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.