In Theaters: October 26, 2018

There are two releases to talk about this week (one wide, one limited).  Last week there was only one wide release and it was rated R so I didn't do a post.

Johnny English Strikes Again (limited)

Rowan Atkinson returns as Johnny English, and this time his co-star is an actual former Bond girl!

The original Johnny English came out way back in 2003, and Johnny English Reborn in 2011, and while neither of them have been outstanding, they have marked themselves as the true king of super spy parodies.  And for parodies, there is quite a lot of pedigree here.  The car in Johnny English Reborn, for example, was literally one of a kind.  Rowan Atkinson wanted to stray away from Aston Martin and he settled on the Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupé, which normally comes with a V12 engine, but Rowan Atkinson was privy to the fact that Rolls had made a handful of 9.0 liter V16 engines for that very car.  He asked them to put one into the movie car, and they actually did it.

The pedigree doesn't stop there.  At this stage in his career, Rowan Atkinson's comedic abilities are as much a triumph of English culture as the character of James Bond himself.  And this time around he's got Olga Kurylenko (the Bond girl from Quantum of Solace) as his co-star, and he drives an Aston Martin once more (just a few generations behind the one Bond himself drove in The Living Daylights).

But on to the most important question for a comedy film: does it look funny?  Yes.  Yes, it really does.

Johnny English Strikes Again is rated PG for some action violence, rude humor, language and brief nudity.

Indivisible

I love that there's apparently a strong market for movies like this.

Indivisible is about an army chaplain who goes to war.  So what's the central conflict in the movie?  Hard to say.  It seems to be every hardship that can possibly stem from that situation.  The difficulty of being apart from his wife and kids, the difficulty of gaining the trust of those he serves, the difficulty of dealing with the realities of war, and so on.

Indivisible is rated PG-13 for some thematic material and war violence.

      Big Shot Critic

In Theaters: October 12, 2018

First Man

"We choose to sit through another Ryan Gosling movie - not because it is easy, but because it is hard."

First man is about Neil Armstrong.  If you don't know who that is, stop reading this blog and find the nearest person to you.  They can tell you.

I've been wondering why nobody has done a movie about Neil Armstrong, but I don't know how I feel about Damien Chazelle being that person.  Don't expect singing and dancing OR drum sets.

First Man is rated PG-13 for some thematic content involving peril, and brief strong language.

Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween

Goosebumps came out in 2015, and it distinguished itself pretty quickly from all the poorly made family films.  It did well and people liked it.  So now they're doing a second one.  And Jack Black is still in it as R.L. Stine.

I never saw the first one so I have no idea what this is about.  I think the famous author's book monsters come to life and the main character kids have to deal with it.

Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween is rated PG for scary creature action and images, some thematic elements, rude humor and language.

Gosnell: The Trial of America's Biggest Serial Killer

Okay, so I was about to make a joke about this movie, but then I looked up who this guy was.  Wow.  This is not at all a joking matter.

Dr. Gosnell ran an abortion clinic in Philadelphia.  I say "abortion clinic" in the loosest sense I possibly can.  This was something more akin to a butcher shop.  This was a man who did very bad things.

Gosnell: The Trial of America's Biggest Serial Killer is rated PG-13 for mature thematic content including disturbing images and descriptions.

This gets a PG-13 rating for disturbing descriptions.  That should tell you something about the kind of clinic this guy was running.  Read the wikipedia article at your own peril.

Also, Dean Cain is in this movie.  Superman himself.  So that's fun.

      Big Shot Critic

In Theaters: October 5, 2018

I got a new job and I was in training last week and it was kicking my behind.  I was tired and worn out.  Blog day will have to be Tuesday for the foreseeable future, because now I work all day Thursday.

We have three from last week and one this week.

Little Women

You might say the Little Women have come back to the future.

Lea Thompson is the only name actress here, and she stars in exactly zero movies you remember except three: the Back to the Future trilogy.  She's Marty's girlfriend in that and Marmy in this.

Personally, I'm a fan of the 1994 version, but this one looks very faithful to the book.  It's set in 2018, which is obviously a big departure.  But it looks to me like the spirit of the book is very intact.  I have no objection.  In fact, I have reason to support this new version.

Greta Gerwig is making her own version of Little Women, due out next year.  If you only see one version between these two - please, make it this one.  I don't know what horrors Ms. Gerwig has in store, but they can't be good.  She is also likely on the warpath, since her last movie had the distinction of being the best-reviewed movie ever on Rotten Tomatoes . . . until it lost that distinction when it got a single negative review counted and lost its candidacy.

There are many movies with 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, but her film, Lady Bird, became the film at 100% with the most reviews counted, beating out Toy Story 2, which held the honor for almost twenty years.  When Lady Bird fell off the list, Paddington 2 soared right to the top and is the current placeholder to this day.  It was odd for two movies only a few months apart to top such a long-held record back to back like that.

Anyway, Greta Gerwig is known for a genre known as mumblecore.  You read that right.  It's a "genre" distinguished by its use of non-professional actors and actresses (to get that "raw" performance), and usually including much improvisation, resulting from many long takes of freeform performance.  In other words, mumblecore is a genre of bad films.

Moving on.

I have been known to put on Little Women by myself.  So I have a genuine vested interest here.

Little Women is rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and teen drinking.

Night School

Could anyone have come up with a less inspired poster?

I'm just gonna be straight with you, it looks really lame.  There's not even anything else to say.  In three weeks nobody will remember this movie ever existed.

Night School is rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content throughout, language, some drug references and violence.

Smallfoot

LeBron James is in this movie.

Smallfoot is a funny concept.  All the bigfoot monsters don't believe humans exist.  Some of the conspiracy theory type bigfoot monsters do, but the rest believe it's a myth.

The movie actually looks pretty funny and pretty well-made.  If I had kids I might take them.

Smallfoot is rated PG for some action, rude humor, and thematic elements.

Venom

I just don't know.

Tom Hardy hardly ever has bad roles, but this just seems like a flawed idea.  I could be wrong.  I just don't know.

Venom is a super villain associated with Spider-Man.  Sony has toyed with the idea of a Venom movie since way back in 2013 at least.  But he's a super villain.  What do you do with just a villain?  I'm not sure.  And I don't know if I care enough to find out.

Venom is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for language.

Some fanboys think a proper Venom movie should be rated R.  These would be the same people who complained that the first two Wolverine movies were PG-13.  As for me?  I'm not sure there is such a thing as a proper Venom movie.

      Big Shot Critic