When CREED was released three years ago, it blew me away as a modern extension of the Rocky franchise and a hell of a boxing movie. CREED II climbs into the ring and delivers an excellent punch of its own. The premise could have been hokey. You have to hearken back to "Rocky IV" in 1984 for its roots. I have VERY fond memories of seeing that movie in a packed theatre in all its ripped Stallone, USA v Russia, snowy training montage glory. But it's also the film that pushed the series dangerously close to self parody in its 80's excess. In that film, Ivan Drago killed Apollo Creed in the ring and Rocky traveled to Russia to battle the monstrous Drago and avenge his friends death. It's 34 years later, Apollo's son Adonis Creed (an incredibly good Michael B. Jordan) is battling his way through lesser contenders as the Heavyweight champ. The past comes calling in the massive form of Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu), son of Ivan, still played in a surprisingly good performance by Dolph Lundgren. They and their promoter want the boxing match for the ages, CREED and DRAGO in the ring, with Adonis set to avenge his Father's death. As with the first film, what makes CREED II special is the personal story behind the characters. Adonis and his fiance Bianca, well played by Tessa Thompson (Thor: Ragnarock, Annihilation) are making a journey toward parenthood while Adonis deals with his father's legacy and his role in it. At the film's center is another excellent performance by Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa. He looks old, he looks beaten. Every word from him is carefully chosen and delivered with perfection by Stallone. It's every bit as strong a performance as his Oscar nominated turn in Creed. The journey that Adonis and Rocky take together here is heartfelt and also a KILLER sports movie on top of the personal story. The boxing matches are incredibly well staged. There are surprise appearances from the past films that I certainly wont spoil here, but they are GREAT and bring back great memories of past installments. By the time we're back in Russia in the boxing ring, with composer Ludwig Goransson's (Avengers Infinity War, Black Panther) modern take on Bill Conti's Rocky theme music swelling over the action, you realize the filmmakers have done the impossible and delivered another knockout Rocky movie. Nostalgic, dramatic, well balanced between quiet personal moments and violent battles in the ring, CREED II gets an A. It's closing five minutes are just about perfect. As Rocky fans might say, "Yo Stallone and Jordan, YOU DID IT!"

It's been a long time since I've enjoyed a Rocky movie as much as I did the new sequel, CREED. We are introduced to Adonis Creed, the son of Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers in the original films) and the product of an affair his father had just before he died in the ring. We see Adonis as a young man, rescued from an orphan-like series of foster homes and the system by Apollo's wife, Mary Ann, played to perfection by Phylicia Rashad. Flashing forward to the present, Adonis is now a young businessman at the bottom rung of the ladder, with a desk job by day and a series of amateur fights (in Mexico) on the weekends. Adonis is played powerfully by Michael B. Jordan, who is perfect every moment, creating a character with unexpected depth and realism. Adonis is soon hungry to take his fighting to the next level and heads to Philadelphia to meet the legendary Rocky Balboa, one of his father's best friends and the last fighter his father coached. Rocky is played with surprising power and emotion by Sylvester Stallone, reminding you of just how good he was in the original Rocky film 40 YEARS AGO! (Let that sink in a minute, forty years. Wow.) Stallone has no interest in getting back into the fighting game, but sees something special in Adonis. The two men's relationship is built on family and respect and their moments together feel real to their core. This is the first Rocky film not written by Stallone, and its much better for it. Writers Ryan Coogler & Aaron Covington bring a fresh perspective and a modern style to the characters we know, honoring them while energizing the pieces of the Rocky films we love. They manage to position Adonis as a competitor for the world championship in a way that doesn't feel forced, quite a feat for the film. The last twenty minutes of CREED are, in a word, perfect. The original Rocky films were, at their core, boxing films that staged fights for excitement and theatrical effect. This film stages fights in which the camera travels in and out of the ring, constantly moving from a perfect ringside seat to closeups of the fighters in mid punch. Director of Photography Maryse Alberti with a filmography of mostly documentaries and quiet dramas, choreographs the action in a unique style that just simply WOWS. Director Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station) crafts an astonishingly great film. I went in expecting "a Rocky Movie" and it blew me away. It's the first time I've immediately re-watched the final act of a film in quite awhile. Stallone and Jordan are superior. If you are a Rocky fan, get ready for a powerful, emotional story, characters you root for and a great movie that perfectly balances respect for its film legacy with a fresh and exciting perspective. CREED is a knockout and gets an A+.

Attention Kate Hudson, stop making those horrible romantic comedies! THIS is what a smart & funny comedy about relationships looks like. What a fun movie! Steve Carell is really good here and Ryan Gosling is great. Is there anything this guy can't do? The last act twist I NEVER saw coming. Probably the most surprised I have been in a movie since the Sixth Sense. I was so sucked in, never looked for it. Smart, touching, sweet and funny. Crazy yes, Stupid NO. An A in our book!

Sometimes you just want an enjoyable creature feature that knows how to provide some jolts, fun and killer special effects. On that score, CRAWL delivers! Kaya Scodelario (Maze Runner) stars as college swimmer Haley, who can't get hold of her Dad as a massive Category 5 Hurricane approaches Florida. As folks do in these films, she drives through roadblocks, flowing rivers of streets to her father's house and crawls down in the basement to find him. Unfortunately, her father Dave (Barry Pepper) isn't the only thing lurking in the basement. The best CGI alligators you've ever seen are HUGE, hungry, growling predators on the prowl for every tasty human they can find. You can feel producer Sam Raimi's (three Spiderman films) fingerprints all over the pace and humor of the movie. There are more than a few echoes of "Darkman" and "Army of Darkness" in the polished B-movie sheen dripping off of every frame (along with the blood and endless rain). When they try to slip in some family drama into the mix it falls flat, but there's another giant chomping CGI gator right around every corner to spice things up. The storm's great, the creatures are better and our two main actors are both surprisingly good, as are the graphic attacks. It's predictable and kind of dumb. And I had a great time. It bites a sharp B-.

Three years before he launched to fame by directing the anti-war classic comedy M*A*S*H, Robert Altman crafted his first studio film, COUNTDOWN. A young James Caan stars as a solitary astronaut sent on the first mission to the moon. Too bad they didn't wait a couple more years to capture more of the actual technology and insight the real moon missions would deliver. In an effort to beat the Russians, who have announced an imminent lunar mission, Caan is enlisted to get to the moon first and spend an entire year there in a shelter that will arrive before he does. The heavy handed screenplay gives Caan only three weeks to train for the mission, which is just as silly as it sounds. Caan is good, Robert Duvall is dependably very good and Ted Knight has a small serious role long before Ted Baxter would be unleashed on us. When you think of the movies like M*A*S*H, Nashville and McCabe and Mrs. Miller that Altman would later create, this seems like a strange first studio film. Countdown never quite creates the suspense it hopes to and other than an early glimpse of some actors who would emerge as a couple of the 70's best, it's a TV movie dressed up for the big screen. Never lifted off for me, I'll give it a C.

For all of you 70's Grindhouse or b-movie fans, check out this fun documentary about Hollywood rebel Roger Corman. He made a lot of crap movies and stumbled into making some good ones too! Remember those 1960 Edgar Alan Poe movies with Vincent Price? Death Race 2000, Piranha, Boxcar Bertha, those were some fun 70's flicks. Big stars and directors like DeNiro, Scorsese, Bogdanovich, Ron Howard and so many more started in Corman's movies. Especially moving input from Jack Nicholson, who clearly loves remembering his times with Corman. FILLED with clips from b-movies you will love if you are into that sort of thing like I am. What could I possibly give the king of the B's but a B?!

Three years before they teamed up to create "Dirty Harry", Director Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood crafted the 1968 fish-out-of-water cop thriller COOGAN'S BLUFF. Eastwood is Arizona deputy sheriff Coogan, his boots still covered with dust as he arrives in New York City to pick up a murder suspect and bring him back to the desert. Arizona and New York City have both come a long way from 1968. Manhattan seems more like an Austin Powers flashback, with plenty of tie-dye, hippies, beads and groovy music. Don Stroud (Django Unchained, The Amityville Horror) is the murder suspect, who manages to escape custody and lead Coogan on a trail through most of NYC. Like most films of that day, you'll see a lot of the Universal backlot pretending to be NYC, along with plenty of location shots for Coogan's arrival and the final chase. Lee J. Cobb (On the Waterfront, The Exorcist) is terrific as the lead NYC detective, Susan Clark (Night Moves) is a police psychologist and gorgeous Tisha Sterling is a young hippie chick (groovy baby) whose loyalty is as short as her mini skirt. Eastwood is having a hell of a lot of fun bringing his western morals to the big city, bedding every babe in town like Bond in a cowboy hat while saving time for bar room brawls and lots of broken cue sticks over bad guys heads. The police station scenes play like something out of a time warp. I counted at least 8 people that would be fired for sexual harassment in the first ten minutes. It was definitely a different time. Eastwood's still a blast. Siegel (Telefon, Escape from Alcatraz) keeps his camera and his star moving at a rapid pace and it all wraps up faster than you can put your boots back on. Audiences also loved the opening sequence in Arizona, with Coogan tracking a killer through the desert before making a quick pit stop on the way back to jail for a 007 like visit with a beautiful blonde. It's a pretty great opening ten minutes. Later adapted into the long running "McCloud" TV series starring Dennis Weaver, COOGAN'S BLUFF is a retro blast from the past with plenty of laughs dropped into the action. I'll give it a B-.

When you realize that this is the film that Writer/Director Francis Ford Coppola made BETWEEN THE GODFATHER and GODFATHER PART II, its pretty astonishing. At the top of his powers here in 1974's THE CONVERSATION, Coppola creates a simple story with many threads. Gene Hackman gives one of his best performances as Henry Caul, the best man for the job when you want to listen in on private matters. Haunted by the ripple effects of a past job, Hackman is drawn too deep into his current assignment listening to a couple in San Francisco's Union Square at lunchtime. Are they a cheating couple, a business deal gone bad? The less you know the better, so you can be pulled in just as Henry is, and just as I was watching this 70's classic for the first time. Look for a very young Harrison Ford in a key role (two years after his film debut in the Coppola penned "American Graffiti") and Godfather alums John Cazale and Robert Duvall in strong supporting performances. This conversation gets an A.

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

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

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

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