Blockers is totally vulgar, but damn if it isn’t hilarious. Three separate parents have seen their individual daughters grow up as best friends from their first day of school until prom night, and on the day of prom, they find that their girls have made a sex pact to lose their virginity’s that night. So they set out to be c*ckblockers and stop the acts before they go down. In the end it is a bit of a coming-of-age movie from a perspective we don’t usually see (the parents), and everyone involved has some learning to do, even the adults. Though a pretty straight forward comedy (and a great one at that), it doesn’t fail to raise serious questions about gender equality, acceptance (of many kinds), and what it means to be a parent. The good comedies do more than just make you laugh, and Blockers is one such example.
Sometimes you know you will like a movie before you ever watch it, and my recent example is The Greatest Showman. I’m a sucker for musicals, even movie ones, and I’m a big fan of the supremely talented Hugh Jackman, so put it all together and I knew it was going to be up my alley. Jackman plays P.T. Barnum, and the film is about his rise to stardom as he starts his circus and grows it into the draw that it was for so long. It is a little light on depth, and the story is a bit paint-by-numbers without a lot of fleshing out, but the songs are catchy and radio-ready, and the sets and costumes are colorful and gorgeous. A fun movie for fans of the genre, others may not find much to enjoy though.
The Death Cure is the finale to the Maze Runner trilogy of films. It didn’t get great reviews, and it doesn’t live up to the suspense and mystery of the first film, but I found it very entertaining, albeit a little campy at times, as many films based on young adult books often are. Light on the mystery but heavy on the action, this film follows Thomas as he and his fellow survivors of an illness that has all but wiped out humanity, in their endeavors to rescue captured friends from a sinister group. The first film in this set, from 2014, was a great thriller with a lot of intrigue, leaving the viewer to guess what all is going on and why, and while the subsequent films lost that element, it is still a satisfying set for fans of the post-apocalyptic genre.
Murder on the Orient Express is a new film based on an old book, and if you’ve never read it, it is basically the film Clue on a train. A high profile passenger is murdered, and the world’s best sleuth, who happens to also be present, sets about to find the killer among his fellows. Beautifully filmed and well acted, it however doesn’t quite get as gripping and edge-of-your-seat thrilling as it maybe hoped. A tremendous cast props it up nicely though, including Johnny Depp, Willem Dafoe, and Judi Dench, with Kenneth Branagh as detective Hercule Poirot, the longtime star of many of Agatha Christie’s mysteries. If Clue had never existed, I might have enjoyed this one more, but that film is far more entertaining with its wildly preposterous cast and ultimately a more satisfying ending.
The Post is another one where I can’t quite agree with the professional critics. They heralded this one because it is the kind of film media types eat up, but if you set aside the two engaging leads (Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep), and you are left with a cut and dry, paint-by-numbers historical film that follows just like reading the paper (ironically enough). The true story of the rise of the Washington Post during its coverage of the Pentagon Papers, detailing their reporting of the classified documents of the US involvement in the Vietnam War, it has plenty to be excited about without ever truly being exciting. I can appreciate the historical aspect of it, freedom of the press and all that, especially in today’s age when a politician can scream “fake news” if they don’t like the content (factual or not), but it doesn’t make for a very entertaining film.
Jons Movie Takes 
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