An all-star cast of true characters make THE WOMAN IN CABIN 1O a very enjoyable thrill ride of a mystery. It also helps that you get to spend two hours in some luxurious global settings while trying to solve its riddles. Settle in as the soaring score by Benjamin Wallfisch (Twisters, IT, Alien: Romulus) seduces you into the strange happenings aboard a real $150 million yacht that serves as the parlor for all kinds of bad doings afoot. Keira Knightley elevates the film as reporter Laura Blacklock. She's still reeling from her last assignment when she accepts what appears to be a puff assignment, taking a journey on the yacht of tech Billionaire Richard Bullmer (Guy Pearce). He's gathered the richest of the rich for a charity voyage in which their enormous contributions are only exceeded by their eccentricities. The cast is excellent. Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso) and David Morrissey (The Walking Dead) are Heidi and Thomas Heatherley, Art Malik (The Living Daylights) is the ship doctor who is always ready with a prescription to fix anything and Christopher Rygh is perfectly cast as a mysterious global rock star who seems to be hiding from his demons. David Ajala is very good as Ben, the photographer hired to capture the voyage, who also happens to be Laura's ex boyfriend. The opening scenes in London are excellent, establishing who Laura is through her long conversation with her editor. It's a smart, well written intro to a complex character devoted to her craft. That commitment has clearly brought her to some very dangerous places. Won't this cruise be a welcome break from that? Shortly after the voyage begins, Laura hears a violent confrontation in the cabin next to hers. Running out to her balcony, she sees a woman in the water. But there is no body to be found. And there WAS no guest in Cabin 10.... A modern day take with strong vibes of Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes", a highly polished whodun-what is unveiled, one clever piece at a time. The settings are everything. The production design and locations are first rate. While the boat is stunning, every time they get off of it, the landscape matches it, especially the scenes in Norway. Pearce (Memento, Alien:Covenant) is excellent as Bullmer, controlling everything around him like a puppet master, but seemingly concerned about Laura as she appears to become unhinged. Is she losing her grasp on reality? Knightly is terrific as a woman who begins to doubt her own thoughts and motives. I never came close to figuring things out and loved the reveals. The film is beautifully shot by Ben Davis (The Banshees of Inisherin, Guardians of the Galaxy). His moody, sweeping camera shots and Wallfisch's music are mystery nirvana. How do you account for a woman going overboard that was never on the ship? Ignore the critics bitching because they seem to hate everything that Netflix does. Pop the popcorn, turn down the lights and immerse yourself in a world of opulent wealth, stunning global settings and lethal greed & ambition. THE WOMAN IN CABIN 1O gets a solid B.

Hand drawn animation, family fun and the music of Randy Newman prove to be a winning combination yet again in Disney's 2009 hit, THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG . Like the Pixar/Disney hit "Up" released the same year, the film opens with a solid bit of storytelling, introducing us to a poor family with a rich history in New Orleans. Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) is a struggling waitress with dreams of her own jazz filled restaurant on the bayou. It's a dream shared by her late father, who we meet in warm flashbacks infused with Creole spirit thanks to Newman's music (Toy Story, Cars, The Natural). Just as he did in "Ragtime", Newman's songs and score evoke the place and era with such power that you can almost smell the beignets! In classic Disney form, we meet the handsome, vain Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos) who's turned into a frog thanks to a voodoo curse from local villain Dr. Facilier. Perfectly voiced by Keith David (The Thing), Facilier "The Shadow Man" conjures up some evil spirits, colorfully rendered by the Disney animators. Michael Leon-Wooley provides the voice of Louis, a croc with some serious trumpet playing skills and Jim Cummings is hilarious as Ray, a Cajun lightning bug with some serious match making skills that take him over the moon. The story is pure Disney, as Tiana finds herself turned into a frog just like Prince Naveen. Their adventures are hilarious and provide a nice blend of gentle scares for the kids and laughter for adults. The entire film MOVES, propelled by Randy Newman's songs, some of the best in the Disney canon. "Down in New Orleans" and "Almost There" are terrific, "Friends on the Other Side" offers up Burton/Elfman like chills as Facilier creates his spell and "Gonna Take You There" is a romp in the style of "Bare Necessities" from "The Jungle Book". Just when you think you've heard them all, "Dig a Little Deeper" serves up another round of foot tapping laughs. This is the first Disney film since "Beauty and the Beast" in which all the voice actors also performed their songs, they are seamless. Directors Ron Clements and John Musker) (Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Hercules, Moana) have driven many of the greatest animated films of the last 50 years, and this is no exception, serving up family entertainment of the highest quality. Released the same weekend as "Avatar", the film grossed nearly $300 million at the box office, but was considered a slight disappointment. Appreciation for the film has grown in the decade plus since its release, and Splash Mountain was redone at the Disney Parks as Tiana's Bayou Adventure. A deft blend or a body-swap comedy, full blown musical, feel-good romance and fairy tale, THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG is, for me, one of Disney's hand drawn animated best, earning an A.

With distinct memories of loving this movie on VHS back in 1984, I was surprised to find it on Prime. I was excited to see it again after 40+ years! The concept still holds up, but THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT suffers from some seriously bad acting and a director who wants to focus more on romance than he does science fiction. Four years before, "The Final Countdown" had seen Kirk Douglas at the helm of a battleship transplanted in time. New World Pictures couldn't afford Douglas or the logistics of moving a whole cast, so they just threw a couple of soldiers into a wormhole. But first.... We met Dr. Longstreet (Miles McNamara) who has created a new process that he thinks will render a US Naval Destroyer invisible. Things go awry and his two seamen in charge of the newfangled machine (which looks a lot like a couple hundred light bulbs stuck in the transporter controls from the Enterprise) disappear instead. The sequence in which they move through time was pretty cool in 1984. Now it's pretty laughable with a slight twist or retro cool. Our Naval men, David Herdeg (80's legend Michael Pare') and his buddy Jim (Bobby Di Cicco from "1941") fall through a wormhole and end up in the Nevada desert circa 1984. The film has some fun with the "dudes out of time" concept, especially when they see Ronald Reagan on TV giving a speech and someone tells them he's President, but then it seems to throw all the fish-out-of-water ideas out the window as David adapts to his new era in about three minutes. They boys didn't make that trip without consequence. Jim's hand and arm keep lighting up in "Miami Vice" colors and lightning bolts appear out of nowhere, wreaking havoc on a roadside diners pinball machines. The boys run outside and commandeer a vehicle and its driver, Allison, played by another 80's stalwart, Nancy Allen. Allen has appeared in a lot of great films I love to this day. Spielberg's "1941", De Palma's "Carrie" and "Dressed to Kill" and Verhoeven's "Robocop" to name just a few. But the material strands her here as a helpless, whiny ride-along, too busy swimming in Pare's dreaminess to have any other emotions. Pare' came to stardom after "Eddie and the Cruisers", this film and my favorite of his films, Walter Hill's "Streets of Fire". I had the chance to meet him briefly at a VSDA conference in the late 90's when he was doing a lot of straight to video films and he was a very pleasant and humble guy. Immensely personable. He's coasting here on his brooding looks, with long stares at Nancy Allen to tide the audience over to the next action sequence. In the 80's, studios like New World Pictures and Cannon turned out horror, sci-fi and action thrillers in a constant B-movie grind. The budgets were low, but the stuntmen were pretty damn good. Stories around the production talk about Director Stewart Raffill being much more interested in shooting a romance than a sci-fi flick. He kept getting rid of scenes that focused on the time wormhole mystery so he could get back to Allen and Pare making goo goo eyes at each other in a series of cheap hotels. That choice doesn't help the film much. LOL You get actors like Steven Tobolowsky (so legendary in "Groundhog Day") forced to spill a ton of exposition just to try and justify the special effects sequences when they finally DO hit the screen. Consider the story line in which David visits a friend on ranch. I'm not going to say anything more to ruin and surprises, but I ask you. Does that entire sequence make sense? How is he there and he....oh whatever. If the filmmakers can't be bothered, I'll just wait for the next car chase. It's all very goofy, and only sporadically lifted ever so slightly above B-movie status by some good stunt work or a slightly clever twist. The music score by Emmy Winner Ken Wannberg is surprisingly memorable and the photography by Dick Bush, who would go on to shoot MUCH better films like Friedkin's "Sorcerer" and Blake Edwards "Victor Victoria" is far superior to the material here. If you're looking for nostalgic 80's B-movie thrills with enough wooden acting to encourage termites, THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT serves up a couple moments of fun, unintentional laughs and thrills, time traveling its way to a C.

Fear is the New Faith....... There is a long sequence near the end of 28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE that is so perfectly staged, so over the top in every way possible that I laughed out loud. It's absolutely, madly, hellishly perfect. Sadly, you'll need to suffer through so much graphic torture and insufferable death to get to that sequence, it's hard to recommend you stay seated. The Devil is in the details, as it were. Picking up shortly after the events of last year's "28 Years Later", young Spike (a great Alfie Williams) is under the thumb of Sir Jimmy Crystal, a Charles Manson like gang leader with a whole lot of Jimmy's leaving a trail of death behind them at Sir Jimmy's bidding. Jack O'Connell, hot off of playing the villain Remmick in "Sinners", the best film of 2025, returns as the cult figure who seems to control his minions like murderous puppets. O'Connell is dangerous & beyond twisted, but the sequences in which they capture and torture the surviving humans of the infection and plague are disgusting, relentless and just plain too much. I began to wonder if one of my favorite screenwriters, Alex Garland, was trying to make a heavy handed metaphor or theme around how much we love watching our heroes slaughter the zombie-like infected, but cringe at the same deaths inflicted on the survivors. One big difference. The zombies are killed with a shot to the head or a knife to the brain, a quick kill to survive and move on. The humans suffer graphic, long sequences of scream inducing torture. The film's better storyline dives into the continuing saga of Dr. Kelson (the reliably superb Ralph Fiennes) and his growing suspicion that he has found a cure for the plague that has ravaged the Earth for the past 28 years. Kelson builds a fascinating story line with Samson, the giant Alpha male of the infected tribe, well played by Chi Lewis-Parry. There is real suspense, intelligence and hope in the scenes between Samson and Kelso. They become the spirit of the story, but evaporate every time the action pops back to Sir Jimmy and his murdering squad. When the two stories within do eventually meld, it immediately improves. The delicate dance between O'Connell's Sir Jimmy and Fiennes Dr. Kelso is fascinating from their first glance at each other. Director Nia DaCosta has stated that her intent was to deliberately move away from Danny Boyle's style and create something "bonkers" and all her own. Well, mission accomplished, I guess. Her production design team absolutely blows it out of the park and we get to experience the wild Bone Temple much more deeply this time out. During the day, in the middle of the night with stars swirling above, it becomes an incredible space where the climax of this middle chapter of the new trilogy takes place. About the best sequence of the film: I'll reveal little, beyond to say that when you near "The Number of the Beast" by Iron Maiden blow out of the Dolby Cinema speakers, buckle up. Fiennes delivers something so manic, grand and BONKERS that for about ten minutes, the film is perfection. It's a thrilling, scary and hilarious scene that blows everything else around it out of the water. I loved it. Then we get a coda that seems to have gently floated in from a very, very different movie. It's a jarring, welcome surprise ending that's as shocking as the tone shift with the appearance of the Jimmys at the end of the last film. It actually turned me around and made me intrigued to see the final chapter that's due at a future date. That's a minor miracle when I spent most of the first half of the film shaking my head anytime Kelso & Samson weren't on screen. I'm hoping Boyle comes back to direct the final chapter, his sure hand, visual style and vision is sorely missed as this one spins wildly off its rails. THE BONE TEMPLE set itself is a meticulous construction of over 1000 towers featuring 5500 skulls and 150,000 bones, one of the most visually stunning physical sets in the last five decades of film. If only this chapter of the story had been constructed with such precision. I'll give it a C-, saved from a much lower grade by Ralph Fiennes 11th hour performance that seems to spew forth from hell itself. It's a WOW that saves the film around it from being a hellish disappointment.

I haven't had this much unhinged fun at the movies in a long time. Vintage Sam Raimi, SEND HELP is a hilarious horror adventure that's packed with laugh out loud surprises. Rachel McAdams (Doctor Strange, True Detective) kills it in a career defining role as meek, single and devoted employee Linda Liddle. Socially awkward, her most loyal companion is the parakeet she shares her tiny apartment with, making tuna sandwiches nightly for her next day's lunch. Linda is a beast at her keyboard or when making audition tapes to join Jeff Probst on "Survivor" but she is a timid personality in the office. When young, new hotshot President Bradley Preston (Dylan O'Brien) takes the reins of his Father's company, he firmly establishes that he'd like to be surrounded by frat bros and gorgeous women. But he decides to give Linda a chance to prove herself by inviting her on the company private jet for a merger meeting in Asia. Only because her keen eye on strategy and numbers will help him close the deal. After a spectacularly shot and crafted crash sequence in the ocean, Linda finds herself stranded on an impossibly remote tropical island with Bradley. It's Linda's Survivor dream come true! Bradley, not so much. What happens for the next hour+ won't be revealed here as it is a laugh out loud treasure trove of surprises, suspense and clever twists and turns that kept me guessing and the sold out preview audience roaring. I've never seen McAdams in this kind of role. She's fantastic. As the meek office Linda morphs into the ultimate Survivor contestant, her drive to outwit, outplay and outlast Bradley is movie nirvana. McAdams executes comedy and horror with equal relish. O'Brien is every bit her equal as a young, powerful man neutered by fate. His line readings and facial expressions are perfection. He's also got the best on screen laugh I've ever heard. You can't help but laugh along. The early scene in which Bradley and Linda chat at her desk is flawless. While Linda flirts and pitches her abilities, Bradley just stares at the hunk of tuna fish hanging to the corner of her mouth. Raimi zooms in on it like its the plague, while scary music looms. It's laugh out loud funny and just a taste of what's to come. How in the hell can someone thrive on the island like Linda does? She was born for this. Jeff Probst take notice. This is my favorite Sam Raimi movie since "Darkman" and "Spiderman 2", which is still my favorite Marvel movie of all time. Raimi's style is unmistakable, with zooming cameras, slightly askew closeups and an unflinching camera for gore and jump scares. There's one good jump here that's the best one in memory since that back seat passenger in Mike Flanagan's "The Haunting of Hill House". Damian Shannon and Mark Swift have crafted a clever, funny & twisted mashup of "Misery" & "Castaway" that delivers the goods, including the most shocking reveal at the movies I've had in decades. It's also the biggest laugh I've heard in a packed theater in nearly that long when it's revealed. Has a career in strategy and planning ever translated so well to a tropical island? Watch out for Linda, she's a mover and a shaker with a whole lot of secrets. I laughed hard, jumped a couple times and couldn't wipe the smile off my face from start to finish. Raimi is a horror genre master and he's back with vengeance to spare. Loved this one and bet it's a big hit. SEND HELP gets an A+. "You ever hunt? I think I like it....."

NO ONE creates suspense on film like Director Paul Greengrass, something you know if you've seen his films "United 93" or "The Bourne Ultimatum". His telling of the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, THE LOST BUS moves you to the front of your seat and never lets go. We meet school bus driver Kevin McKay, embodied brilliantly by Matthew McConaughey. Kevin's struggling after the loss of his father and recent divorce, caring for his mother and his 15 year old son, who wants nothing to do with him. McConaughey is reliably great in the role, disappearing into a man ready to break. Alternating between Kevin's day and the howling winds that spark a brush fire the hills, Greengrass ramps up the film turn by turn. As the fire grows, so does the tension. In a once in a century turn of real life events, wind gusts of over 80 miles an hour push the fire so quickly across the California hills that emergency services are immediately strapped. Kevin finds himself the only driver with an empty bus as schools are ordered to evacuate and he drives direct to an elementary school in the fire's path, picking up 22 children and their teacher, Mary Ludwig, played by America Ferrera (Barbie). The initial scenes with Mary are exasperating, as she insists on organizing the children and taking her time, while Kevin watches the size of the fire grow to unimaginable proportions. No matter what he does to get her on the bus quickly, she takes her time, refusing to see just how bad the scenario is. From the point those children board the bus, Greengrass takes us on a white knuckle ride through the madness of total gridlock, walls of fire in every direction and a daytime plunged into midnight-like darkness. Yul Vasquez (The Outsider, Captain Phillips) is very good as Fire Chief Martinez, who watches a brush fire become a mass casualty event in real time, no matter what he and his dedicated crew throw at it. Stage and screen actress Ashlie Atkinson is excellent as Ruby, the bus depot manager responsible for all the school buses, drivers and children. Her agony as the disaster spreads is palpable and Atkinson drives real emotion. And what a disaster this is. Rivaling any recent attempt at a disaster film, Greengrass and his special effects team create a terrifying scenario with real casualties. You can almost feel the fire surrounding you. Nominated this week for an Oscar for Best Visual Special Effects, it's well earned. The camera never stops moving and when it pans out and up into the sky to show the sheer vastness of what's facing our characters, it's jaw dropping. I loved James Newton Howard's music score that lurks like the fire before exploding on screen. His score during the finale is a powerful crescendo that pushes the suspense to the outer limits. The kids are all very well cast and they up the tension by being in such incredible peril, its deeply moving for any parent or grandparent in the audience. Many of the emergency service personnel are played by the real-life emergency service workers who were there at the time of the real fire. In real life, Kevin McKay drove about 30 miles over a grueling five-hour period through smoke, fire, blocked roads, and accidents to evacuate 22 children from Ponderosa Elementary. The film is a powerful testament to his bold heroism that saved all the children aboard. THE LOST BUS stands alongside Greengrass's "United 93" as an impeccably crafted, moving tribute to everyday heroes that stood up when challenged. One of the most suspenseful films of the past decade, it deserves a blazing A by any measure.

Although I'm not strapped into the chair that Chris Pratt spends 90% of MERCY in, I have to admit that I went into this movie ready to quip, "Yeah, I saw this when it was called 'Minority Report'! While it never nears the superiority of that Cruise/Spielberg classic, damned if this one isn't a whole lot of fun, packed with suspense, humor and buckets of action. Pratt plays Detective Chris Raven, a decorated officer and one of the champions of the near future virtual court called Mercy. If you are found committing a crime and the evidence shows a very high probability of guilt, you forgo all pre-trialcrap and go right to a very heavy chair. If you can convince the AI Judge that you are innocent in 90 minutes, you walk. If you can't, the chair offers up a swift execution at minute 91. Pretty efficient. Does this mean no more jury duty? I'm in! Building off the floating screens that Spielberg and team introduced in "Minority Report", the chair sits in the middle of a room, in front of an IMAX sized screen. Your AI Judge (Jury & Executioner) gives you access to ALL the data you can imagine. And in THIS near future, nothing is private, including full access to all phones, cameras and intel in the entire city of Los Angeles. Our AI magistrate for the 90 minute trial is Judge Maddox, played by Rebecca Ferguson (The Greatest Showman, Dune, Mission Impossible) who manages to have some fun, even though this is the rare role of hers I've ever seen that didn't involve some serious stunt work. As the film opens, Raven wakes up, hungover in the chair, accused of killing his wife. He's so intoxicated that he can't remember anything, but as the filmed evidence is presented, even he begins to question his innocence. Pratt is so good at playing an everyman that it's nice to see him play a more flawed character. Raven is a hell of a cop, but he's also off the wagon and not a great husband or Father. Director Timur Bekmambetov, who helmed the vastly underrated "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer" and Angelina Jolie's action thriller "Wanted", brings a lot of visual style to the film, especially in IMAX 3D. He basically sticks you in that chair with Pratt, with a countdown clock hanging in the air to your upper right and screens buzzing all around you at a rapid pace. Once Pratt shakes off his shock and begins investigating the crime with every asset at his disposal, the film really kicks into a gear that never lets up until the final moments. Those assets at his disposal include his current partner Jaq (Kali Reis from "True Detective") and his friend and AA Sponsor Rob, well played by Chris Sullivan from "This Is Us". Raven proves to be a hell of a detective and the film builds off its roots as a standard police procedural, pulled into a dazzling near future 21st Century. I also loved the way the film sets up a modern day Los Angeles as an Escape from New York-lite, with sections of LA cordoned off into red zones that offer nothing but riots, drugs and death. The fact that Santa Monica and Beverly Hills are two of those red zones are just a couple flashes of the humor that Behmambetov and his creative team weave into the film. The action scenes are huge scale, well shot and the finale through the streets of downtown LA is a big budget action thrill. I'm thinking if I can already get my Amazon packages by drone, that it can't be long before the police do have flying motorcycles. It's one hell of a way to beat LA traffic! Pratt's great, weaving terror, shock, grief and humor into his 90 minutes in the chair. He's perfectly cast here. I came into MERCY expecting a rip-off and left very pleasantly surprised. It's a pure B-movie popcorn action thriller with a big budget and a solid mystery at its core. Visually arresting and suspenseful, my verdict is a surprising B. Didn't see that coming....

What happens when a man stands up and says, "enough is enough"? Today is the perfect day to experience one of the most powerful and moving biographical films ever made. SELMA is a perfectly crafted look at a turbulent time in our country's history that still sadly resonates half a century later. David Oyelowo is incredibly good as Dr. Martin Luther King, portraying the man's passion, spirit and weaknesses with equal skill. Oyelowo's performance is equal to Daniel Day Lewis's turn as "Lincoln" and its startling he wasn't nominated for Best Actor with this role. He is amazing. The film depicts Dr. King's struggle to gain voting rights in Alabama in 1965. While Black Americans made up 55% of the population of the state at the time, less than 2% could vote due to racism and corrupt practices in the registrar's office. This repression takes place under the watchful eyes of Governor George Wallace (Tim Roth), the violent local sheriff and the growing impatience of President Johnson (Tom Wilkinson). By focusing on a pivotal three-month period in the history of civil rights, just as "Lincoln" did with a small time frame in history around slavery legislation, the film is able to dig deeper into the details and share shockingly sad and troubling historical facts that bring the issues to life and empower them with true consequence. As King struggles to lead strictly non-violent protests, he is met with pressure within his own community for revenge on local regimes that treat their population with no human regard. SELMA introduces you to real people that you grow to care about. You feel their pain and horror as the backward hate of racism takes their blood and sometimes their lives, but never their passion for real change. Carmen Ejego is very good as Coretta Scott King, rap star Common is excellent as James Bevel, Giovanni Ribisi is strong as LJB's right hand man, Lee White and Oprah Winfrey brings power to her small role as a woman determined to vote that serves as our conduit into those struggles in the mid sixties. The cast is filled with surprise cameos of major actors in roles, delivering a who's who of American acting talent to the film, even though all four leads are actually from the UK! Paul Webb provides a smart, involving screenplay and Director Ana Duvernay (again shamefully not nominated, while the film WAS for Best Picture) crafts a moving, emotionally powerful tribute to King, his mission and the historic march from Selma to Montgomery. While they changed the world in 1965, we clearly have more work to do 50 years later. This powerful film is a tribute to those of all colors that stood up and said "No. Enough is Enough". Oyelowo's performance is one of the best I've ever seen. He campaigned for 7 years for the film and we're all lucky that he earned the role. He's a powerhouse that truly connects at a deep level on these important issues, offering a fitting tribute to King. The injustices witnessed in this film are jaw dropping, but Oyelowo gives them even more human weight through his inspired performance. Come to watch the man act and leave moved by this beautiful film. SELMA gets a richly deserved A+ and a powerful spot in my all-time Top 100 films.

A suspenseful throwback to the gritty crime dramas of the 1970's, DEAD MAN'S WIRE is taut full of suspense and based on a true story of televised revolution. Be prepared to be plunged into a cold February day in 1977. Director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting) and his team recreate that chilly Indianapolis day, giving the entire film a palpable sense of time and place. Bill Skarsgard is a long way from Pennywise in a superb performance as everyman Tony Kiritsis, whose American dream is imploding. He purchased a plot of land, has cleared parts of it himself and has had several major tenants, including a major grocery store, commit to development. The Meridian Mortgage company has apparently diverted those potential tenants to other parcels and pressed Tony with ballooning interest payments. Bank President ML Hall (Al Pacino) and his son, Dick (Dacre Montgomery) are two generations of banking institution in Indianapolis. Are they on the up and up? As the film opens, we hear Jazz DJ Fred Temple (a perfectly cast Colman Domingo) on the radio, selling music and philosophy in equal measure. Temple is the only calm, quiet voice in Tony's world. Skarsgard creates a fully rounded character, desperate, funny, confused and pissed off. Tony enters the Mortgage company office and takes Dick hostage, holding a double barrel shotgun to the back of his head. Winding a trip wire around Dick's neck and the trigger, if either of them fall or Tony goes down, the gun goes off. What follows is a crazy series of events that are so bizarre they can only be true. Temple gets pulled into the crisis when Tony insists the only person he wants to talk to the DJ live on the radio, telling all of Indianapolis about what Meridian has done to him. Pacino is solid in a small but important role as the company patriarch, unwilling to accept any blame, regardless of that fact's impact on his son. Cary Elwes is unrecognizable in great period hair and makeup as Detective Michael Grable, who knows Tony from their local watering hole. Elwes disappears into the role, one of his best performances in years. Myha'la (Leave The World Behind) is very good as Linda Page, a local reporter in the right place at the right time as the saga unfolds. Van Sant is on fire here, creating one of his best films in years, creating a crime drama that oozes 1970's grit. The camerawork and styling of the film gives off "The French Connection" and "Serpico" vibes in grayed out, relentless waves. It's not unusual looking at Van Sant's past work that he would create the ultimate tell of an anti-hero, but I didn't expect going in, to feel for Tony as much as I did. That's a tribute to Van Sant's direction, a tight screenplay by newcomer Austin Kolodney and a killer performance by Skarsgard. Every man has a breaking point and Skarsgard lays it bare before your eyes. You can't pull DEAD MAN'S WIRE any tighter if you tried, earning it a solid B. Now someone else cast Elwes in these kind of supporting roles immediately, he's off the charts as Grable! That's him above with the shield around his neck. Hard to believe, right?

17 years ago today on January 15, 2009, the world experienced the Miracle on the Hudson. If Tom Hanks has become today's go-to actor for portraying everyday American heroes, surely Clint Eastwood is at the top of American Directors for traditional dramas. These two American Classics pair up for superb work on SULLY , the behind the scenes story of Captain Sully Sullenberger, the pilot who managed to land US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River, next to Manhattan. Shortly after taking off from LaGuardia, a massive flock of birds flies directly into the plane, taking out both engines and leaving Sully and the 155 people on board in the hands of his very fast decision making. I've had friends say "why would I want to see a movie about a flight that lasted less than 4 minutes? I know what happens." I promise you that there is a lot more to the story than your know and the film does a terrific job with its structure, unveiling the flight layer by layer. Director Eastwood has always been a clever storyteller and he lives up to that here, showing you the flight in dream sequences, once from outside the cockpit, once almost solely IN the cockpit for the entire flight and yet again to show the real-life heroic aftermath. The brilliance of the actual event, of course, is that all the Americans on and around that flight in 2009 were quiet heroes in their own way, leaping to do the right thing and help each other with split second decisions and grace. Hanks is so damn good that it's easy to take his performance for granted, but he finds real depth in a humble man suddenly thrust into the zeitgeist. Aaron Eckhart is very good as co-pilot Jeff Skiles, Mike O'Malley is perfectly slimy as an investigator determined to prove Sully could have easily landed the plane back at LaGuardia and saved a whole lot of dollars and Anna Gunn is very good as a fellow panel member. The flight and water landing sequences are first rate special effects showcases, with absolute realism from every angle. You know the plane is going in the Hudson. But credit Eastwood and Hanks for crafting a film with such a big heart, that you're on the edge of your seat to find out EXACTLY what happened from every angle. Stay tuned during the end credits for some terrific shots of the real life passengers reunited with Sully at the museum where the airplane now hangs, full size, as a tribute to that day. I had the chance, flying to the Super Bowl back in early 2010, to be on a flight with Sully, who was attending the game to be recognized during the pre-game for his heroism. As he passed me, I shook his hand and said "Sully, shouldn't you be up there? (pointing at the cockpit). He put his hand on my shoulder and said "Don't worry, if they need me, I'll be right back here" and gave me a wink. A cool moment, from a humble, modern-day hero. Hanks and Eastwood are a terrific team, telling a powerful story that you only think you know. Sully soars to an A.

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 an absolute trip. William Hurt made his 1980 film debut as a scientist more concerned with finding the root of man in his DNA than in exhibiting any social graces. Dr Jessup (Hurt) is rude, obnoxious, pious and about to discover man's origins within himself. That leaves little time for feelings. Alienating his girlfriend Emily (the great Blair Brown) his fellow scientist Arthur (Bob Balaban from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and anyone else within twenty feet, Jessup decides to spend extended time floating in an isolation tank to dig deep into his primordial 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, my first year of college, and loving it. I still enjoy the hell out of it today. Religious visual motifs dominate many of the hallucinations, including many crucified men barreling at you on wooden crosses, slain sacrificial goats and spilled blood. It's all visually fascinating and the work of Bran Ferren (Little Shop of Horrors) who works wonders with a limited budget. Its 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. He was nominated for an Oscar for best score, along with a Best Sound nomination for its atmospheric, hollow plunge into that tank. Russell's first American film, it was released on Christmas Day in 1980 and promptly tanked, baffling audiences. I loved its twisted, relentless energy and sheer madness. Is it an intellectual film or a twisted body horror thriller? It's a very strange, unique blend of both. Go ahead, immerse yourself in the tank with Dr. Jessup, but like him, you may or may not like what you find! I give it an insane A, a true guilty pleasure of the highest order.

The best afterlife comedy since "Heaven Can Wait", ETERNITY is a laugh-out-loud romance with heart, soul and wit to spare. The film opens with senior citizen couple Joan (Betty Buckley) and Larry (Barry Primus) driving to a gender reveal party for their new grandchild. Buckley and Primus are old pros, delivering every bit of comedy with panache as traffic backs up a mile behind them. When Larry dies suddenly at the party, he wakes up on a train, in his much younger body, now played by Miles Teller (The Offer, Top Gun: Maverick). The train pulls into a massive station that serves up a trade show like atmosphere offering up every kind of eternity you can imagine. Writer/Director David Freyne delivers a lot of laughs in this sequence, as each booth offers a sales person pushing that version of your forever. I loved the twisted humor and even as the film moves on, sharp eyed viewers can see plenty of other options in the background. The "Man Free World" is constantly sold out, which made us both LOL every time. The biggest laughs of the film are courtesy of the devine Da'Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers) as Anna, a spiritual tour guide and AC (Afterlife Coordinator) who arrives to coach Larry on his options. Like Buck Henry in "Heaven Can Wait" she faces off with a new arrival that has no intention of moving on. Larry knows that his aging bride won't be long behind him and decides to hang out and wait for her, drinking in a quiet cocktail lounge with bartender Luke (Callum Turner) who's also been there a very long time waiting for the love of his life. He's been waiting over 60 years as a matter of fact.... Soon enough, Joan does arrive, now embodied in the form of Elizabeth Olsen (Wind River, The Avengers). She's excited to see Larry, her husband of many decades. There's only one problem. Luke has been waiting decades for Joan's arrival too. He was her first husband before dying in the war (and not one of the big wars, as Larry loves to point out). It's an impossible choice and a heartfelt dilemma that Freyne crafts to serve up as much heart and it does humor. But for the first hour plus, big laughs! How Anna and the guide team decide to handle the problem, the opportunity it gives both Larry and Luke, is perfectly crafted. Randolph is flat out brilliant in every scene, almost stealing the movie and walking away with it, but the lead trio is also perfectly cast. Randolph's swooning over everything that Luke says and her pity for Larry's inability to compete is a highlight. Teller delivers as a grumpy old man stuck in a younger body. He loves Joan and has for so long it should be an advantage, but how do you compete with a dashing war hero, his young wife and their unrealized dreams? Turner, who rumor has it is one of the two finalists to be the next James Bond, is terrific as Luke. He's charming as hell, sweet to Joan and not afraid to take on Larry as a foe for her affections. I get why the new OO7 producers are looking at Callum. He's not an obvious choice in some ways, but definitely has screen presence and shows terrific range. Olsen is the center of their attentions and the film, creating a Joan that you feel for as she tries to figure out who she wants to spend the rest of her life with. Eternity is indeed a very long time and there is no escape clause once you make a choice. The last thirty minutes turns up the romance and the heart, loaded with unexpected choices and a damn near perfect conclusion. You may think you know who she chooses, but don't be so sure. No spoilers here! Looking for a feel good, romantic fantasy that leaves you happy (and choked up)? ETERNITY is a pleasure. Funny, sweet and clever is a trio that transcends any generation, earning this enjoyable tale an appreciative A.