Lee Mickus

I did not care for Babes a tale of a single mother and her best friend a pregnant married mother about to give birth. Friends for 27 years they have a Thanksgiving ritual of going to the movies. Here is where it falls apart for me. The pregnant mother's water breaks all over the movie theater seats. Ew! Then her single friend in the movie theater looks up her vagina to see if she is in labor. Double ew! This movie is very graphic and not funny at all. The single woman takes advantage of her pregnant friend. So of course she is suddenly pregnant herself. You know where this going. Now I am single with no kids so maybe this is why I found it predictable and boring. It got great reviews. I don't understand why.

This is a perfectly adequate animated cartoon movie. Full of broad slapstick humour, geared to families. You see Garfield as a kitten, adopted in a meet cute at a pizza parlor. But the main theme is fathers. Garfield felt abandoned as a child by his father. You find out over the course of the movie the true story. It was cute.

A fascinating new film from Oscar winning director of Drive my Car. Its an ecothriller. A small pristene Japanese town. The local river is used for water. A new glamping hotel is coming. The movie opens with town hearings. A restaurant owner and other residents are concerned sewage run off from camping guests will pollute their water supply. The film has a slow sense of dread. Beautiful forests, a lake. A father is late picking up his daughter from school so she walks home alone through the forest. A sense of fear builds slowly. I won't ruin the shocking ending.

I liked Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. It takes the franchise in a new direction setting up a new trilogy. I have seen all 10 movies in a movie theater. This movie is heavily ape centric. Humans are mostly mute, stupid, and enslaved. Apes have tools, voices, slavery and conflict. They even have pets. One group uses eagles. The opening hunt for eagle eggs is very Avatar like. But our ape hero sees his village destroyed and teams up with a smart female human to rescue his fellow enslaved villagers. But humans cannot be trusted. And oh there is a secret cache of old human technology and weapons that both humans and apes lust for. A surprise ending is telegraphed early setting up a sequel. The original 1968 Planet of the Apes is still the best Apes movie. Streaming now.

Poolman is Chris Pine's directorial debut. What wasted effort of a good cast with an incoherent plot. The actor plays a loser with mental issues. He lives in a motel, cleaning the pool. Scraggly beard, but buff body. He meditates underwater. He constantly goes to local municipal meetings with outrageous demands. He is also filming a documentary on his efforts which his parents support. A femme fatale hires him to follow and photograph a local politician. Somebody ends up dead. He is positioned as the fall guy. From a mix of slapstick comedy to film noir homage and stealing from better movies like Chinatown and the Maltese Falcon. The tone varies widely and none is done well. Terrible film, just skip it.

Abigail is a fun horror movie. Unfortunately the trailer ruins a major plot twist. A group of criminals are hired to kidnap a young girl for a $60 million ransom. We see her over the credits dancing onnstage as a ballerina in a giant empty theater, being picked up by a fancy car and driver. The kidnappers use fake names and masks, drug the girl, arrive at a spooky mansion with girl in tow and are trapped inside with their victim. The rest of the film is why this happens. Good cast, quite gory. Lots of fun.

Arcadian is anorher post apocalyptic horror movie with a strong cast. Starring Nicolas Cage it opens with him running leaving a city with 2 young twin boys. He ends up in the country side. Cities have fallen, fighting in the streets, cause unkown. Fast forward and the babies are now teenagers. They live in a fortified house with some unspecified danger lurking at night that requires barricading at night. The teenage boys have errands, they forage for resources during the day. Dad has rules for survival. One boy is reckless, romantic. A neighbor farmer has a teenage girl. He is drawn to her like a moth to flame. His twin brother is curious, an inventor, smart. He questions Dad's rules too, but more for improvement. So something bad happens, injuries, and we meet what is out there at night which are quite scary. I won't ruin what happens next. I loved this film for a fresh take of what goes bump in the night.

I saw the first 2 episodes in a movie theater at a preview 2 weeks ago. I am not familiar with the video game. I was lost at first. There is a lot of jumping around with not much back story. Its quite violent with a mix of genres. Science fiction, 50's retro vibe, post apocalypse story, satire, zombies, mutants, and satire. Its a lot to take in. Beautiful sets, great cast. Streaming. Its worth seeing more. There was a nuclear war. Warring camps between vaults, bunker like underground communities. One member is forced outside, and there is a search for a magical nuclear fusion object. Walter Goggins appears as the Ghoul.

Exhuma is a Korean film about posession but its got its own quirks. A wealthy Korean family in the US has a baby seriously ill and the father suspects an ancient curse. Each male first born has been haunted. They hire a geomancer who says they have to find an ancestral grave and.either burn the body or rebury it in a better location. Now here is where it starts getting weird. The grave is on top a mountain on the border between North and South Korea. His grandfather paid a lot of money to a local monk for a prime spiritual location. But the 2 newly hired exorcists say the location is all wrong and there is something creepy about the grave site. I won't give away any more of the plot. It's slow going and atmospheric, not a traditional horror film. In Korean, really different.