In his second to last film, John Belushi took on a very different role in 1981's CONTINENTAL DIVIDE. Actually he seems to take on two roles in one in this something less than perfect romantic comedy. Belushi is Chicago Sun Times reporter Ernie Souchak, a columnist with a focus on Chicago corruption (talk about a deep well of stories!) and an adoring audience of readers. As Souchak digs deeper into one councilman and starts getting too close to the mob, he's roughed up and threatened. His editor Howard, perfectly played by 80's character actor Allen Garfield, reassigns him to the mountains of Wyoming for a story on a famed eagle researcher. The film suddenly moves from hard nosed reporter threatened by bad guys story to a romantic comedy between Souchak and our naturalist Nell Porter, appealingly played by Blair Brown (Altered States). Belushi earns some nice, quiet laughs as Ernie finds himself hiking for days to the remote cabin where Nell lives, then slowly letting her know that he's there to tell her story. They spar, they battle, they slowly find common ground, come on, you know what's going to happen. This was Steven Spielberg's first film under his production company Amblin and its a very safe film in many ways. As Brown and Belushi go for some Hepburn/Tracy verbal battles and eventual romance, the predictability of it feels more comfortable than annoying. This was a very different role for Belushi and he's fine. His comedy antics, while brief, are spot on and remind you in small moments of his more frantic characters, but he stays in character and does a nice job as Ernie. Brown is even better, going toe to toe with Souchak and making Nell believable. The photography and Montana/Wyoming settings are spectacular. The film is written by one of the best screenwriters of our time, Lawrence Kasdan (Body Heat, The Empire Strikes Back, Silverado) and that's evident when the film refuses to go where lesser movies would. A final showdown with the mob or shootout with Nell in the balance never materializes. Instead for the final act, Kasdan puts our two characters on a long train ride where they have to make a decision on their future at every stop. The two settings of the film never quite come together, but Belushi and Brown are never less than entertaining in a quiet, old fashioned style romantic comedy with a dash of outdoor adventure and Chicago action piled on top. It never quite soars like Nell's eagles, but its a pleasant diversion that gets a B-.

Oooh, this is a good one. As a big fan of Robin Cook novels and "The Andromeda Strain", this kept me interested. Great cast down to the smallest roles and many dialogue-free scenes that move the story along just as fast as the bug spreads. I guarantee you that you will start counting how many times an hour you touch your face....I'm up to 15 in the past hour and I'm trying not to! Watch out my germaphobe loved ones, this one will scare ya! This bug gets a solid B. 2022 Update: WOW, post-Covid.....who knew? Pretty spooky now.

It's hard to make a truly scary film. It's even harder to make a great sequel. THE CONJURING 2 scares up so many tense moments it makes both these challenges look easy. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are back as husband and wife supernatural investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. After a chilling prologue set in the Amityville house of legend and the most chill inducing main title music in memory, the film moves to the suburbs of London. Working class single mom Peggy Hodgson (a terrific Frances O'Connor) is raising four children in a large flat, with barely enough money to scrape by and an absent husband. Her two daughters and two sons are good kids, and the young actors playing them are terrific across the board. Youngest daughter Janet (Madison Wolfe) suddenly begins talking to unseen entities, then channeling the voice of an old man who declares the flat "HIS home" and wants them out. The film very cleverly sets up supernatural scene after scene that feels familiar, but each one takes a different path than the predictable. The scene where police investigators come to the house is a fine example. You assume that when they are there, nothing will happen and the family will appear to be loony. Not so much..... As events around Janet and the home escalate, the Warrens are asked by the church to investigate. They find themselves up against not only some of the most blatant evidence of possession they've ever faced, but also an underlying threat of a horrifying demon in the form of an evil nun that reemerges from the Amityville home in the terror-filled London flat. I rarely find "scary" movies scary. From it's beginning to its final frames, THE CONJURING 2 kept me on edge, fascinated me and provided almost unbearable tension. There are some stand out scenes. Lorraine's encounter with the nun's portrait is horrifying. The taped interviews with Bill are creepy. Janet's little brother's adventures with his invisible playmate and the cross filled room's powers scream with suspense. Director James Wan (The Conjuring, Insidious and just announced as Aquaman's director) knows how to craft a horror story. You'll care about these characters and what happens to them. Farmiga is excellent as Lorraine and Wilson matches her as Ed. Simon McBurney is perfect as Maurice Gross and Maria Doyle Kennedy (Orphan Black) shines as the Hodgson's neighbor. Composer Joseph Bishara gets special credit for his music that gets deep under your skin and Bonnie Aarons will haunt my dreams forever as the Demon Nun. If you can turn the lights out after watching this and NOT be creeped out thinking about that horrifying white face in the darkness, you're ahead of me. Truly scary, really well executed in front of and behind the camera, this Exorcist style horror thriller gets an A. Stay tuned during the credits to hear the real life tapes of the Wilson's interview with Janet/Bill. Yep, this is based on true events that took place in London in 1977 in one of the most documented cases of all time. Creepy........ENJOY!

There are two kinds of Michael Crichton movies. The really great ones, like Andromeda Strain, Westworld and Jurassic Park. And then there are the really bad ones like Sphere, Looker and this 1995 turkey, CONGO. Laura Linney (horrible) joins Dylan Walsh (so long before Nip Tuck he's almost unrecognizable) on his trip to Africa to return his sign language talking gorilla to the jungle. Yes, it's every bit as dumb as it sounds. Add Tim Curry as a Romanian treasure hunter named Herkermer Holmolka, spouting a horrible russian accent (you can't make this crap up) and you have quite a flick. They must have known this was a disaster because in the last twenty minutes they add in an erupting volcano, tribes of ancient killer apes, earthquakes, giant laser weapons and a hot air balloon. Amy the gorilla wears a device on her arm that turns her sign language into audible words. She likes to say "Amy Bad, gorilla bad." You're right Amy, this is BAD. Really bad. Congo gets a D.

Poor Liam Neeson, can't he ever just get where he is going and be left in peace? At least he put's his action hero skills to work in entertaining fashion in 2018's THE COMMUTER. This time, he's ex-cop, aging insurance salesman Michael MacCauley, who's already having a bad day when he boards the same commuter train home to suburban New York as he does every evening. But today, a mysterious woman passenger named Joanna (Vera Farmiga) sits down across from him and challenges him to a little verbal quiz. What would Michael do if he was offered a large sum of money just to find a certain person on the train? That simple question soon escalates into something tangible, with real consequences that ripple out from every decision he makes. Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring, Phantom of the Opera) is current cop and Michael's ex partner. Sam Neill (Jurassic Park) is the Police Captain with uncertain loyalties. Neeson has found a second career playing these physical action roles as men who should be too old to beat the crap out of various bad guys, but thanks to his "particular set of skills" (and good stunt work and editing) he seems to always rise above. Action director Jaume Collet-Serra (NonStop, Unknown) has plenty of style. Even though the best actions sequences are completely unbelievable and preposterous, they are fun as hell to watch. This is is best full speed train derailment since "Silver Streak" and the special effects are fun. With action aplenty and zero brain cells needed to enjoy it, THE COMMUTER is an action packed trip worth taking. Just don't wander the cars looking for logic or you'll be left empty handed. All aboard! Like the camera above, under and around the train, this thing never stops moving. I give it a brainless B-.

What in the hell were we thinking in the 80s? I vividly remember seeing this movie opening weekend in theatres and loving every minute of it. Now, its laugh-out-loud funny in every respect. COMMANDO features a very young Schwarzenegger as John Matrix (hey that's a cool action hero movie name, someone should make a movie called that....). One of those guys retired in a cabin in the middle of nowhere until his old commander comes to get him for "one last mission", Matrix spends his days feeding deer, eating sandwiches and cuddling with his big haired, mom-jeans wearing daughter Jenny, played by Alyssa Milano. If you think that description is off, wait until you see the cutsy-pie montage that opens the film. Oh wait, I forgot the moment Alyssa smashes an ice cream cone in her Daddy's face with the same vigor she would rip a Trump sign out of her neighbor's yard. It's one hell of a first 5 minutes. Thankfully James Olson (The Andromeda Strain) arrives to tell Matrix that his whole squad is being assassinated and Arnold goes into full beast mode. Bad guys come flying out of the bushes and 9000 bullets hit the cabin (but no one they're aiming at), Jenny is kidnapped by the bad guys and whisked off to Mexico. Arnold is forced to get on a plane to South America to go kill a President for the bad guys, but he's able to kill the bad guy in the seat next to him, climb down the landing gear of the Western Airlines plane and splash into a swamp like he's jumped off a kiddie diving board instead of a jumbo jet achieving lift off. The realism just leaps off the screen like Arnie's bulging biceps. He meets a flight attendant named Cindy and kidnaps her to help find his daughter's kidnappers. I couldn't spend very much time delving into the circular reasoning swirling around that decision. I was too busy trying to survive Rae Dawn Chong's screeching, annoying portrayal of Cindy. She makes Kate Capshaw in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom seem like a Monk by comparison. Oooof, she's bad. Dan Hedaya adopts a Ricky Ricardo accent as the head bad guy, Australian actor Vernon Wells brings every bit of his "Road Warrior" madman character to Bennett, Matrix's former squad buddy who's moved to the dark side. Wells called his look for the film "Freddie Mercury on steroids" and he's dead on! Arnold would get much better at this in a few years with "Predator". He's saddled with a bit too much dialogue a couple films before he really found his groove. What makes the movie so hilarious is that there must be 20,000 bullets fired at Matrix. Machine guns, riot guns, pistols, grenades, Gatling guns, they all miss. Arnold's big. I struggle with the physics. The good news is that all his bullets hit bad guys. Every saw blade he throws cuts off a scalp, every machete hacks off an arm with one blow. The rocket launchers capsize every jeep, every grenade launches bad buys like those trampolines in Angry Birds. It is awesomely hilarious and unending. And really, really stupid. What were we thinking? OK, "Predator" still holds up, its awesome reveling in all its eighties violence. So is "Rambo: First Blood II" made the same year as this film. Bottom line, my best advice is DON'T GO COMMANDO. It chafes its way to a D. "Hey Sully, you know how I told you I'd kill you last? I lied..." still makes me laugh though.

Back in 1988, after huge success with the first two Beverly Hills Cop films and a semi-bomb in "The Golden Child", Eddie Murphy returned to fine comic form with the mega-hit COMING TO AMERICA. Murphy stars as African price Hakeem, who wants no part of his arranged marriage and wants to spread his wings with a visit to the USA. With best friend and assistant Semmi (a very young Arsenio Hall) in tow, our Prince soon lands in Queens, loses all his luggage and somehow retains his regal dignity as he takes a job at a McDonalds wannabe fast food joint. Murphy is at his best here, showing a softer side for the first time on film and creating a character you really care about, who is searching for true love far from home. Murphy and Hall also bust out in another four roles each within the film. Beneath heavy make-up that turns him into everything from an elderly barber to an old Jewish man, Murphy is hilarious and sows the seeds for what would become a multi-part, gender bending pattern that would emerge again years later in the Nutty Professor films. James Earl Jones gets plenty of laughs as Hakeem's dad, simply by never breaking his serious demeanor and John Amos is great as the father of the girl in America that Hakeem inevitably falls for, much to his parent's horror. This is a fun and funny movie from start to finish, with plenty of one-liners that plenty of us are still quoting today. Look fast for Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy reprising their roles from "Trading Places" and Cuba Gooding Jr as a customer in the barber shop. Paula Abdul did the choreography for the royal engagement and wedding sequences and it is pretty damn good (and over-the-top hilarious). Coming to America holds up really well as an eighties comedy classic and gets a laugh filled A.

Powerfully acted and well told, 1978's COMING HOME is one of the best dramas of that era and an intelligent look at the impact of the Vietnam war. Opening with an unscripted scene with real Vietnam vets in a VA hospital, they share their stories as one of them talks about his desire to go back. Paraplegic vet Luke Martin (Oscar winner Jon Voight for this role) voices his opposition, angrily motoring away down the hallway, face down on a stretcher and using canes to push himself around. The polar opposite is Captain Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern at the peak of his 70's quirky madness) who cant WAIT to get to Vietnam and expresses excitement that he's finally getting his tour. His wife Sally (Jane Fonda in her Oscar winning Best Actress performance) is dutiful, reserved and there to support Bob. As she says early in the film, "if the Marine Corps wanted you to have a wife, they would have assigned you one". When Bob leaves for his tour, Sally begins to make life choices that build her confidence. A new car, a new apartment. She decides she wants to volunteer at the VA, where she meets Luke, realizing that they went to high school together. Luke was captain of the football team, she was a cheerleader. That spark of the past and some sense of normalcy spurs a budding friendship. Waldo Salt (Serpico) also won an Oscar for his screenplay and he earns one for taking these characters in realistic directions and never pandering to expectations. Luke's growth from drugged, angry hospital patient to the man he is at the end of the film is powerful. Likewise, Sally's metamorphosis from obedient housewife to independent woman is powerful. Fonda's portrayal is nothing that you'd expect if you bring any real-life Fonda Vietnam baggage to the film with you. She's excellent. Fonda had been looking to make a Vietnam film and was inspired when she met real-life vet Ron Kovic, whose life was later portrayed by Tom Cruise in "Born On the Fourth of July". You can certainly see roots of Ron in Luke's character. I loved the way that Sally never abandons Bob. A lesser film would have her writing him a Dear John letter, but Director Hal Ashby (Being There, Shampoo) never turns away from real life and the way these people have been impacted by the war. Bruce Dern's scene near the end of the film talking about what's next with a loaded rifle in his hand is explosive. You feel what he's going through and have no idea what will happen next. Voight and Fonda's relationship is so quietly told that you don't realize how caught up you are in their stories until the finale threatens everything they've built. Voight's finale speech to a group of high school students about the choice in front of them to enlist is powerful, inspiring and heartbreaking. Voight starts the speech with quiet uncertainty and begins to find his voice, until the reality of what he's been through just pours out of him in a passionate plea for them to carefully consider the next step of their lives. COMING HOME is one of the best Vietnam films ever made. Nominated for 8 Academy Awards in 1978, it still packs a punch today and gets an A.

Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) takes on Comic-Con in this fun, involving documentary focusing on 5 attendees. As a non-comic fan, I was surprised how much Spurlock got me to identify with these five very different people with career goals or personal goals revolving around the HUGE San Diego Comic Convention. Kevin Smith, Joss Wheland, Eli Roth (all you fellow movie nerds will know exactly who those people are) add some fun flavor and input. Witty, involving and surprisingly moving, COMIC-CON looks at a convention that has expanded to include movies, TV, videogames and all things entertainment. A very pleasant diversion and a solid B.

Michael Crichton's 1978 film of Robin Cook's novel COMA is a great little thriller. Healthy patients are checking into a large Boston hospital for routine procedures and slipping into comas at an alarming rate. Genevieve Bujold is a young doctor that refuses to accept the comas as coincidence, Michael Douglas is her doctor boyfriend and Rip Torn and Richard Widmark play good guys and bad guys but don't look to me to tell you which is which. A classic 70's Jerry Goldsmith score, made all the more amazing by the fact that there isn't a note of music for the first 45 minutes, then once it starts it barely lets go of you! Look for Tom Selleck & Lois Chiles in very small early roles. Suspenseful, exciting and engaging COMA is guaranteed to keep you awake! We'll diagnose it with a B.

If there was an award for the strangest, most difficult film of the year to categorize, I'd hand out the trophy right now to the smart, funny, powerful and entertaining COLOSSAL. Anne Hathaway is excellent as Gloria, a jobless woman who would rather hang with her friends than search for work. Her drinking finally becomes too much for her boyfriend Tim, played by Dan Stevens (Beauty and the Beast, Downton Abbey) and he throws her out of his apartment. Forced to move back to her parents empty home where she grew up, Gloria meets old friends & lovers, including bar owner Oscar (Jason Sudeikis, terrific in a straight dramatic role) and his friend Joel, very well played by Austin Stowell (Whiplash, Bridge of Spies). Pretty straight relationship drama, right? OK, stick with me.... At the same time, a giant Godzilla style monster begins to terrify and destroy South Korea, in full-on big-scale special effects sequences. It's as if a science fiction movie wanders in and takes over the screen. Things take an even stranger turn when Gloria begins to notice direct connections between herself and the huge monster in Asia. Where the film goes from that point in the film is surprising, funny, at times dramatic and always enjoyable. I LOVE movies that surprise you and get bored quickly when a film never strays from the predictable. I never had any idea where this one was going from beginning to end, but it made me laugh a lot, while also portraying some serious topics as effectively as any relationship drama in recent memory. Hathaway is very good, playing against type and doing it well. Her scenes with Stowell carry a lot of unspoken power, a tribute to them both and its the best I've seen Sudeikis on film. Spanish Writer/Director Nacho Vigalondo is one to watch. I know this one sounds strange, straddling the line between sci-fi and drama enough to alienate both audiences. Do yourself a favor and check it out. HUGE on talent, originality and laughs, it gets a COLOSSAL A.

In 1980, Writer/Director Richard Rush released his best film, the terrific Peter O'Toole thriller "The Stunt Man". It's hard to believe the same man made the 1994 mess, boringly dubbed COLOR OF NIGHT. Bruce Willis is NYC psychiatrist Bill Capa, who leaves for LA soon after one of his patients jumps out of his skyscraper office to her death far below. Bill changes coasts and stays with his good friend, Los Angeles psychiatrist Bob (Scott Bakula). When Bob is brutally murdered, Bill takes over his weekly therapy group, which seems conveniently loaded with viable suspects. Lesley Ann Warren (Victor Victoria) is the hyper sexualized nymphomaniac Sondra, throwing herself at every man that crosses her path. Lance Henrikson (Aliens) is Buck, a former cop who doesn't deal well with thunderstorms and has a hair trigger temper. The reliably quirky Brad Dourif (Dune, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) is an OCD hampered, tightly wound lawyer who counts everything but his blessings. We also have a tortured (literally) artist with a penchant for S&M in his paintings. Lastly we have young Richie, hidden behind coke bottle glasses and grunge clothes as he stutters his way through his insecurities. Meanwhile, a beautiful young woman named Rose meets Bill, seemingly by chance. She appears and disappears from his house at will. Sex and power are constant themes and the film was notorious at the time for its full frontal nudity of both Willis and Jane March as Rose. But no amount of sexy can save Rush's over the top, ridiculous choices in storytelling. Our murderer seems to be able to know exactly where Bill is at anytime, pushing a car off the top of a parking garage to try and hit Bill walking on the ground below, even though basic physics and common sense tell you there is NO WAY the driver can know where Bill is 5 floors below. Bad guys seem to change locations in seconds, I still have NO IDEA how that red car got so beat up but the owner didnt notice. A person with major wounds to their hands seems to climb five stories of a ladder five minutes after nails are pulled from ther hands. March is just plain awful as Rose and the big plot twist isn't exactly a surprise if you pay attention at all. Maybe the worst pieces are poor Ruben Blades as a police detective in a strange role that seems like comic relief to graphic murders and Dominic Frontiere's bizarre music score that seems to strike all the wrong notes at the worst times. Roger Ebert famously said in 1994 that the mysteries of this film would perhaps only baffle Forrest Gump, which was released the same year to much success. COLOR OF NIGHT was a bomb and doesn't play any better seeing it again. What color stinks? That's what color this is. We'll give it a D.