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.

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.