A fascinating chronological documentary of the mission that put men on the moon, APOLLO 11 looks like it was filmed yesterday. 4K restoration and presentation of preserved film brings every visual nuance of the mission to life in eye popping fashion. The film shows the mission from beginning to end, without talking heads and narration, letting the bravery and drive of the NASA team speak for itself. Neil Armstrong is the reserved leader and the film serves as an interesting companion piece to Damien Chazelle's terrific Armstrong biopic "First Man". Buzz Aldrin is a hilarious mix of ego and brass balls, qualities that have stayed with him since the 1969 mission, as anyone that's seen interviews of the last decade knows well. Michael Collins, the man left orbiting the moon to re-connect with his fellow astronauts after their moonwalk is a fascinating subject too. I am an Apollo mission fan since the actual events, and I have fond memories as an 8 year old watching the mission at school along with the rest of the Earth. I was fascinated throughout with the amount of this footage that I had never seen before and its pristine condition. CNN and Director Todd Douglas Miller deserve a lot of credit for assembling what should stand as the definitive capture of this incredible moment in human exploration. The genius of its structure as a documentary is achieving the fine balance between the intricacies of the mission and the smaller human stories within it. The helicopter shots of all the people of every age and demographic crowded together on the decks of Florida hotels and beaches to watch the launch are incredible. It also recalls a time when ALL Americans came together with pride, fascination and patriotism to be part of an incredible achievement. What an incredible time that was. APOLLO 11 is a jaw dropping tribute to American exceptionalism, bravery and triumph. From launch to splashdown, it gets an A+.

An all time (anti)War classic and one of Francis Ford Coppola's best, APOCALYPSE NOW is still an amazing, unique film experience. Martin Sheen stars as Captain Willard, hired by the CIA to track down Colonel Kurtz, a former military genius who has lost his sanity and is operating on his own in the jungle. Willard (Sheen) is far from stable himself, drinking himself into a violent stupor in the film's opening scenes. As he begins his journey up river to track down Kurtz, he gathers his team around him. Frederick Forrest is Chef, Sam Bottoms is famous surfer Lance Johnson and 17 year old Lawrence Fishburne is nearly unrecognizable but excellent as "Clean". Willard and boat Chief Phillips (Albert Hall) meet up with the Airborne Battalion on their first rendezvous, where they experience the mad genius of Lt. Bill Kilgore, played to perfection by Robert Duvall. Coppola's staging of the airborne infantry's attack on a Vietcong village, staged to "The Ride of the Valkyries" by Wagner is a modern film classic. "I love the smell of Napalm in the morning" indeed. Willard's ragtag team heads further north, encountering a USO Show complete with flown in Playboy bunnies, an intense encounter with a Tiger in the jungle canopy and finally the truly mad, psychotic genius of Kurtz, played with legendary eccentricity by Marlon Brando. The final 30 minutes with Brando, a very high Dennis Hopper, legions of newly painted natives and an ancient native temple is truly mad, but I found it much more entertaining and intelligent than I remembered from earlier viewings. This was one of the most difficult movies ever made, with the schedule never ending and both Coppola and Sheen suffering heart attacks during the filming. In 1991, a great documentary was produced called "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse". If you love the movie and haven't seen that behind the scenes story of the massive troubles during production, check it out. It's a fascinating companion piece to the movie. Sheen is fantastic, appearing in almost every scene. He looks like he lived through hell making this movie and it comes out of every pore of him in his best performance. So many pieces of this film are perfect. The camera work by Vittorio Storaro is amazing, the screenplay by Coppola is some of his best work. It's probably the ONLY film I have ever really thought narration worked in, but here its like another character. Writer Michael Herr wrote the narration separately and it truly adds some classic moments. Watch closely for a VERY young Harrison Ford as one of the soldiers giving Willard his orders early in the film, Scott Glenn and R. Lee Ermey (the drill sergeant from "Full Metal Jacket") in small roles. From the opening and closing strains of The Doors "The End" to the Stones "I Can't Get No Satisfaction", the music of the sixties sets the tone, along with an eerie electronic score by Carmine Coppola. I watched the "Apocalypse Now Redux" version of the film, with 45 extra minutes of footage supervised by Coppola and cut back into the film. Long sequences at a French Plantation deep in the jungle and more leisurely side trips on the boat trip flesh out the journey into madness. Much of the film is left open for interpretation. How much of the film truly happens and how much is drug fueled hallucinations experienced by Willard? The farther the boat goes, the more surrealistic the events. Coppola structures the journey so well that the trip is worth taking at every moment. Coppola had plenty of great film making left in him, but APOCALYPSE NOW was probably his last masterpiece, standing alongside "The Godfather" and "The Godfather II" as the best films of the entire decade. If you haven't seen it for awhile, join Willard and his team for the mission upriver. It truly is a TRIP. One of my all-time favorites and an A+.

I'm a huge Woody Allen fan, but even HE can't put out a film like clockwork every year and not create a couple lesser efforts. ANYTHING ELSE could be called a lesser effort if you were being kind. If you weren't so generous, you could also call it a painful misfire. Jason Biggs takes the younger Woody role as comic writer Jerry Falk. Madly in love with one of the most unlikable women ever, Amanda Chase, Jerry finds himself in a hot & cold relationship with an obnoxious, loveless, chain smoking, rude and dizzy partner. Poor Christina Ricci. She can be so charming and funny on screen (Pan Am, Sleepy Hollow) but she's saddled with a bad, harshly written role here and you spend the film growing to dislike Jerry for not having the balls to dump her. Danny DeVito has an underwritten role as Jerry's longtime hack agent, a young Jimmy Fallon shows screen presence as a friend and Stockard Channing seems to wonder in from another film occasionally as Amanda's mother. Balance those folks with Woody Allen (admittedly laugh out loud funny at least a half dozen times here) as an academic friend of Jerry's who has a very violent streak and you've got a a big, unappealing mess. Woody has said that he wanted to write and star as a character that was the antithesis of himself. Violent where he is passive, confident where he is timid, the anti-Woody. In turn, he gives the usual neurotic role to Jason Biggs as Jerry, who is in way over his head. Very little of this works. It's all rather painful. If you're in the mood to watch this 2003 Woody Allen film, do yourself a favor and pick another Allen film. Anything Else, but this. It gets a D.

After the emotionally wrenching ending of "Avengers: Infinity War", we were due a purely fun entry in the Marvel canon. It arrives in fine form as ANT-MAN AND THE WASP, the follow up to the funny & enjoyable original in 2015. Paul Rudd is back as Scott Lang/Ant-Man, just days from the end of his house arrest. When a portal to another dimension that Scott was the only one to return from in his last mission is opened, Scott is reunited with his former love and partner Hope/Wasp and her father Dr. Hank Pym. They are attempting to recover Hope's mother, whose been trapped in the "phantom zone" like realm for thirty years. Evangeline Lilly (Lost) is great as Hope, exasperated that Scott left to fight with Captain America in the "Civil War" battle in Germany that led to his arrest. Michael Douglas is equally good as the clever Dr. Pym, unveiling a never ending series of suits and scientific breakthroughs like a more quiet and less well-funded version of Tony Stark. Michelle Pfieffer (The Witches of Eastwick, Scarface) is great on screen as Hope's mother and the flashback scenes of her and Douglas three decades ago are a triumph of CGI. Walter Goggins (Vice Principals, Justified) is our earthly villain in a predictable subplot that shows him chasing the tecnology for evil-doers. Hannah John-Kamen (Game of Thrones, Ready Player One) is our less than Earth bound Ghost. The action scenes are first rate, with a car chase through the classic hills of San Francisco made even more enjoyable when our heroes cars are shrunk and expanded to varying sizes that add a whole new dimension to a traditional movie chase scene. Michael Pena is back as Scott's friend Luis and is even better than he was in the original. His storytelling during a truth serum questioning is hilarious and just one of many solid choices from Director Peyton Reed that continue and build on the fun he created in the original film. Randall Park (The Interview, Veep) is the most inept FBI chief in history, which is great for us as he delivers a TON of great comic relief. He is the perfect, socially awkward foil to Rudd's deadpan delivery. At the center of it all is Paul Rudd (Anchorman, The 40 Year Old Virgin) who looks like a super hero but brings many laughs with perfect comic timing. He's a riot. Throw in a great action music score by Christophe Beck (Edge of Tomorrow), songs from The Partridge Family, references to everything from "Them!" to "Animal House" and a fantastic closing title sequence and you have a really enjoyable, lightweight Marvel flick every bit the equal of the original. We kept asking ourselves when this film takes place in the timeline of the series. Stay tuned after that great End Title sequence for a post credits scene that will answer that question to perfection. ANT-MAN AND THE WASP have plenty of comic sting and deliver a fun-filled B+.

Proving that great MARVEL heroes can come in very small packages, ANT-MAN is everything that this summer's mega-bomb "Fantastic Four" wasn't: FUN, exciting, suspenseful and ENJOYABLE! Paul Rudd brings his usual charm and a lot more muscles to his role as newly released ex-con Scott Lang. Scott is determined to stay crime-free, but he is constantly offered "jobs" by his roommates, including Luis, hilariously played by Michael Pena (World Trade Center, American Hustle). The film opens with a sequence from 1987 that introduces us to brilliant scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) who has nearly perfected the science of shrinking inanimate objects and humans to the size of our title insect. CGI has now reached the amazing point where it appears that Douglas filmed these scenes at the same time he did "Romancing the Stone". The digital technology to recreate him in his youth is startling and far superior to the "plastic" looking younger Jeff Bridges just a few years ago in "Tron Legacy". In this early sequence, Pym realizes that his secrets are being immediately applied to military use and he walks away with the project. Flash forward to now, when Pym's protege Darren Cross has developed the shrinking technology to work on everything but humans. Cross wants Pym's original shrinking suit for the last piece of the puzzle and Pym wants Cross's new suit to keep it from becoming an advanced weapon. Pym hires Scott to steal Cross's new suit in a highly secure facility and the fun is off an running. Corey Stoll (The Strain) is excellent as Cross, especially when he dons the new suit and becomes the lethal Yellowjacket to Scott's Ant-Man. Evangeline Lilly is excellent as Pym's daughter Hope, who trains Scott in more than a few skills and provides plenty of family drama that's surprisingly powerful. Throw in Judy Greer as Scott's ex-wife, Bobby Cannavale as her new fiance who happens to be a police detective and you've got a cast that's just as comfortable with action & drama as they are with humor. And this is a laugh-FILLED movie. The visual effects are terrific without being tiresome and the climactic fight aboard a Thomas the Train village is as exciting as it is hilarious. Avengers fans will enjoy a long sequence with Ant-man up against The Falcon (Anthony Mackie) at the new Avengers training facility glimpsed at the end of "Age of Ultron". Also look for Agent Carter and Howard Stark in the 1987 flashback. I wasn't that excited about seeing Ant-man but I enjoyed every minute of it. After the dreary drivel that was "Fantastic Four", this was a terrific Marvel palette cleanser. Our tiny hero gets a B+.

Alex Garland knocked me out with his 2014 mind bender "Ex Machina", one of my top 3 films that year. For my money, he's topped that film with his new film, ANNIHILATION. Engaging from its opening moments, we meet Lena (a terrific Natalie Portman) as she tries to find her footing after the death of her husband, Kane. A military man often dispatched on secret missions, he never returned nearly a year before, leaving Lena devastated and immersed in her role as a botany professor at John Hopkins. But suddenly, Kane walks into their home. Quiet, disoriented and not himself, he falls very ill and Lena is immediately whisked away into a massive military operation. A "shimmer" has appeared. A massive, slowly growing wall of prismatic light to which many soldiers, drones and machines have gone into, yet none have returned. With seven years in the military before her teaching career and her husband lying near death in a secured hospital bed, Lena joins a mission to enter the shimmer to divulge its secrets. What happens from there, wont be divulged by me, as the brilliance of the world that Garland creates is that it's wholly new, dreamlike, trippy....hard to describe. Garland merges elements that feel like "The Andromeda Strain", "Predator" and "2001: A Space Odyssey", wrapped in a "Contact" sheen with some serious "Aliens" gore & tension, then polished into something more cerebral. The hardest part of setting up a film this smart is that the ending is bound to disappoint, but for me, it never wavers, offering a thrilling last half hour that visually blows your mind without falling into CGI madness. Portman is at her best here, creating an intelligent action hero on par with "Aliens" Ripley and equally adept with a machine gun. Oscar Issac (Inside Llewyn Davis, Star Wars:The Last Jedi) is one of my favorite actors and he matches Portman scene for scene as her husband Kane. Half of his role is in clever flashbacks or snippets of his mission and he's equally as good portraying the very different man that returns. The all-female team around Lena on her mission to the shimmer is excellent. Jennifer Jason Leigh (just as good here as she was in "The Hateful Eight") is Dr Ventress, a psychiatrist and team leader of the expedition. Gina Rodriguez (Jane The Virgin, Deepwater Horizon) is the volatile Anya, US newcomer Tuva Novatny is a thoughtful Swedish scientist recovering from a loss and committing all to the mission and Tessa Thompson (so great as Valkyrie in "Thor: Ragnarock") is a grad student who begins to unravel the mysteries of the world inside the shimmer. The sound design and photography is excellent, with otherworldly sounds and voices throwing you off balance inside "the event". The offbeat music score by Ben Salisbury & Geoff Barrow is equally good, working in tandem with the sound design to mess up your bearings and build tension. Garland's screenplay pulls you in, building suspense and tension from the first scene and unwrapping an intelligent mystery. I'm sure that every time I watch it, I'll learn more and SEE more. Garland never dumbs down the mystery to make it easy for you. The final half hour can be interpreted many ways. The final scenes will create plenty of dialogue for viewers. A day later, I'm still trying to connect some of the pieces and its got me thinking. ANNIHILATION is a thriller, but a damned smart one. There's plenty going on inside the shimmer. The fascinating journey there gets an A+.

If someone asks what your favorite Woody Allen movie is, the easy answer is ANNIE HALL. While I like "Manhattan" and "Crimes and Misdemeanors" better, Annie is certainly in the top three. At his comedy writing and performing best, Woody stars as comedian Alvie Singer, narrating the tale of his life with hilarious flashback observations on his childhood, family and relationships. Diane Keaton is new girlfriend Annie Hall, and its one of her best performances, eccentric, sweet and funny. Everyone from Paul Simon, a young Christopher Walken and Tony Roberts to the smallest bit player are perfectly cast and brilliantly played. Woody's asides on life and relationships are damn funny and often touching too, as he struggles with relationships, jealousy, falling in and out of love and the difference between LA and NYC, all with some of the best punch lines in film history. Woody breaks a lot of rules here, turning to face the camera and address the audience directly to introduce flashbacks, but somehow never falling out of character as Alvie. Best quotes: (after sex with Annie): "that's the most fun I've ever had without laughing" (Arriving In California): ANNIE: "It's so clean out here!" ALVIE: "That's because they don't throw their garbage away, they turn it into TV shows." It's a brilliant film, as funny the tenth time as it is the first. Annie gets an A+. La-di-da, La-di da.....

The creators of The Conjuring series really have a good thing going at the movies, consistently turning out very good, truly scary flicks of the first order. ANNABELLE CREATION is no exception. 12 years after the tragic loss of their daughter, Samuel and Esther Mullins (Anthony LaPaglia & Miranda Otto) decide to open up their large country home to a Catholic orphanage. Unfortunately for the girls but luckily for us, a very nasty demon is excited for visitors (souls). What all the films in this series do so well is create tension that builds and builds as we meet people we care about that are then plunged into horrifying scenarios. The girls are well cast. Talitha Bateman is terrific as Janice and Lulu Wilson as Linda is especially good. The minute you see the slow moving, wall mounted chair that moves up the long staircase, you just KNOW someone is going to have a horrifying ride in that thing. They do. When two girls hide under a sheet with a flashlight telling scary stories, you know that something very uncomfortable is going to happen. It does. Add in a very creepy scarecrow, a dumbwaiter from hell and a small room covered with pages from the Bible and you've got another winner in the Conjuring series that delivers real tension and fun scares. Fans will also get glimpses of that truly horrifying Nun from Conjuring 2 that is apparently getting her OWN stand alone film. I'm already freaked out. ANNABELLE CREATION is original, fun and scary as hell and a far superior prequel to the original Annabelle film in 2014. It elevates the first Annabelle film by teeing it up in a brilliant way that closes this film. A perfect Halloween flick, CREATION gets a B+.

For those of you, like me, that found "The Conjuring" to be one of the scariest horror films in recent memory, you'll probably be intrigued by a prequel that highlights just one scary piece of that film, ANNABELLE. This film details the back story of how this creepy Victorian doll became an evil addition to any playroom. A young couple is decorating their home, getting ready for their first child. The husband buys Annabelle to complete his wife's doll collection in the nursery (next time go with a stuffed animal). When the couple is witness to a murdering rampage by a satanic cult next door in their idyllic neighborhood (think Manson family madness) that spills over into their own home, a killer's blood spills into the doll and it takes on a scary life of its own. It's a tribute to the filmmakers that Annabelle never becomes Chucky, but simply inspires enough strange happenings and evil presence to provide some fun shocks, thrills and scares. This is one of those films where the husband leaves the wife alone so many times after the damn doll has attacked her, set the house on fire and caused assorted mayhem that you start to wonder if the husband and the doll have something working..... This is an old school horror movie, with 99% of the scares coming from noises or a person suddenly standing where the filmmakers know you will be looking. In that respect I'll give it some props, but it's a mere ghost of a reflection of the terrific "Conjuring" and barely scares up a C. That one scene with the fast moving little neighbor girl that morphs into the satanic killer woman, that one will get you! If only the other hour and a half lived up to that fleeting moment.

I'm not sure how many times French Writer/Director Luc Besson can keep making different variations of the same theme, but as long as they are as entertaining as ANNA, I'm not sure I mind. Riffing on 1990's "Le Femme Nikita" and 2014's "Lucy", Besson delivers a time hopping, intriguing thriller about Anna, a stunning fashion model/assassin with a very special set of skills. As the fluid time frame makes your brain hurt with "six weeks ago" "5 years ago", "4 weeks later" title cards, we watch Anna's most brutal missions, her recruitment and her training. The film's structure elevates the story, with us often seeing a killing several times, with each view more informed than the last on what's really happening. Newcomer Sasha Luss is stunning and lethal as Anna. With long, brutal fight scenes that reminded me of "Atomic Blonde" and "Kill Bill", the action is fast & furious and Luss delivers. Helen Mirren is senior trainer Olga, the toughest boss in Moscow. Mirren's having fun being as far from glamorous as possible. Luke Evans (Beauty and the Beast) is Anna's Soviet trainer Alex and Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Inception) is a CIA boss who zeroes in on Anna in every way possible. Just when you think you've had enough of the time shifts, ANNA saves its best tricks for its last 15 minutes. Savaged by critics and buried with a low profile release after Besson was accused of misconduct on set, ANNA was a bomb in theatres. It's a shame for Luss, who emerges as a formidable new female action hero. Familiar but less than predictable, ANNA gets a B.

Woody Allen's 2015 drama IRRATIONAL MAN travels a similar path to his terrific "Crimes and Misdemeanors" with less likable characters at its core. Joaquin Phoenix stars as the heavy drinking, moody, controversial college philosophy professor Abe, who finds himself in a small town and a new college. Very depressed, he shares his darkness with a romantically interested fellow professor Rita (Parker Posey) and his favorite student Jill (Emma Stone). Abe is a disillusioned man. After spouting many years of philosophical beliefs, he finds himself shocked with a realization that he (and therefore humanity) has no control over his life, his hopes and his happiness. Jill (Stone) brings him a different perspective, bringing a youthful exuberance to her world views and constantly trying to pull him out of his funk. Midway through the film, Abe and Jill overhear a conversation in the booth next to them in a diner. A woman is about to lose custody of her children due solely to a judge's friendship with her loser husband's lawyer. Abe is energized instantly with the fact that he can change and improve this woman's life... By murdering the judge. Since there is virtually no connection between him and the judge or him and the woman, it should be the perfect crime. Right? What follows is a thoughtful and suspenseful tale of what paths we all choose and the repercussions or our actions. Phoenix is very good, if in his somewhat typical vein of disconnection, as a man who has spent his entire life teaching students historical philosophy while wrestling with the fact that the foundation of his teachings is potentially just meaningless bullshit. Stone is terrific and Posey is very strong. The photography by Darious Khondji (Se7en, Alien: Insurrection) is beautiful and makes the most of every location. Abe has become impotent literally and in his ability to interact with others. His humanity is fading. Can he rediscover it by murdering a stranger? Does the good that murder would bring an innocent woman and her children outweigh taking a man's life? The answers, and Abe and Jill's path through discovery, may not be as easy as they seem. Irrational and interesting, this tale gets a B.

I had forgotten just how hilarious 1978's ANIMAL HOUSE is and it still holds up nearly 40 years later, with laugh out loud scenes from start to finish. The Delta's are the worst fraternity in modern history, racking up grade point averages of "ZERO point ZERO" and having the time of their lives. John Belushi, fresh from his debut on SNL, is Bluto, knocking off one classic comedy scene after another. Tim Matheson is Eric Stratton (damn glad to meet you!) and John Vernon is Dean Wormer, determined to shut down Delta House once and for all. There are so many classic scenes, just as funny today as the day they were filmed. The horse in the Dean's office, Neidermeyer's "Is that a PLEDGE PIN, Mister!!", the toga party, Flounder's joyride, the food fight and my personal favorite, Belushi's ladder maneuvers when peeking in the second floor sorority windows. Belushi knows how to work an eyebrow for maximum effect, hilarious! Director John Landis shows the same fondness for smashing cars and weaving music into the story that he would build on later with "The Blues Brothers" and keeps things quick & loose. Donald Sutherland & Tom Hulce's scene when Pinto gets high for the first time is priceless, Belushi's love of folk music in the stairwell and the devil & angel on Larry's shoulders are still damn funny. A priceless comedy from back in the day when we were all a LOT less sensitive, ANIMAL HOUSE is a riot from start to finish. "Food fight!!!" "That boy is a P-I-G, Pig!" "Guess what I am now......" "What? Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no! Forget it, he's rolling..... They were on a roll indeed, with one of the biggest box office comedies of all time, that gets an A+.