One of my all time film guilty pleasures, Ken Russell's bizarre, over-the-top blend of hallucinogenic science fiction, thriller and love story ALTERED STATES is quite a trip. William Hurt makes his 1980 film debut as a scientist more concerned with finding the root of man in his DNA than in having any social graces. Dr Jessup (Hurt) is rude, obnoxious, pious and about to discover man's origins within himself. Alienating his girlfriend (the great Blair Brown) his fellow scientist (Bob Balaban) and anyone else within twenty feet, Jessup decides to spend extended time floating in an isolation tank to dig deep into his past. The word "subtle and Director Ken Russell (Tommy, The Music Lovers) have rarely been mentioned in the same sentence and Russell proves why with 102 minutes of dreams, hallucinations, flashbacks, gory religious images mixed with nudity and horror. When the images are blended with Paddy Chayefsky's very intelligent screenplay based on his own novel, it somehow grounds Russell, bringing the visual excess together to portray a flawed hero you root for and a quest for knowledge you can find a stake in. By the time Hurt regresses into a proto human apelike creature and attacks a deer in the zoo, you realize it's going to be a hell of a ride. ALTERED STATES is one of those films you are either going to love or hate. I remember seeing it at 19 years old and loving it and I still enjoy the hell out of it today. It's weirdness barrels at you full force. Even the scientific yammering of Hurt and company hammers you non-stop, somehow providing a context that validates the madness. We'll call it good writing by Chayefsky, who fought so much with Russell that he took his name off the film, crediting his pen name "Sydney Aaron" for the screenplay. This was composer John Corigliano's first movie score and its as crazy and smart as the film itself. Go ahead, immerse yourself in the tank with Dr. Jessup, but like him, you may or may not like what you find! I loved the trip and give it an insane A.

If you are a lifelong music & video buff, you're going to have a lot of fun reliving the heyday of the music business in ALL THINGS MUST PASS: THE RISE AND FALL OF TOWER RECORDS. I used to spend literally hours (and who knows how many thousands of dollars) in Tower Records in Phoenix near Chris-Town, in Tempe by ASU and at Southern & Alma School. From albums, through CDs, from Beta to VHS to Laserdiscs, Tower Records owned me. Colin Hanks (great actor in TV's FARGO and son of Tom) directs a savvy and entertaining tale of the rise of Tower Records from a single section in a drug store to a massive international retailer. Founder Russ Solomon narrates the entire tale, from his first venture selling 45's in his Dad's store, then expanding into a new building, then a separate store, and so on. He has fun sharing the work place adventures of a bunch of kids through the 60's, 70's and 80's that grew into a massive family that expanded into THE destination for music and video. It's heartbreaking for those of us that loved that store to see all those massive shelves and shelves of selection, the great signage for new releases, the immersion of the customer in a buying experience that's been lost forever on a grand scale. There are plenty of laughs and some surprisingly moving moments as well. Elton John and Bruce Springsteen show up to tell their tales and the documentary is packed wall to wall with footage of the stores and the characters that worked there. I still head to Amoeba Records in LA when I visit to try and grab a fix of that old retail store magic, but I truly miss the days of collecting those titles. As the digital age appears and then explodes and you watch Solomon's business model become unsustainable almost overnight, you cant help but feel sad for him and his team. By the time they could react, it was too late. As Hanks and his crew film Solomon visiting Japan, where Tower Records still exists in all its glory, its enough to make any album aficionado wax painfully nostalgic. All things must pass but what a shame! This entertaining blast from a treasured past gets an A.

Revisiting 1976's great film ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN makes you long for the day when journalists actually chased a story and didn't serve as lapdogs for political parties (no matter what side of the fence you may be on politically!). Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman are young, new reporters Woodward and Bernstein, who start to report on the Watergate break in and uncover a much bigger story that changed the face of politics in the seventies. An all star cast portrays the real life players at the Washington Post and the White House, while real news footage shows Nixon and Agnew's actual reactions to their unraveling administration. Jason Robards is GREAT as Post boss Ben Bradlee, while Jack Warden, Martin Balsam and Hal Holbrook provide strong performances. While basically a movie about two reporters, the film plays like a suspense film as the two uncover deeper and deeper ramifications behind the facts that continue to pile up. My only complaint is I would have liked the movie to have been longer and stuck with the story as the White House players began to fall like dominoes in the face of the breaking story. A film classic, perfectly led by Redford and Hoffman as two undaunted, aggressive reports going where the story leads them, with the fortitude to stand behind the story. Oh how we could use some of THAT reporting style in recent years! Exciting, smart, a brilliant history lesson disguised as a thriller and deserving of an A.

Part family drama, part thriller and excellent from start to finish, ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD is filled with riches. Billionaire Jean Paul Getty (an excellent Christopher Plummer) is one of the most powerful men in the world. Traveling the globe to expand his oil business, Getty built an incredible fortune. Driven by power, with little regard for anyone without focus, Getty keeps his family at a distance. When his 16 year old grandson John Paul (Charlie Plummer) is kidnapped, a huge mystery begins to unfold. Michelle Williams (The Greatest Showman, My Week With Marilyn) is Gail, John Paul's mother, who battles with everyone to take the kidnapping seriously and find her son. Gail's pursuit is exhausting and relentless. Getty assigns one of his right hand men Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlberg in by FAR his best screen performance) to assist Gail to find his favorite grandson. As it becomes clear that the richest man on planet Earth is not going to part with a dollar to pay the ransom, the tension on both sides escalates. Director Ridley Scott is a terrific filmmaker. His film legacy (Alien, The Martian, Thelma and Louise, Blade Runner) assures that fact, but he continues to surprise. Scott moves this story forward at an incredible pace, slowly revealing more and more facts about people you grow to care about or despise. They aren't always on the side of the event you suspect. Plummer famously took over the role of Getty from Kevin Spacey after his swift fall from grace last year. Scott re-shot all of Spacey's scenes with Plummer one month before the film hit theaters. It's incredible to see how seamless the re-shoots are and how fantastic Plummer is in the part. I have no idea how Spacey played the role, but I am confident it didn't come close to Plummer. Romain Duris is fantastic as Cinquanta, a kidnapper who grows protective of John Paul. It's great to see Timothy Hutton (Ordinary People) on screen again as Getty's senior lawyer. I'm not a huge fan of Wahlberg, but given a straight dramatic role for a change, he is surprisingly good. Holding his own against Plummer in the final scenes, their last confrontation is a powerhouse and one of the best moments in a film. Beautifully shot, exciting from start to finish, some of the quieter moments of the film are the ones that stick with you the most. What a story. What a movie. ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD won't bring you happiness, but this twisted true story delivers on every count and gets an A+. After you see the film, google to find out what happened to these characters after the events of the film. Real life truly is stranger than fiction.

Steve Martin delivers a master class in physical comedy in 1984's ALL OF ME. Martin is lawyer Roger Cobb, anxious to move up the corporate ladder and finally given his opportunity when assigned the will of obnoxious millionairess Edwina Cutwater. Lily Tomlin is terrific as Edwina, spewing venom and sarcasm in her final days, while devising a new age plan to move her soul to another body. Victoria Tennant is the beautiful young women she has in mind, but wacky guru Prahka Lasa (Richard Libertini at his hilarious best) goofs and Edwina's soul moves into half of Roger's body. It's not a body switch, its a very funny merger, with Edwina controlling one side of Roger's body. Martin nails every movement and Director Carl Reiner (The Jerk) makes a great choice in letting us hear Edwina's voice inside Roger's head. Tomlin's always been a terrific verbal comic, spilling rapid fire dialogue as she finds herself horrified to be trapped inside a man. "I can't believe this, I can't even die right!" Martin said this was the first film he made with a traditional story and a real character that had a brain. It was his fourth and last film working with Reiner after "The Jerk", "The Man With Two Brains" and "Dead Men Dont Wear Plaid". He's right, Roger is the first one with a brain! The 80's brick phones and wardrobe add some unexpected chuckles, but Martin & Tomlin's comedy remains timeless. Fast & fun, it will leave you grinning. ALL OF ME gets a B. Libertini (Fletch, The In-Laws) damn near steals the movie. "Backinbowl. Backinbowl."

James Cameron has created some of my favorite movies of all time, "Terminator 2" and "Aliens" among them. If there's one consistent knock against Cameron in some of his films, it's that he's a much better filmmaker than he is a writer. ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL is the best film evidence of that allegation. It's beautiful, at times jaw-dropping to look at. The action sequences are well constructed, fun to watch and thrilling, but the story itself feels old, creaky and beyond predictable. Based on a 9 part manga series, Cameron seems to have left some magic behind during the adaption. Dr. Dyson Ido (a completely wasted Christoph Waltz) finds parts of a humanoid robot in the trash heaps below the floating wealthy world above a decimated Earth. That's right, its post "the big war" and the wealthy live in floating cities, treating Earth like a dump. Hmmm...that sounds awful familiar. Did anyone see "Elysium"? Anyway, Ido rebuilds the robot into the beautiful Alita. Everything you think will happen does, predictably but with incredible visual flair. Director Robert Rodriquez has always done digital wonder with small budgets. With $170 million at his disposal here, he creates incredible digital settings and action that are consistently dazzling. Too bad they are populated with such cardboard characters. Poor Mahershala Ali (Green Book, True Detective) looks completely out of place playing stock bad guy, Vector. Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind) does her best in an underwritten role and Jackie Earle Haley brings high energy to the CGI bad guy Grewishka. It's okay for a film to leave you wanting more, but not for its entire running time. Rosa Salazar (Maze Runner) is okay as Alita, our photo realistic but hollow hero. Maybe that's the best summary of the whole film. Beautiful but hollow, ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL gets a C.

The new documentary MEMORY: THE ORIGINS OF ALIEN promises to tell the untold story of Ridley Scott's 1979 classic. Alas, for any Alien fan who has purchased the LaserDisc, Boxed Anthology on BluRay or even casually invested in the film's history, there are very few new treasures. Filmmaker Alexander O. Phiippe created a film doc I loved called "78/52" detailing Hitchcock's classic "Psycho", but his inspiration seems to have failed and got mired in PC culture this time around. We see a bit of new footage behind the scenes, plenty of history of the brilliantly twisted HR Giger and his hyper sexualized designs of the Alien, some great input from writer Dan O'Bannon and his widow, but little new. The one completely new angle that Philippe adds is a boring, poorly conceived bookend scene of ancient Greek witches in a desperate attempt to explore the roots of Alien's story arc. There's also some very 2019 psychological ramblings about the creators and how the Aliens depict a patriarchal society, blah blah,blah. Does every film from 40 years ago have to be forced through the tiny little minds of today's society police to be acceptable? Alien fans don't give a crap about the politics of the film, anymore than Ridley Scott and his team had the myopic minds of today's acceptable standards in mind when they were making the sci-fi classic FOUR DECADES AGO. Ripley was a trailblazing female power role at the time, which seems lost on the eggheads droning on here. I can only imagine how their little Millennial heads would burst examining the hyper-testosterone fueled James Cameron sequel "Aliens". I'm sure there would be tears involved. With far too little Ridley, Sigourney and cast to be relevant, MEMORY only serves to waste 90 minutes that would be much better served going back to watch the original film in all its 4K brilliance today. Where's a Xenomorph when you need one? MEMORY is already forgotten and gets a D.

In 1989, Woody Allen delivered one of his all-time best films, "Crimes and Misdemeanors". The following year, his next film paled badly by comparison. ALICE stars Mia Farrow as a pampered, wealthy, kept & bored Manhattan wife. Her husband Doug (William Hurt) suggests that maybe she sell sweaters at a friend's upscale boutique. "You know sweaters", he implores. But Alice has decided she wants to be a writer. She thinks she may want to have an affair with a Dad she meets dropping off her children at their posh nursery. Joe Mantegna is the Dad, a jazz musician drawn to Alice. Woody digs a little too deep for the story line to propel Alice forward. She visits a Chinatown medicine shop, where an ancient alchemist (Keye Luke of "Kung Fu" fame in his final role) gives her magic herbs. These aren't just any herbs. They make her invisible so she can hear what her stuffy friends are really saying about her. They allow her to see the ghost of her first true love (Alec Baldwin) who takes her on a hand-held flight over NYC that seems awfully similar to Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder's flight over the Big Apple in "Superman". Woody seems like he's really straining from beginning to end. The Jazz references seem forced, Alice's allegiance to Mother Teresa is cumbersome and I couldn't tell if Woody was secretly hating these pampered, wealthy New Yorkers or finding some sort of comfort in their pompous lives. With a cast this talented, it's not a disaster. Judy Davis, Bernadette Peters, Julie Kavner, Blythe Danner, Gwen Verdon, Bob Balaban and Judith Ivey all cross Alice's path. Mia Farrow has a couple great moments, especially when she uses a potion to verbally seduce Joe. She drops her voice into Kathleen Turner territory, its hilarious. She also shows some chops in her dramatic scenes confronting her husband. But overall, its too long, strangely disconnected and Alice isn't interesting enough to carry a film. Allen proved in "Crimes and Misdemeanors" that he can deliver tense drama, dark humor and a suspenseful thriller in one package. It's one of my all time favorite Allen films. Perhaps that's why this follow up is so empty by comparison. One of my least favorite Woody Allen works, it gets a C-.

Disney's current rush to bring all its animated to classics to theatres as live action films has yielded mixed results. Even the Mouse House can't get it right every time. But they nail it with the hugely enjoyable ALADDIN. Having seen the original countless times when my daughter was 8 and it originally hit theatres, there are lots of family memories tied to the title. They've captured them all perfectly and blown them up into live action CGI wonders that bring nostalgic smiles. Will Smith (treading in Robin Williams legendary shoes as the Genie) brings a perfect pitch of tribute and updated spin to his role as our giant blue Genie, released by street urchin Aladdin, well played by newcomer Mena Massoud. Naomi Scott is stunning as Princess Jasmine and Director Guy Ritchie, who bombs as often as he succeeds with me, finds an unlikely perfect fit with the fable. Classic Songs like "A Friend Like Me" and "A Whole New World" are reinvented with a huge budget and state-of-the-art CGI. Ritchie brings his patented camera movements and sweeping vistas to life, zipping through crowded streets and palaces filled with exotic animals at a fast pace. Marwan Kenzari (Murder On the Orient Express) is a menacing Jafar and Nasim Penrad (SNL) delivers big laughs as Jasmine's loyal handmaiden. With over a Billion at the box office, audiences loved the film more than critics, but count me with audiences. Will's great, the cast is flawless and the visuals drip every part of the movie's $183 million budget. Adding in some touching new scenes that take a deeper dive on loyalty, power and family, Ritchie's created a new classic family film. Guy Ritchie and a great family film? What's next, Tarantino's take on Pinocchio? I know, it shouldn't work, but it does, beautifully. Aladdin gets a hugely enjoyable A.

After the original AIRPLANE movie hit theatres and made a bundle, Paramount was anxious to crank out a sequel. The original writers, the Zuckers & Abrahams wanted nothing to do with the sequel, so of course Paramount turned to...Ken Finkleman. Having worked with them on the disaster that was 'Grease 2", they decided he was their man. Let's call it the Finkleman curse, cause AIRPLANE 2 is another stinker. When the funniest parts of a sequel are the flashbacks to the original, you know you're in trouble. There are a couple funny moments, including Jack Jones appearance singing the theme from The Love Boat outside the mental institution and Wiliam Shatner's entire appearance in the climax but most of the movie is misfire after misfire with lame wordplay and visual gags built on the first movie. This time, it's a space shuttle instead of a plane and Sonny Bono is a mad bomber. From the original cast, only Lloyd Bridges knocks it out of the park. If you look up "unnecessary sequel" in the dictionary, it must surely show a pic of this poster. The last scene of the movie says "Coming Soon from Paramount, AIRPLANE 3!"....here we are 30 years later, but thankfully NO ONE is waiting after this stinker.....Airplane II crashes with a D.

Airplane! still holds a special movie memory for me as the hardest I have ever laughed in a theatre. Back in 1980, no one had ever really done this rapid fire style "throw everything at the wall" style comedy spoof. Of course since then the Abrahams/Zuckers have done it brilliantly in the Naked Gun series and the underrated "Top Secret" to name just a few. They take the classic airliner in disaster formula of "Airport" and "High & The Mighty" and add a million jokes. You have to also credit their brilliance in taking serious actors and putting them in very funny roles that they all play 100% straight. Who can forget Lloyd Bridges "Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue...", Robert Stack and his multiple pairs of sunglasses, Peter Graves "Have you ever seen a grown man naked, Joey?", and the brilliant Leslie Nielsen in his first comic role after many years in Hollywood as a serious actor. "Surely you can't be serious, Dr." "I am serious and don't call me Shirley." So many LOL moments, the best of which for me are Julie Haggerty blowing back up Otto the inflatable auto pilot and anything air traffic controller Johnny (Stephen Stucker) says. "Auntie Em! Auntie Em! It's a twister!" LOL. Comedy movies don't get any faster paced, funnier and laugh out loud enjoyable than this monster 1980 hit. Followed by a lesser comedy sequel set on the space shuttle. Airplane! is comedy gold and gets an A.

Action fans could do a lot worse than enjoy 98 minutes of Bruce Willis and the state of the art explosive effects team giving their all in A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD. First, it's a horrible title, yipee-kay-yeah wouldn't Die Hard 5 have been better than that? Put that aside and sit back and enjoy Willis at his easygoing best and emerging Australian star Jai Courtney (Jack Reacher) as John McLane's son Jack, a CIA operative in over his head in Russia. John Mclane goes to get his boy out of jail, not knowing that he's an operative there to break out a Russian mobster with a whole lot of valuable secrets. It sounds laborious, but its actually a pretty well oiled machine and gets you just enough plot to be passable while Willis and team commence to destroy most of Moscow by handgun, machine gun, war helicopter, car, rope, you name it, the McLane boys do it. I thought it was a blast. Is Bruce Willis using a time machine? The dude is timeless, in great shape and in great humor. If you loved the first 4, you are probably going to have a good time here. GREAT music score by Marco Beltrami. Turn your brain off and the sound up and enjoy the ride. Willis and team get a B-.