JB REVIEWS

Pixar is one of the greatest movie studios of all time. If you need any proof at how unique and original, yet emotional and relatable their stories are, look no further than “Soul”.

Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) seeks to reunite his soul and body after dying, just before his big break as a jazz musician. An unborn soul tags along and together they set out to help Joe, but also find the unborn soul’s purpose in life.

Incredible themes and concepts of determinism, life and how to live it along with what’s important in it are ambitiously explored in this beautifully animated world. Both kids and adults can appreciate the beauty of the Great Before, along with its life lessons. It’s superbly casted as the voice acting is phenomenal, the comedy hilarious, and the score inspiring! It’s the best jazz score I’ve heard since “La La Land” and that’s saying something.

It was a tall order trying to live up to the near perfect first film and sadly, WW84 failed to live up to those expectations.

After making wishes on the “Dreamstone”, Diana Prince and co-worker Barbara Minerva fight on opposite sides as Businessman Maxwell Lord uses the stone to try to take over the world.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not the worst sequel ever. The action scenes are fun and it’s great superhero escapism at times. I especially loved the opening competition in Themyscira and the final fight between Wonder Woman and Cheetah. The actors, especially Gal Gadot and Kristen Wiig, try their best in their roles...it’s just weak material they’re working with. The screenplay is super cliché and the villains and their motives are even worse. Some CGI is bad and the weird switching between ratios to make it seem more 80’s was off-putting.

After the “Resident Evil” films, you should know what kind of movie you’re getting when it comes to director Paul W.S. Anderson. With that in mind I came to “Monster Hunter” with certain expectations and every single one was met.

After traveling through a portal into a new world filled with monsters, Captain Artemis (Milla Jovovich) must train along with a hunter she meets (Tony Jaa) to outwit and kill them if she has any hopes of coming back to her own world.

The film does what its title suggests VERY well. The monster hunting action is loud, extra and frequent. Little thought is put into dialogue or a complex storyline. Normally that would already put me off a movie, but it is Anderson and you get what you expect. You can tell they paid top dollar for the CGI cause the monsters look super realistic which makes the action even better.

It does bother me that besides the 2 main characters, no one gets any type of character development. Her team gets massacred in the beginning and then we get introduced to a whole squad of characters in the third act that pull a move here and there, but are quickly forgotten. Makes any deaths or stakes have less impact since you don’t know or care for any of these people. Also wish the climax was more fantasy instead of it getting grounded in the real world, but even so it was a lot of fun.

Remakes are a tricky endeavor. On one hand, you don’t want to remake a film scene for scene and on the other you don’t want to differentiate too much from the source material. Finding that happy medium is hard and like many before him, Director Ben Wheatley doesn’t achieve it.

Based on the classic novel, a beautiful, unnamed woman (Lily James) meets the wealthy Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer), they fall in love and soon he takes her to his rich estate: Manderley. There she meets the head of staff, Mrs. Danvers, and soon realizes the spirit of Maxim’s deceased ex wife, Rebecca, is still there.

The novel and original film directed by Hitchcock are hauntingly tragic gothic bodies of work, yet this remake is colorful, vibrant with beautiful cinematography...no gothic horror anywhere. It’s greatly casted and shot, but has no point. There’s a few changes here and there to not make it a complete retreat of the original, but for the most part it’s the same film and serves no purpose.

Bless Ryan Murphy’s heart. He always comes up with a great concept, lures us in with a great first act and crashes terribly by the ending. Now, “The Prom” doesn’t crash as bad as some of his other projects, but it’s no smooth landing either.

After their show gets closed on opening night thanks to scathing reviews, 2 aging and narcissistic Broadway stars (Meryl Streep, James Corden) and their struggling acting friends (Nicole Kidman, Andrew Rannells) set out to find a charitable cause to get in the public’s good grace. They find that cause in Emma Nolan, a lesbian growing up in Indiana who’s choice to bring a same-sex date has caused the conservative PTA to cancel prom and through extravagant musical dance numbers, the Broadway stars set out to get prom back on and help the whole town open their minds and hearts to accepting Emma and anyone else like her.

The musical numbers are fun thanks to vibrant and colorful set pieces. The actors all do a fine job, yet it’s Meryl Streep who steals the show as a narcissistic actress who hilariously always manages to make things about her and she and James Corden have the most fleshed out characters arcs as opposed to the others.

The message of acceptance is well intended and much needed, but it’s just super melodramatic and sappy that it became eye-roll inducing. As a gay man I know the struggles, but fuck, they really wanted to hit you over the head with their message. The runtime is super long and as scenes and songs ended I kept telling myself “that wasn’t needed” or “that number could have been cut” and there’s a lot of filler.

I didn’t even know Enola Holmes books existed, but you get Millie Bobby Brown and Henry Cavill playing brother and sister Enola and Sherlock Holmes, I’m watching.

After her mother goes missing and her brother Mycroft (Sam Claflin) tries to send her to finishing school, Enola Holmes sets out to find her mother after discovering clues left from her. Along the way she meets the missing Viscount Tewkesbury and after realizing someone’s out to kill him, tries to solve why and help the young Lord get to his rightful place as Lord to help pass the important Reform Bill.

It’s all great fun thanks to the intricate clues Enola finds and solves thanks to being brought up as a deciphering genius by her mother. They are mostly codebreaking clues though, and not as clever as some of Sherlock’s mysteries which I wish wasn’t the case. Speaking of Sherlock, he’s a great supporting character in trying to solve the mystery as well and being impressed whenever Enola is just a step ahead of him.

This film’s premise is actually pretty unoriginal, yet I didn’t even realize it until after the credits rolled. I was too busy having fun and being invested thanks to two of the most charismatic leading couples I’ve ever seen.

Jibran (Kumail Nanjiani) and Leilani (Issa Rae) find themselves in a crumbling relationship when they get tossed into a murder that makes them look like the prime suspects. With the victim’s phone in tow they decide to solve the mystery of the murder to clear their names.

It’s a story done before, it’s predictable, but who cares? Kumail and Issa have such great chemistry that you’re quickly rooting for them while at the same time laughing hysterically at the clever, cheeky dialogue and antics based on the wild situations around them. The comedy is hilarious and I found myself rewinding certain scenes and loved that the jokes remained funny a second and even third time. That’s great writing and we get even better delivery by all involved.

Almost a decade later, The Croods are back in theaters with a new adventure and while reaching for new heights, it doesn’t really justify the long wait.

After surviving Pangea in the first film, The Croods are enjoying life with Guy and their hold on him gets puts to the test when they meet The Betterman’s; old friends of Guy’s parents. They want him to fall in love with their daughter, Dawn, and an alluded to villain puts both family’s relationships to the test to help them see what’s really important in life.

Right off the bat, the film is super colorful, funny and the characters all hop into believe continuations of where they left off. Guy and Eep get “engaged” and Grub fears his daughter leaving the pack. Dawn is a believable obstacle in their relationship since she knew Guy as a kid and the Betterman’s feeling superior to The Croods is something that happens with people in different social classes.

What’s not believable is the jarring continuation errors: a big plot point is Grug not having a banana in ages, yet bananas were used in the last film to distract some punch monkeys. Sandy apparently uttered her first words here, yet she said “Dadda” in the last film and the list goes on. The third act villains, while giving us a fun action packed climax, feel like a last minute entry to help both families come together and resolve their issues.

I’m surprised a horror version of “Freaky Friday” hasn’t been done yet, but now it’s finally here and the results are equal parts campy, hilarious and terrifying.

Millie (Kathryn Newton) is an introverted teen who’s still grieving the loss of her dad while dealing with the terrors of high school that include mean girls and even meaner teachers. One night after a football game she gets chased and stabbed by the town’s notorious serial killer, The Butcher (Vince Vaughn). She escapes and the next day the magical knife The Butcher used has switched their bodies and now Millie and her friends have 24 hours to get her body back before the curse becomes permanent all while trying to stop The Butcher from killing any more people while in Millie’s body.

It’s definitely a predictable plot and the clichés are endless. However, the film is in on the joke and plays up those clichés to great campy fun. It’s algo progressive as hell with Millie’s 2 besties being a black girl and a gay guy and ignoring social and gender norms.

Vince Vaughn does a great and hilarious job playing a teenage girl and Kathryn Newton does well too, she just needed more to work with as she was just quiet for most of the film. The score is also a bit loud and obnoxious and I’m still trying to figure out if that was on purpose or just an oversight. The deaths are also fun and ridiculously gory making the horror aspect still as fun and campy as everything else.

From the trailer alone the monster’s terrifying design made me giddy to see this film and thankfully the writers cooked up a beautifully scary and emotional story to go along with such a brilliant design.

A long-limbed monster named Larry terrorizes a non-verbal autistic boy named Oliver along with his family and classmates through their smartphones, tablets, tv’s etc. to get Oliver to join him in his realm.

It’s a great setup and thanks to three-dimensional characters taking the lead, it makes the scares and danger that much more impactful. Oliver using his phone to speak is a brilliant plot device that’s used to communicate with Larry and start the whole chilling adventure. Sound design is the film’s biggest asset as Larry’s invisible for much of the film so the sound of his heavy footsteps approaching, his bones creaking and labored breathing are placed brilliantly and genuinely scare you even though the monster’s not in sight.

While I would normally skip something with such an awful B-title like this, my thirst for seeing a new horror movie in theaters made me buy a ticket to The Empty Man...I wish I would have listened to my initial instinct.

Retired cop James LaSombra investigates the mysterious deaths and disappearances that have befallen his small town and ends up getting more than he bargained for when he discovers a cult trying to bring to life an entity known as “The Empty Man” and start a new world.

There were times while watching this film that I had to stop and remind myself I wasn’t watching a Tarantino flick. It’s got some of his usual ingredients, and while not as good, it has enough differences to stand out on its own merits.

We follow Arvin Russell (Tom Holland) growing up in Ohio as he deals with deaths, predatory pastors, serial killers, crooked cops and more that all connect to each other Tarantino-style.

Performances from Holland and Robert Pattinson are standouts, and the characters connecting made the plot more interesting than it is cause there were a few times things felt slow and dull until the third act when the characters intertwine. While there was some Tarantino inspiration character-wise, the dialogue and filmmaking leave a lot to be desired. It’s interesting at times, but dull in others, while the directing and cinematography are barely above average.

It took me 10 days to finish this film. It got so boring I had to stop several times and do something else. When I remembered I haven’t finished it I would watch a little at a time until I finally reached the bitter end. I kept telling myself the ending will tie things up nicely and make the whole grueling journey worth it: I was wrong.

The female protagonist, who’s name we don’t know even though several are mentioned, is taking a trip with her boyfriend, Jake, to meet his parents. Once there they recount how they met with several inconsistencies in both stories. As the night goes on the girlfriend experiences weird occurrences and sees Jake’s parents as young and old with dementia. On their way back home they stop at Jake’s old high school and things get weird, confusing and irritating by the end.