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.

1971's COLD TURKEY is a pretty funny look at what happens when a major tobacco company's head of advertising (Bob Newhart in hilarious, manic form) proposes to give any town in America $25 million if they can all stop smoking for 30 days. Eagle Rock, Iowa is JUST the town to do it. Led by Reverend Clayton Brooks (Dick Van Dyke playing against type and damn good at it), Eagle Rock's band of hard smoking citizens all sign up for the challenge. Director & Writer Normal Lear (All in the Family creator and TV genius) whips up a dark, funny mix of characters and cuts them loose, led by Jean Stapleton (Edith Bunker) as Mrs. Wappler, who trades cigs for food, Barnard Hughes as Dr. Proctor, who has never operated without a cig and comedy legends Bob & Ray, who play virtually every 70's TV anchor in some of the funniest parts of the movie. Judith Lowry plays old lady Odie, who must be the nastiest 90 year old woman every put on film. She steals almost every scene she's in and must also hold the record for the number of times "Bulls@*t" has been said by one character on film. Pretty fun to see how dark we liked our comedies 43 years ago! COLD TURKEY is a fun flick from the past and puffs it's way to a B.

Way better and funnier than I would have expected, COLD PURSUIT serves up chilly revenge with violent style, strong action and great wit. Liam Neeson is Nels, a snowplow driver in a very frozen part of the Rocky Mountains, keeping the local roads clear and nearing the end of his career. He's at that stage where he's winding down and getting career achievement awards from his town. When his son mysteriously dies in a heroin overdose, Nels and his wife Grace (Laura Dern) are devastated. But the more Nels digs into his son's death, the deeper he dives into a major drug ring. Neeson soon takes up the most focused, efficient revenge spree since Charles Bronson blazed that path in "Death Wish". What the movie gets right is filling the cast of characters with unique personalities and strong actors. Tom Bateman (Murder On The Orient Express) is fantastic as the most obnoxious, elitist a-hole gang leader on record. Even his team hates him. William Forsythe (Raising Arizona) is terrific as Nels brother and Emmy Rossum (Phantom of the Opera) is solid as a local young deputy with a hell of an eye for the truth. Bradley Stryker is Speedo and Tom Jackson is fantastic as a Native American gang leader, White Bull, who treasures loyalty. When additional sons are lost in the turf battle and another is kidnapped, the sins of the fathers collide in a hail of bullets, fists and anger. Neeson is obviously enjoying having a great script in his hands that gives him a chance for every range of emotions within the story. Adapted from the 2014 Norwegian film 'In Order of Disappearance', it's fast moving, lethal and a great ride. The biggest surprise here is the intelligent sense of humor that fills the entire film, right down to its darkly hilarious final shot. Loved it. I went in expecting "Taken 6" and got so much more. Neeson has said this will be his last action movie. If so, it's a hell of a way to go out. COLD PURSUIT is chill fun of the finest order and gets a B+.

For everyone too young to remember the huge box office success of the Blaxploitation flicks of the early seventies, it's hard to explain just how big of movie stars Richard Roundtree, Fred Williamson and Pam Grier were. Pam kicked it all off with 1973's COFFY, a low-budget, high action film that was soon followed by "Scream Blacula Scream" and "Foxy Brown". Grier stars as a nurse whose sister dies due to an overdose. She becomes a one-woman wrecking crew to go after the low level dealers all the way up to the crime kingpin behind it all. The script is crap, the special effects are silly and the sets look like they cost $10, but damned if Grier doesn't rise above it all with a strong and believable performance. Quentin Tarantino loved all her seventies action flicks and cast her in the lead in 1997's "Jackie Brown", finally giving her a film worthy of her efforts. There are numerous unintentional laughs throughout, from the obvious use of dummies during action scenes to the worst fake blood this side of the Hammer Dracula movies. Look quick for Alan Arbus (Major Freedman for a decade on TV's "M*A*S*H*) as Vitroni the horribly dressed mobster. Bet he'd like to get this one off his resume, haha. Grier is a bad-ass action hero and by far the best actress in this nostalgic, cheap and silly movie. She gets a B but this COFFY is lukewarm and gets a D.

Looking at the cast of the new 2020 Netflix comedy COFFEE & KAREEM, you expect big laughs. Prepare to be underwhelmed. Ed Helms (The Office, The Hangover) is less than stellar policeman James Coffee. He's dating Vanessa (Taraji P. Henson of "Hidden Figures") and trying to bond with her 12 year old son Kareem (Terrence Little Gardenhigh). Kareem cant stand Coffee and sets up the perfect opportunity for a local criminal to scare him off, but it all goes horribly wrong when they both witness a murder by a drug kingpin. That's predictable enough. Now toss in a cocky female detective (Betty Gilpin of "Isn't It Romantic" seems like she thinks she's in a cartoon she plays everything so broadly) who hates Coffee and seems to be gunning for him, and a supportive Captain that has Coffee's back and you've completed the template. David Alan Grier, who's always hilarious, is given very little to do as Captain Hill, it feels like all his best comedy bits must be on the cutting room floor. Grier is a talented actor, wasted on a weak script. It's a little unsettling to see this many four letter words spilling out of a 12 year old kid and Gardenhigh is just never that likable in the role. Helms is a funny guy, but some of his best scenes are when he's alone on screen, and that's not a good sign. Henson steals every scene she's in and is the best part of the movie, too bad she spends most of it off screen. It's only 88 minutes long and that's a good thing, because it wore out its welcome about 60 minutes in, well before its goofy conclusion that's long on bullets and short on laughs. Meh, I'll give it a D+. Henson and Taraji deserve better.

For the first 45 minutes of COCOON: THE RETURN, the 1988 sequel to Ron Howard's 1985 hit, I was really ready to walk away. It looked like a cheap, throwaway waste of a talented cast. Then damned if the amazingly talented Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy didn't draw me in. Even with so-so material like they are provided here, they are superb actors. Our senior citizens have returned to Earth after 5 years in the stars to pick up the visitors left behind at the end of Cocoon. Returning to Earth challenges them not only with starting to age again, but with the ties of their friends and family. Will they leave again? Will they all survive and live happily (forever) after? Some of the answers may surprise you. Courtney Cox stars in a very early role and Brian Dennehy returns for a closing cameo. A pale imitation of the original, but Tandy and Cronyn are excellent. C-

1985's COCOON was Ron Howard's first major blockbuster and put him on the map as a filmmaker to watch in the 80's. Howard has a classic stable of actors in Maureen Stapleton, Gwen Verdon, Don Ameche, Jack Gilford, Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn and Wilford Brimley and puts them to great use in this story of a group of older, retired folks who stumble on the fountain of youth courtesy of some visitors from very far away. Brian Dennehy and his visiting friends make some discoveries about themselves along with the retirees, culminating in an emotion packed last twenty minutes. Why haven't we seen more of Tawnee Welch (Raquel Welch's daughter) who made her screen debut here? I understand why we haven't seen more of Steve Guttenberg..... Some of the 80's music is really painful, but James Horner's score is very good. An Oscar winner for supporting actor Don Ameche and Special Effects, Cocoon is a solid little sci-fi/drama that is a lot more touching than you might remember. For everyone that only knows Wilford Brimley from his diabetes and Quaker Oats commercials, he will surprise you in Cocoon with a great performance. Cocoon wraps up a B.

A visual masterpiece with a huge heart, Disney/Pixar's latest, COCO is a funny, moving adventure into the land of the living & the dead. Set in Mexico, with colorful visuals from its opening frames that immerse you in Mexican culture and traditions, COCO is transporting. Young Miguel (newcomer Anthony Gonzalez) has a passion for music, but since his great grandfather left the family to become a musician, all music has banned from their home. As the annual Day of the Dead celebration nears, many generations in Miguel's house prepare to honor those that have passed. Miguel inadvertently opens a pathway to the land of the dead and finds himself in an incredible world where all our loved ones that have died live on. Talk about crossing over! The scenes around how they move back and forth between worlds at a spiritual border station are funny and filled with incredible visuals. COCO brilliantly sets up an urgent quest to return to the living while simultaneously exploring family ties, the legacy of generations, the aging of our elders, all blended with a mystery around Miguel's father that's surprisingly intriguing. The cast is excellent. Standouts include Gael Garcia Bernal (Y Tu Mama Tambien) as Hector, and Benjamin Bratt as superstar singer Ernesto de la Cruz, whose fame has followed him into the next world. My (almost 4 year old) grandson LOVED every minute of the film, and at nearly two hours long was never anxious to leave. He loved the comedy and the giant "spirit creatures" that guide our characters into the land of the dead. I remember watching "Up" and wondering how an animated film can be so emotionally connected and moving, but the final scenes of COCO take that to another level all together. Stirring up deep emotions about loved ones that have passed and the importance of remembering them, COCO is as moving as any live action film in recent years. It's not a musical, but music plays an important role. You'll cheer (and Jonah laughed a lot) at the talent show where Miguel proves his chops. And bring your Kleenex for Miguel's moving final act song "Remember Me" to his aging, Alzheimer's afflicted great grandmother. Far beyond a simple "cartoon", COCO is one of Pixar's best and a fun, visually powerful and moving adventure into family and tradition. One of my favorite films of the year, it gets an A+. Thankfully. my grandson didn't notice me losing it like a blubbering grandpa in the film's final scenes, I still have my cool "Bumpa" credentials intact....

JJ Abrams has created something very interesting with his emerging "Cloverfield" brand. He dropped the original on audiences in 2008 with great success, spinning a handheld camera view of a giant monster's attack on New York City. In 2016, he introduced "10 Cloverfield Lane" to theatres and found gold with a very different type of tale, with John Goodman as a recluse imprisoning strangers in his basement during the alien attack of the first film. The two films were connected by the most obscure of tentacles and you began to sense that Abrams was creating a Twilight Zone brand for today, telling interesting stories with a hint of sci-fi, horror or suspense. That brand takes a mild hit with the third entry in its family, 2018's THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX. Teased by commercials during the Eagles/Patriots Super Bowl and then released immediately after the game on Netflix for viewing, its a big budget, stellar cast entry. As the cast kept arriving on screen, I was shocked by the star power. Daniel Bruhl (Inglorious Basterds, Captain America: Civil War, Rush) stars as a German scientist orbiting the Earth in quest of a new energy ray that will save the dying planet. The planet is out of natural energy and countries are descending into war over anything that's left. Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Free State of Jones, Beauty and the Beast) is Hamilton, an American scientist whose left her husband and children at home to save their world. David Oyelowo (fantastic as Martin Luther King in Selma) is also in the crew, as is Chris O'Dowd (Bridesmaids) and John Ortiz (Kong Island, Silver Linings Playbook). For over two years, the crew attempts to fire up an energy ray from their orbiting space station. When it finally does engage (as these things so often do at the last moment), they are forced to deal with a time/space paradox they've created via the massive energy force. People and things seem to have crossed dimensions, the space station itself seems to have a life of its own, a dismembered body part takes on a life and intelligence all its own. Meanwhile, the story bounces back and forth to Hamilton's husband on Earth as the world begins to find itself under siege. The film starts off well. It's interesting, its cast is stellar, the sets are terrific and special effects are first class. Soon however, the narrative seems to spin off track. The Earth-bound scenes with the husband seem tacked on, meaningless to the overall plot and often confusing. It feels like there is a much better movie lurking here somewhere, but by the end it all deflates into something much more routine than I've come to expect from the franchise. Ortiz is completely wasted in a one-note role. Many of the intriguing mysteries the story seems to set up go nowhere or are dropped. The editing is choppy and pedestrian. Positive points for the music score by Bear McCreary (The Walking Dead) and voice appearances by Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead) and Greg Grunberg (Heroes). The final moments finally deliver a direct tie to CLOVERFIELD but by then it gets more of a shrug than a jaw drop. I liked finding out the answer to what that was dropping from the sky into the ocean in the original film, but the film could have used a whole lot more of those moments. The only paradox here is the amount of money spent on the project and the talent level of the cast versus the very disappointing final product. We'll give it a C- and a meh......

Shrouded in mystery, filmed in near secrecy and announced just last month, 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE packs a punch telling a monster story connected in interesting ways to 2008's "Cloverfield". I'm not going to say anything here to give away any spoilers. Fans of the first film (count me among them) are best to approach this movie as a stand alone and let the pieces connect on their own. The film opens with Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) packing up and moving out from her boyfriend (that voice on the phone IS Bradley Cooper by the way) and hitting the road in a hurry. Stopping for gas, she sees news reports of power outages up and down the east coast and strange happenings in the atmosphere. Buried in her own emotional turmoil, she hits the road again, where she is involved in a massive accident. She wakes up shackled to a bed in a large underground cellar, belonging to Howard (John Goodman) a rural survivalist who keeps talking about the attack above ground and the fact that he saved her life just in time. Howard's neighbor Emmett is also in the cellar, hurt but thankful that Howard let him into his underground safety zone, because he also saw some major events happening above ground. From there, I won't be saying anything more. The story pivots on these three characters. Who are they? What are their true motivations? What HAS happened above ground? Producer JJ Abrams has found a talented filmmaker in first time director Dan Trachtenberg. The suspense never lets up and a simple story becomes more and more intriguing as it goes. Goodman is never better than when he plays a big personality, and he's wrangled one here in Howard. I spent most of the film trying to decide if Howard was a bad man or a good one. Emmitt is nicely played by John Gallagher Jr, who we saw a couple times on Broadway as Moritz in "Spring Awakening". He is a talented actor and does plenty with the role. Abrams has said that he sees a potential CLOVERFIELD series of films and entertainment projects under the same kind of umbrella as "The Twilight Zone", with stories connected in style, if not with direct bloodlines. If they continue with the entertainment value and fun of the first two, keep 'em coming JJ. As the poster says, "Monsters Come In Many Forms". Indeed they do. Suspenseful, fast and full of surprises, 10 Cloverfield Lane gets a B.

In 2008, uber-talented super producer JJ Abrams very quietly snuck CLOVERFIELD into theatres and found a big hit with audiences by putting a clever and exciting spin on the "found footage' film genre. Abrams cast a strong group of young actors, a few that went on to much bigger roles. As it opens, we see a group of young Manhattan friends gathering for a surprise party to send one of their own off to a new VP job in Japan. You learn just enough in the first twenty minutes to care about the characters, understand some lost loves, some great friendships and some key traits of the main characters. At the 20 minute mark, a massive explosion rocks the loft they are in, lights flicker and news channels all pop on with word of a capsized tanker near the statue of liberty. The party goers head to the roof to see what's happening and the film is off and running. Another massive explosion erupts in the harbor and Lady Liberty's head flies through the air into their street, with millions of folks panicking at once and the terror escalating as something massive, loud and very angry decides to tear apart the city. TJ Miller (Deadpool) brings plenty of humor as our man behind the camera for much of the film, determined to chronicle the event and catching some amazing footage. Abrams and Director Matt Reeves (Let Me In, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) follow the Steven Spielberg "Jaws" model, by teasing us with quick glimpses and visual teases of our massive monster, slowly feeding us more information as we go along toward a thrilling conclusion. The special effects are absolutely first rate. You'll never quite enter the subway at Spring Street or look at Columbus Circle the same way. Reality is additionally served by the fact there is no music score until the end credits (when Michael Giacchino serves up a doozy of a monster theme) and the handheld camera work is consistent throughout. Visually, this is one of the best monster movies of the past decade. For me, its far superior to "Pacific Rim" and is only equaled by Gareth Edwards 2008 "Godzilla" in recent years. Abrams takes a $25 million budget and makes it look like $100 million. You want to see a massive monster kick ass all over NYC? It doesn't get ANY better than this. Cloverfield ROARS with an A. Followed in 2016 by "10 Cloverfield Lane" from Abrams

It's virtually impossible to describe Cloud Atlas easily or quickly. It's a fascinating, sprawling, complicated, challenging, funny, powerful film. At 172 minutes, it's the never boring saga of souls that meet again, and again, and again. Tom Hanks plays six different roles over literally a thousand years, continually meeting Halle Berry in six different roles (including men and women). Hugo Weaving plays six evil characters and Jim Broadbent is a highlight playing six different, mostly comic roles. Toss in Hugh Grant playing everything from a horse-riding cannibal to a power company magnet in 1972, shake well and enjoy. I went in expecting Cloud Atlas to tell different stories with half hour glimpses into each world, but the Wachowski's (The Matrix) cut quickly, in the middle of scenes without any regard for continuity or consistency within the many times of the story. It sounds horrible, but I thought it was fascinating and it kept me really interested. They move so quickly between the times and stories that the suspense builds across all the stories at once to a fascinating last 45 minutes. Doona Bay was a real standout for me as Sonmi-351 and Ben Whishaw is fantastic as Robert Frobisher (along with 4 other characters). The make-up is excellent, the special effects are thrilling, the acting is excellent. Settle in for a 3 hour ride that is not for the lazy, but bears great rewards for those prepared to let it unfold. Cloud Atlas is superb. A