SPOILERS AHEAD
 
"Shazam!" flawlessly captures the playfulness and creativity of being a kid. It follows fourteen-year-old foster kid Billy Batson (Asher Angel) — who receives magic powers from a wizard named Shazam (Djimon Hounsou) — and his foster brother and superhero fanatic Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer), as they fight a villain named Dr. Sivana (Mark Strong), who harnesses the power of seven deadly sins, in the form of large demonic creatures, and aims to steal Billy’s powers for himself. The film also features many of Billy’s other foster brothers and sisters who, along with Freddy, end up getting magic powers as well.
 
"Shazam!," the latest film in the D.C. Extended Universe, solves many of the problems that critics and fans identified in the series’ previous installments. Most notable is that in “Shazam!” the characters are actually relatable.  We learn in the film that Billy’s mother had left him at an early age, after which he shuffled from foster home to foster home. As a result, Billy is motivated by a desire for a family and a sense of belonging. Billy’s motivations are grounded and sympathetic, making him an engaging and endearing protagonist.  Moreover, while previous installments like “Justice League” and “Suicide Squad” juggled too many tones and couldn’t settle on an overall character and feel for their films, “Shazam!” sticks to a silly and playful tone (the continuous stream of well-paced jokes will keep viewers laughing throughout), which fits the original tone of the character Shazam from D.C. comics — unlike “Man of Steel” which took the inherently optimistic and happy character of Superman and placed him in a dark and gritty film. 
 
Additionally, the film humanizes the villain, Dr. Sivana, and doesn’t portray him as a one-dimensional, uniquely evil stock character. The very first scene of the movie shows us a young Dr. Sivana, who just like Billy, doesn’t feel at home, and is hated by his family. In Billy’s case, these experiences of being without a home gave him the desire to help people.  In Dr. Sivana’s case, very similar experiences made him angry and resentful, which inspired him to harness the power of the seven deadly sins. As a result, viewers can sympathize will Dr. Sivana, and understand what motivates him.
 
It was really hard for me to find anything bad about "Shazam!," but there are a few things that could be improved.  The special effects could be better, but on a relatively low budget (at least for a superhero movie) of only $80 million, the shortcomings are understandable. As a regular watcher of C.W.’s “Arrowverse” shows, I can sympathize with having to pull of a lot of big scenes with superheroes on a shoestring budget. The soundtrack didn’t blow me away either, but it still fit the movie well. The positives overwhelmingly outweigh the negatives; taken as a whole, “Shazam!” is a fun, nostalgic movie that will make viewers feel like they are a 14-year-old kid having fun again.

Grade: A/A-

In case you couldn’t tell from the train wreck of a title, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is an utter mess of a movie. It really seems like J.K. Rowling just threw a bunch of her leftover worldbuilding notes from Harry Potter together, adding only the bare minimum of connective tissue needed to assemble a somewhat logical narrative.

The film’s plot is ostensibly quite simple. Magizoologist Newt Scamander and his friends, with guidance from the legendary Albus Dumbledore, try to find and protect Credence Barebone, a young but terrifyingly powerful wizard, as he is hunted by both the harsh and overbearing Ministry of Magic and a group of violent extremists led by outlaw Gellert Grindelwald.

Unfortunately, the story ends up being incoherent, both by over-complicating the plot and some remarkably poor storytelling choices. After an inoffensive opening sequence, the film starts to go downhill, with two early reveals that undo all of the consequences of the first film’s conclusion. The film then splits into roughly half a dozen different plot threads, tied together in some of the most contrived ways imaginable. It’s a shame too, because each of the storylines probably would have been compelling had they been properly fleshed out. Poor editing exacerbates the clumsiness of the already convoluted narrative. Some of the scene transitions are so abrupt that I wondered if there was something wrong with the copy of the film being shown at the screening.

The film doesn’t manage to stick the landing either. Most of the last half hour is taken up by a series of plot twists, each more over the top and less meaningful than the last. And the climax of the movie should have massive repercussions for the film’s heroes and the wizarding community as whole, but Rowling apparently didn’t think it was important to actually show us how the protagonists deal with events that just irrevocably changed all of their lives.

The film also does a less than stellar job at handling its large cast. All of the significant characters from the first film return, and the film introduces a gaggle of new ones. Theseus Scamander (Newt’s brother), Leta Lestrange (Newt’s ex and now Theseus’s fiancée), Nagini (yes, really), and Nicholas Flamel (an immortal alchemist) are all jammed into the movie. None of them are well developed or necessary to the plot. Nagini, especially, is completely extraneous. Not only is it absurd to reveal that Voldemort’s pet snake from the Harry Potter series was actually a cursed human witch the whole time, she serves absolutely no purpose in the movie. Her only role is standing around and looking mildly horrified at the events unfolding around her. Leta comes the closest to having a coherent arc, but the mangled storytelling robs her character development of the emotional heft it should have.

Newt and his allies, the non-magical human Jacob Kowalski and the Auror (wizard cop) Tina Goldstein, fair a little bit better, but only because they are already established characters. These weirdos with hearts of gold are pretty much exactly the same as they were the last time around. If you found them charming in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (I certainly did) then you’ll find a lot to enjoy here. The exception (and not in a good way) for the returning characters is Queenie Goldstein. In a pretty significant departure from her previous characterization, the telepath comes off as consistently selfish, manipulative, and gullible with no real redeeming qualities.

But you know what? Despite the movie’s many, many flaws, I didn’t hate it. Newt, Jacob, Tina, and Dumbledore are delightful, most of the jokes land well, the creatures and magic spells are clever and stylish, and the wizarding world is as fascinating as ever. Grindelwald, too, is deftly handled. He is a far more human monster than Lord Voldemort, but that makes him an incredibly effective villain. His softer approach to fascism and skill at presenting a compelling message makes it all too clear why his brand of bigotry would appeal to the wizarding populace. In particular, his speech to the witches and wizards of Paris, a chilling depiction of the malleability of the truth and the capacity humans have for violence, is  J.K. Rowling’s best piece of writing in the film.
 
Grade: C+/B- (I can’t decide and these grades are meaningless anyway)

Bohemian Rhapsody? More like Bohemian Crap-sody, am I right?
 
I really thought this was going to be a good one. A bio-pic of Freddie Mercury had a lot of potential. But the more I think about it, the more I realize director Bryan Singer took a great story and watered it down to the point of intense blandness.
 
There seems like a lot of material available regarding Mercury that could make for an interesting film. He was the son of immigrant parents who seemingly didn’t approve of his career, which compounded upon his feeling like an outsider. He was a closeted gay man and had a complicated relationship with a woman to whom he was married before he came out. He engaged in the kind of sex and drugs that we generally associate with rock gods of that era. And he famously contracted AIDS at the height of the initial epidemic, and his death from the disease increased attention on finding a cure.
 
Well what if I told you the movie barely addresses any of these elements of his life? Rhapsody acknowledges all of these issues, sure. But it never feels like the film takes the time to talk about any elements of Mercury’s life substantially. Everything is glossed over in this hard-to-place sheen that makes the whole movie feel unfocused and impersonal. I don’t feel like I learned anything about Mercury, the person or the character.
 
And Mercury is really the only character in the movie with even an attempt at depth. Rami Malek’s performance is good, but the lack of focus on any elements of Mercury’s life fails his efforts. No one else in the movie even comes close to interesting. The other members of the band are relegated to tertiary characters, and the rest of the supporting cast are either lifeless nothings or unremarkable stereotypes.
 
There are moments where the film distracts you from it's monotony. The cinematography is pretty interesting, with a few stylistic shots and angles that give Queen the vibe it deserves. Seeing the band put together some of their most iconic songs is interesting, especially “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “We Will Rock You”.
 
The last 20 minutes of the film are just a recreation of the Live Aid performance from 1985. And while this is kind of dope, because it’s just 20 minutes of listening to Queen perform, the minute it is over you remember that you could have just watched the actual Live Aid performance on YouTube for free. You then realize that the only interesting part of the movie is Queen’s music and that you could be in your living room listening to A Night at the Opera and not in a movie theater trying not to sing along because you are surrounded by strangers trying to watch a mediocre movie.
 
I really believe that a documentary about Queen would have been better than this. Talking to the actual band mates about Freddy and the band might have added to some energy to this sloppy, boring mass. I was entertained, sure. But not because the movie is good. Because Queen is awesome and it’s hard to fuck that up.
 
Grade: C

​It’s a tale as old as time: Aspiring Entertainer Female meets Established Entertainer Male, they fall in love, Established Entertainer Male elevates Aspiring Entertainer Female’s career, he becomes Declining Entertainer Male and she becomes Established Entertainer Female. Well, it’s at least a tale as old as 1937, and screenwriters Bradley Cooper and Eric Roth did the bare minimum to update it for Cooper’s directorial debut A Star Is Born.
 
The impetus of the relationship in this film hinged on questionable power dynamics that feel sexist and inappropriately timely. Jack (Cooper) wields his power as a famous musician to relentlessly try to woo Ally (Lady Gaga) until she abandons her life to travel with him after they spend a single night together. Ally’s position as a budding singer herself made Jack’s advances and belief in her talent hard to resist. No matter Jack’s intentions, which prove to be fairly altruistic, it was easy to feel unsettled by this all-too-familiar Hollywood story which usually ends differently. I’d like to forgive these outdated gender politics because this film is, of course, based on a story that originated in 1937. It perhaps wouldn’t have been a true remake if Cooper and Roth had veered from this, but they each hold enough clout to champion a film that feels a bit more modern.
 
Setting all this aside, Cooper and Gaga had palpable chemistry that was hard not to root for. Though both of their performances were uneven, Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga each had scenes that made me question whether I was being too critical. Cooper’s character Jack is a charming piece of shit, which he believably embodies. Jack is tragically and frustratingly flawed, which somehow endears him to the audience and Ally even more. But save for a few emotional peaks, Cooper’s performance was pretty flat and showed minimal depth. I was much more impressed with Gaga, despite her character Ally coming off as a caricature at points. The film often felt autobiographical to Gaga (and many pop stars), as Ally struggles to be accepted as a musician because the industry likes the way she sounds but not the way she looks. The moments that touched upon that issue felt the most genuine. And it almost goes without saying, but any shaky acting was instantly excused whenever she took the stage to perform.  
 
There are a handful of elements to this film that I wanted more of, and some that I wanted less of. The few minutes when Anthony Ramos was on screen were completely joyous. He is an incredibly talented multi-hyphenate who we will be seeing more of very soon (Monsters and Men, out soon), but I wanted to see more of his sweet character Ramon in a film whose turbulent leads quickly become daunting. This is definitely a personal preference, and one that not every viewer will agree with, but I wanted more music. It is clearly the strongest part of the film. “Shallow” is a safe Oscar bet for Best Original Song, and will be fodder for so many covers that I am not looking forward to. Even though he probably wouldn’t have written, directed, and starred in a musical movie if he didn’t, I was still impressed to see that Cooper had genuine musical chops. Every time Ally and Jack play “Shallow” (yes, it obviously happens more than once) is a high for the film, and I am so excited for the Oscars and/or Grammys performance of this song.
 
The aspect of the film I wanted the least of was actually the story. I found myself completely apathetic to Ally and Jack’s backstories, which served mostly to suffocate the narrative and artificially acquaint us with the characters. It was easy to connect with Ally and Jack even if their stories began when the film did. The inclusion of their families as secondary characters felt extraneous. My main issue is actually that I wanted less movie, which is a recurring pattern for almost every iteration of A Star Is Born. Cooper’s version is around two hours and fifteen minutes, and could’ve easily been ten to fifteen minutes shorter without detriment. The 1954 and 1976 versions both come in at an unreasonable three hours and two minutes, which is essentially inadmissible in today’s short-attention-span society. The original 1937 version is just under two hours, which is the absolute longest any of these films should be.
 
Going into the film, I was convinced that A Star Is Born would be either my favorite or least favorite film of the latter half of 2018. But after watching it, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just an okay film with incredible moments that make its flaws forgivable.
 
Grade: B+

I’ve written so much recently about movies that were of varying degrees of awfulness. Whether they were innocuously mediocre or abhorrently painful, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about movies I thoroughly didn’t enjoy. And I don’t really have any problem with that. I like writing about movies, and a lot of my colleagues at the Film Enthusiasts’ Club will tell you that I have a proclivity for seeking out the worst of the worst. A good film critic has to know what’s bad to know what’s good, so I like to take a dive in the deep end of the shit pool sometimes. But it's starting to make me apathetic.

So I’m going to do something a little different with this one, if you readers don’t mind. I’ll give you the general plot synopsis I usually give, but then I’m just going to start listing things about the movie I did or didn’t like. If you don’t want to sit through the rest of this, the long and short of it is that The House with a Clock in its Walls is a tonally inconsistent, immaturely unfunny mess of a film. But I think it’ll be fun to just talk shop about some of the reasons why in a way that doesn’t have me slinging around the usual banalities like “boring characters” or “predictable plot”. Sound good?

The movie follows a young boy named Lewis (Owen Vaccaro), who is sent to live with his Uncle Johnathan (Jack Black) after his parents die in a car crash. Lewis comes to realize that his uncle’s eccentricities are far more than they seem, when he finds out Johnathan is a warlock and the house where he lives is full of magic. The house, once owned by Johnathan’s partner, contains a clock which could spell doom for the world. Thus, Lewis, Johnathan and their witch neighbor Mrs. Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett) have to find it before *something something doom something* happens.

List incoming:

• The title of the movie is too long. I know this is out of the control of the filmmakers, because the movie is based on a book, but it’s a mouthful.
• I’m really getting tired of movies wherein the villain(s) believe that the only way to save the world is to kill off all, or most, of the people on it. This instantaneously throws away any sympathy I could possibly have for them, and the villain of this film isn’t nearly interesting enough to have such a dumb plan for “world peace” or whatever.
• There are three, separate “lion-shaped magic shrubbery farts yard waste on things it isn’t supposed to” jokes. Think about the best family movies. I’d hedge my bets they have an exceedingly small amount of flatulatory humor. Fart jokes are low-bar. Making them funny is hard. This movie put in no effort to make theirs anything beyond “haha isn’t a fart funny, kiddos?”
  
• There is an almost staggeringly low amount of interesting magic in this movie. All of the magic that does happen feels like things I’ve seen in Harry Potter before. No one ever uses magic in a way that I wouldn’t have expected, nor does any of the magic look very inventive. It’s magic. You can do literally anything you want. Get creative with it.
• Jack Black and Cate Blanchett have chemistry, but it is thrown to the side far too often. They are both talented and funny actors, but the film’s poor writing and janky tone issues fail them.
• Scenes start and end out of nowhere. I don’t know if this was a problem in the editing bay or the writers room, but it makes the movie feel piecemeal and sloppy. Nothing that happens has weight, even though the stakes are high, due mostly to the haphazard way in which the film is constructed.
  

I really hope I see a good movie soon. These are starting to get to me.

Grade: D+

When I first heard about Peppermint, an action movie starring Jennifer Garner, I presumed it was going to be similar to her action movies from the past. You know, something along the lines of Elektra. This was not an exciting prospect. Then, I found out the film was directed by Pierre Morel, director of the original Taken film, and was immediately convinced that this movie would be an, at best, underwhelming clone of that film. What I actually got was a mediocre John Wick clone, a movie that reminded me why John Wick works while most of its’ imitators don’t.
 
Peppermint follows the tragic revenge story of Riley (Jennifer Garner), a struggling mother whose husband and daughter are brutally gunned down by crime boss Diego Garcia (Juan Pablo Raba). Garcia believed that Riley’s husband was planning to rob him and his crime syndicate is too powerful to be dismantled by Detective Stan Carmichael (John Gallagher Jr.) and the LAPD, so the killers walk and Riley is committed to an insane asylum. On route to the mental facility, Riley escapes and trains for 5 years to become a badass assassin, intent on taking down Garcia’s entire venture.
 
As you can clearly see here, the plot similarities with John Wick are apparent. And the film is clearly trying to feed off the waves of popularity of the Keanu Reeves led series. The action is constant and intense, the main character fairly silent and stoic (though Garner’s Riley is a bit snarkier than Reeves’ Wick), and the plot paper thin. Occasionally, this approach works, allowing the film to showcase an interesting piece of action or a colorful line from the main character.
 
The problem is that Peppermint lacks the fundamental elements that made the John Wick series work: good choreography and editing. The action sequences are choppily edited and shakily shot, falling into a lot of the same pitfalls as the average PG-13 action borefest. If Jennifer Garner put in the same kind of work that Keanu Reeves did for her stunt work, it was wasted by rapid cutting and confusing camerawork. The few times something cool actually happens are severely outweighed by the surrounding blandness.
 
Without the action spectacle, the movie falls to its lackluster storytelling and character writing. This isn’t to say that these elements are particularly excellent in the John Wick series. But at least those movies have the interesting assassin underground to keep the action-less sequences relatively enthralling. Peppermint features the most barebones of revenge/police corruption stories, the kind of thing we’ve seen 1000 times. A compelling protagonist could have saved the movie, but it seemed like the filmmakers couldn’t decide on the characterization of Garner’s Riley, trying to make her both a stoic badass a la John Wick and a snarky quip machine in the vein of John McClane.
 
Peppermint is the same boring action movie I’ve come to expect at this point. There really isn’t a lot more I can say about that.
 
Grade: C

​There’s nothing better than a film that is a pleasant surprise. I spend so much of my time seeing films that I either know are going to be bad and hate or know are going to be good and like that the moments where a film surprises me are rare. And most of those surprises are still negative (you broke my heart, Man of Steel). This week, people kept asking me what movie I was screening and I honestly couldn’t remember the name of it. I had seen the trailer, I’m sure, and presumed it was for a mediocre sci-fi film. I was dreading the prospect of writing a review for another C-grade action film where I prattle on about how the movie was insubstantial popcorn fodder.
 
When I walked out of Kin, I was reminded why I do this. Not to tell people about the obvious, like that the new Transformers blows or that the new Denis Villeneuve movie is great. It’s to tell  people about the hidden gems, the movies that I end up liking despite the odds being stacked against them.
 
Kin is a feature length adaptation of a short film called Bag Men, following a teenage boy named Eli (Myles Truitt), who discovers a strange and futuristic weapon in an abandoned building. When Eli’s brother Jimmy (Jack Reynor) returns from prison and gets into some hot water, which accidentally gets their father Hal (Dennis Quaid) killed, the two go on a roadtrip/run-for-their-lives trip. Pursued by criminal gang leader Taylor (James Franco) and two mysterious figures from an alternate dimension (or something of the like), the brothers bond with one another and a stripper named Milly (Zoë Kravitz).
 
I would first like to address a potentially unnerving element of the film’s theme. The movie puts a lot of stock into the power of the gun, which in turn appears to make the young Eli feel powerful. This “power of the gun” angle, combined with the brother’s proclivity to get the two of them into criminal activity, could be seen as sending a troubling message to youth about the strength of guns and crime. But I would also argue that the same could be said for Eleven, one of the main characters of Stranger Things. Eleven kills countless bad-guys, her “power” being derived from weaponization. But I would argue that Eli only initially perceives that his power and confidence comes from physical strength, and that the end of the film is specifically ambiguous about the “goodness” of the power of the gun and Eli’s criminal brother.
 
That aside, the compelling nature of the characters outweighs the potentially tonally confused message of the film. Eli and Jimmy are likable, and their chemistry feels genuine. They feel like brothers, who love each other and are willing to put themselves on the line for each other. Jimmy is dumb and impulsive, but never in a way that felt frustrating. Truitt and Reynor play their parts well, and it is their relationship that carries the majority of the film. Franco’s character, while over-the-top, is a fairly menacing villain, hitting that crazy, drugged up crime boss vibe. I did chuckle, however, at Quaid’s performance, as he seemed to be doing his best Harrison Ford impression, straight down to the finger-wagging thing that Ford loves to do.
 
The movie is less compelling when it leans more towards science-fiction than drama. While the cinematography is pretty great, the futuristic/alien tech doesn’t look like anything we haven’t seen before, and the twist at the end of the movie had me more confused than shocked. The sound design was good, if not a little over-reliant on the dubstep-esque techno sounds that permeate films like this. But I couldn’t help but feel like a straight-up drama about these characters might have made for a better film. The set-up at the end for a potentially more sci-fi focused sequel has me concerned that the filmmakers don’t know what the best part of their movie is: the characters.
 
Is Kin perfect? No, not by a long shot. Is it one of the year’s best films? No, not even close. But it is an entertaining movie, with likeable characters, good performances, and interesting cinematography. I enjoyed myself watching Kin, which is a lot more than can be said about almost every movie I’ve reviewed this summer.
 
Grade: B-