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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a remarkable film. It's even more remarkable when you realize that this was Steven Spielberg's third theatrical film and the follow up to the first huge summer blockbuster, JAWS in 1975. No sophomore slump here. Spielberg (in his first and only solo written screenplay) tells of ordinary people inexplicably drawn to Devil's Tower in Wyoming after experiencing a close encounter with UFOs. Richard Dreyfuss is excellent as Roy Neary, Melinda Dillon is very good as Jillian Guiler, who joins Dreyfuss in his quest for answers and to find her son Barry who has disappeared in a close encounter. Famed director Francois Truffaut and Bob Balaban provide great support, as do fantastic cinematography and one of John Williams all-time classic scores. The special effects were groundbreaking in 1977 and still hold up beautifully today. Seeing this for the first time (at that Metrocenter movie theatre above the ice rink at 16 years old!) this movie blew me away. It STILL does. The first 20 minutes of the film draw you in and never let you go. The Director's cut we just watched on BluRay kept some of the added scenes from the 1980 "Special Edition" but thankfully cut the unneeded footage of Dreyfuss entering the mothership. Some things are better left to the imagination and the inside of the ship certainly qualifies. Turn down the lights, turn UP the sound system and have a close encounter with an early Spielberg masterpiece. In my all time top 100 and an A+.

In my continuing 2012 quest to watch all things Kubrick, CLOCKWORK ORANGE filled my brain last night. Banned in Europe after its initial release in 1971, Kubrick's vision of an ultra violent near-future is still powerful. Malcolm McDowell is insane and insanely great as ALEX, surely one of the least sympathetic leading characters in modern films. Yet Kubrick finds a way to tempt the viewer to feel sympathy, fear, arousal and empathy while watching Alex's descent/rise and comeuppance with his gang of "droogs". Weird, overtly sexual, filled with stylized violence and over the top performances, Clockwork still packs a punch and earns a B. Beethoven has never been used to accompany anything stranger........

One of the best full tilt adventure films of the early nineties, CLIFFHANGER is a fast, fun and beautifully shot action film featuring all the best and worst attributes of Stallone at his box office peak. Stallone stars as mountain rescue man Gabe Walker, in serious doubt after losing an inexperienced climber on his watch. Upon his return, he and his fellow team members Hal (Michael Rooker), Jessie (Jineane Turner) and Frank (Ralph Waite) are immediately immersed in a bold skyjacking attempt to steal millions of dollars being transported by the Fed. John Lithgow is at his oily bad guy best as Qualen, a violent, intelligent mad man bent on a daring mid air theft that goes spectacularly wrong, dropping some cases (which are amazingly easy to open with a rock by the way) filled with serious amounts of cash into the snow capped Rockies. Director of Photography Alex Thompson (Legend, Excalibur) provides plenty of jaw dropping scenery, shot from dizzying helicopter shots that drop us right into the ropes, hanging off icy cliffs over incredible drops. Lithgow is surrounded by a rogue's gallery of violent bad buys with a penchant for dropping f-bombs and some seriously violent beatings. Stallone delivers on the action front with scene after scene of incredible physical feats, hand to hand combat and some of the best "pissing-off-the-bad-guys" tricks since Bruce Willis unleashed his fury on Alan Rickman in "Die Hard". Unfortunately, you can also hear Stallone's imprint on some of the dramatic dialogue, which comes across with the delicate pitch of a Rambo or Rocky climax speech. It's rather painful. But you aren't watching CLIFFHANGER for inspiring human drama. You are watching for action and fun and on those fronts, Stallone and Director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, The Long Kiss Goodnight) deliver a slam bang, rip-roaring, snow covered great time. CLIFFHANGER gets an ice hard B.

Harrison Ford returned to the role of Jack Ryan for the second and final time in 1993 in CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER. In this second installment of Ford's Ryan films, our own government is the enemy and Ford is at his best battling the smarmy weasels buried in our political halls. Admiral Greer (James Earl Jones) is sidelined with cancer and he only trusts Ryan to fill his role as Director of the CIA. When drug cartels begin killing Americans, Ford leads the investigation but soon finds himself mired in crosses and double crosses as elements within the US liaison with military groups in South America that have multiple missions and loyalties. Ryan soon finds himself in the field, stuck in the crossfire. Willem Dafoe is terrific as John Clark, a mercenary whose loyalties are murky. Donald Moffat (The Thing) is a crafty President and Disney comic actor Dean Jones turns in a great, dark performance as a political player. Anne Archer and Thora Birch are back as Ryan's wife and daughter and Director Philip Noyce shows a sure hand in his return from the previous Ryan outing, "Patriot Games". Joaquim de Almedia is excellent as Col. Cortez, one of the best bad guys in any Ryan flick. James Horner provides a great music score that pulsates and tears through all the action, a nice accent to the smart screenplay that will keep you guessing and on the edge of your seat. No one has had as many successful film series as Ford. He is great as always here, creating a character you'll cheer for from the opening scene to the last. Clear and Present Danger isn't the best Ryan film, but its a very good thriller that gets a B. Followed 9 years later in 2002 with Ben Affleck as Ryan in "The Sum of All Fears".

There is something so OLD fashioned and cheesy about 1981's CLASH OF THE TITANS that its impossible to resist for this huge fan of Greek mythology since grade school. Ray Harryhausen defines old school, stop motion animation in movies. Compared to today's CGI, its crap. Plain and simple. But there's so much nostalgia seeing this one again, its easy to laugh and just enjoy two hours of fun. Laurence Olivier is Zeus (of course, who else would he play?) Ursula Andress is Aphrodite and Maggie Smith is Thetis, gathered in Mount Olympus and overseeing the humans on Earth. We meet Perseus (Harry Hamlin) as he grows into a young warrior and falls in love with Andromeda (Judi Bowker). The tale leaves plenty of room for giant sea monsters ("Release The Kraken!") tidal waves, Pegasus the flying horse and in the film's best sequence, Medusa. Harryhausen was a legend in movie making, from "The Voyage of Sinbad" to "One Million Years BC", he made monsters and dinosaurs come to life for children of the sixties and seventies. If I showed my grandson today, he'd probably say 'That's silly" as he's already spoiled by Jurassic World and the realism of digital effects. This one's just a fun throwback to the very early 80's, a star-studded cast and plenty of family fun, with some surprising nudity thrown in courtesy of English sensibilities around such things. You can feel the effect of 'Star Wars" in the goofy little mechanical owl the filmmakers feel compelled to wedge into story to ill effect, but the adventures of Perseus keep things moving along. TITANS is old school fun. The special effects are a laughable liability, but if you can get in the mood and roll with them, this CLASH gets a nostalgic B-.