible verse: “Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them.”

Jordan Peele is now two for two with horror movies. First, the wonderful “Get Out” and now this. “Us” did fantastic in the box office raking in more dollars in the first weekend than any other original horror film. With two smash hits in a row, I expect people to backing dumpster trucks full of money into his yard to fund whatever his next 20 projects will be. I also have to add that holy cow is Shahadi Wright Joseph, who plays Umbrae, creepy as all get-out! Her cock-headed smile will haunt my nightmares. I have no idea how she pulled off that transformation, but yikes!

Jean-Paul’s rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: The recurring theme of airplanes flying overhead symbolizes my wishing I were anywhere else except watching this movie.

Ok, I will admit to “Roma” being a technically spectacular movie. Each background, each camera angle, each musical choice is painstakingly and lovingly chosen. It is a masterpiece in movie making. Cuaron, in this movie, emulates Michelangelo carving out the statue of David if he instead used all of his masterful talents to carve a turkey made of marble. What a turkey it would be! But it’s still just a turkey.

Here’s the main problem; the story is so incredibly boring. The action, the storytelling, the suspense is as thrilling as if you watched me typing out this review for an hour, only it goes on for two hours and fifteen minutes, two hours of which is looking at dog poop. The other fifteen minutes tells the story of a middle class family and their domestic worker who loves the children as her own, whose lives get turned upside down by the father abandoning them and the domestic worker becoming pregnant by her boyfriend who abandons her, all under the backdrop of the Mexican Dirty War with the Massacre of Corpus Christi playing a pivotal role, though none of it is mentioned by name. The Dirty War, by the way, was funded by the CIA, shocking no one. So what we have here is an everyday family’s everyday problems being told during an incredibly volatile and interesting time in Mexico’s history, of which we learn almost nothing about.

The acting in the film is wonderful. Or so I’m told. I’m not sure how one can measure the acting abilities of actors when one is busy reading the subtitles of a language one doesn’t understand. Yes, one can tell a lot from body language, but I don’t really much recall a lot of body language in Cuaron’s sweeping wide angle constantly moving and rotating around scenes, which I admit was a beautiful way to unfold scenes.

“Roma” probably deserves the Oscars that it won. Well, except maybe for Best Foreign Film, as I plead ignorance having not seen any of the others, but I have to assume at least one of them was a better film if not as technically masterful. If you get off on all those fancy movie making techniques, there’s a lot to love in this movie. Other than that, though, there’s not much there. Unless, I guess, you like watching paint dry.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: Empowering. Fun. Funny. Great chemistry. Flerkens!

“Captain Marvel” is three origin stories in one. First and foremost, it’s the origin of Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) as Captain Marvel. Brie Larson is very well cast in this roll. She exuded confidence and power as she slowly accepts her role as defender of Earth. Second is the origin of the Avengers itself. Captain Marvel is the spark in Nick Fury’s (Samuel L. Jackson) eye that leads him on his quest to start The Avengers Project and the events in this movie set up everything for the first “The Avengers” movie. Third is the origin story of Nick Fury’s eye patch. Oh, the horrors!

Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson are great together throughout the film. They have this natural chemistry, which I hear is true even off camera, and each plays off the other wonderfully. This may be one of the greatest film bromances in history. What I found most interesting is how Danvers never really talks down to Fury despite her being supremely overpowered and him being a normal human. There are moments of almost motherliness too, which work really well.

The mid-credits and post-credits scenes set up both “Avengers: Endgame”, which is up next in our time, and “The Avengers” which is up next chronologically in the Marvel Comics Universe. They are probably the most straight forward credits scenes in any Marvel movie and you don’t need an advanced degree in Marvel Comics literature to figure out what they mean if you’ve been following along with the movies thus far.

My only mild complaint about the movie is the special effects. It actually turned out much better than I feared when watching the previews for it, but there was still an overly CGI feel to many of the effects that was distracting at times.

“Captain Marvel” did, shall I say, Marvel-ously (yes I shall!) in the box office, raking in $455M worldwide, making it the 7th largest opening weekend of any movie and the second largest of any Marvel movie. Girl Power! All this despite a fairly concerted effort by misogynists to game online ratings systems to make it look like the movie was not worth seeing. That effort got a lot of decent press and backfired on the misogynists spectacularly.

I think “Captain Marvel” is probably in the top five Marvel movies so far. “Black Panther” still reigns supreme and probably one or both of the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies are better too, but “Captain Marvel” is worthy to be in their presence and is definitely worth repeated viewings. Whenever this chapter in the Marvel epic is through, it would be fun to have a Tesseract viewing party where we watch all the Marvel movies featuring the Tesseract in chronological order. Because the Tesseract is clearly the real star of the Marvel Universe.