Brent Lorentson

When a film comes along directed by Richard Linklater, I’m always going to have a little interest in what he’s up to.  He’s one of those directors I’ve followed from the 90’s that every few years he cranks out a film that I can’t help but enjoy.  Dazed and Confused, his Before Sunrise series, Boyhood, Everybody Wants Some!!, School of Rock, and several other of his films are proof enough that he has a solid filmography, but he’s never quite been  the guy to make a splash at the box office. Because of his track record, I’m a bit surprised to see that his new film Where’d You Go, Bernadette managed to squeeze into the tail end of the summer when the trailers would have me thinking this could be an awards-caliber film.  Well, as it turns out, the film is a swing and a miss.  While I still enjoyed the film, it’s a bit frustrating, because this film seems like it’s so close to being something great, but it just manages to disappoint throughout.
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The Conjuring franchise and its spin-offs have been a success at the box office since 2013.  Now with the third Annabelle hitting the big screen, it’s time ask the question: is this the end for the franchise?  We already know there is going to be a third Conjuring film coming out next year, but beyond that, I’m guessing the studio heads are watching to see how this film fares with the summer competition.  I wasn’t a fan of the first Annabelle. The second one was better but still it seemed to pale in comparison to The Conjuring films, so to be honest, my expectations were not very high for this new installment.  As it turns out, this ended up being my favorite of the spin-off movies, and I have no shame admitting how much fun I had with this one.
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It was the summer of 1997 when audiences were first introduced to the Men in Black.  Will Smith was on the fast track to being a box office star, and Tommy Lee Jones, well, he’s always been awesome to watch on the screen, and he seemed to be having fun in this popcorn blockbuster.  It was no surprise that the film became a hit. As for the sequels that followed, for me they just never could touch the fun energy that the first one had.  I always loved the potential the first film had, as it gave us a world filled with an array of aliens and worlds the Men in Black could venture too, but instead the films that followed played it safe, and really, that’s a shame.  Now over twenty years later and in the fourth installment, we get a soft reboot/sequel that gives us some fresh new faces and new aliens for them to pursue, but is it too little to late, or is this the jolt the franchise needed?
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“Something weird is going on.”

If you’re having a bit of zombie fatigue, you’re not alone. From movies to TV shows and video, we’ve had well over a decade of being blasted with the undead. Basically it’s the sub-genre that just won’t die.  I love zombie movies, but I feel audiences could use a bit of a break from them for a little bit and let another monster indulge in the spotlight.  With that being said, when a good one comes along, I’m still going to want to give it a try.  Already this summer we have Black Summer on Netflix that is worth giving a binge, and now hitting the cinemas we have The Dead Don’t Die.  Never in a million years would have guessed that writer and director Jim Jarmusch (Dead Man, Broken Flowers, Stranger Than Paradise) would ever tackle this kind of horror film, but it is a welcome surprise.
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When the first trailer of the Secret Life of Pets film came out I thought that the Illumination and Universal Pictures were onto something.  I think every kid and even adult wonders at some point what their pets’ lives are like when they are not around.  This was what I felt could have been the pet equivalent to the Toy Story franchise.  As it would turn out, the first film started out strong, but for me it quickly fizzled into an absurd storyline.  Kids seemed to like it, and really that’s all that mattered, but personally I felt there was enough strength in the material where we could have gotten something great.  Now we have Secret Life of Pets 2. Does the film manage to pull off something great, or is this a big pile of stale kibble?
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Back in 2014 when Godzilla came out, I had a blast with the film, though one of the major complaints people had seemed to have been that there was not enough fights or not enough of Godzilla.  Personally I didn’t see how this could be a complaint to take too seriously; after all, if you watch some of the older films, we’d only get maybe 15 minutes of screen time, but thankfully this wasn’t always the case. Now with the release of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the human story is a bit of an afterthought, and it’s the titans that carry this blockbuster bonanza.  Is this a good thing?  You bet it is, though I’m sure there are plenty of stuffy critics who will complain about there being too many monster fights; for those critics, this movie wasn’t made for them.  This is a movie made for the kid in all of us who wanted to believe in the possibility that giant monsters could exist, and seeing these hulking giants duke it out while destroying cities in the process just made us smile.
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