21. Paddington 2 (2017) Movie Review: Another fun prison bear movie

Prison movies are hard to get right. I mean, after the Shawshank Redemption, what else can you do? Besides dye all the prison uniforms pink and turn it into a right good place for a spot of tea, anyway? Welcome to the hole, Paddington.

    The world's most favorite bear that doesn't sound like a bowel movement, Paddington returns in the sequel to my favorite new comfort film. The bear is still living with the Brown family, but his Aunt Lucy's hundredth birthday is coming up. He's found her the best gift, but when he's framed for stealing it he goes to prison. The Browns work on his release while he makes friends on the inside. Also there's Hugh Grant having a hell of a good time.

    It's a very English flick with set pieces of comedy that are charming and fun to watch. Like the first, what starts out as a small mistake on Paddington's part turns a regular event like washing a window into a violent torture scene of hilarity. Even though the film is animated, the physicality is on point. Like Buster Keaton or Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean before, the production creates enjoyable… You know what? It's funny and fun and sweet.

    You should see it because you've had a bad day. Or you just want to smile. Or see a flick without 100 people dying or trying to hump each other stupid (although the subtext with Mr. and Mrs. Brown is palpable). It's not a superhero or an assassin. It's just a bear making friends and there's nothing wrong with that.

20. Paddington (2014) Movie Review: Charming English movie that will relieve what ails you

When I'm having a bad day, there's a few things that brighten it up. I'm not talking about earth-shattering days, just those times when the couch seems like the best option. Songs, movies, books: these are the things made to brighten the soul. Add Paddington to that list.

    Paddington, like the books that came before it, is about a bear in a red hat and a blue coat that lives in London. He moves there hoping to find a family. The Browns take him in and in a very standard story, learn to have fuller lives with the clumsy bear in their house. Also, there's a killer taxidermist (Kidman) with a past linked to Paddington's because it's the 2000s, y'all. Action!

    My history with this series is spotty. Honestly, I don't seem to have much recollection of when I first heard about Paddington. My grandma was English, from Bristol, but I don't remember her or my mom reading them. Nothing from Summer Reading or school, either. Just looking at that bear in his red hat and blue coat, though, brings a smile to my face. Don't know why.

    This movie is like comfort food or a simple ray of sunshine on a rainy day. Check it out however you can and just enjoy it. You might not learn much, you might not grow as a person, but you will smile a small smile at the pure English antics of crumbling scenarios, cross-dressing, and wordplay.

19. Rope (1948) Movie Review: Smug Assholes, it turns out, are universal

What does the perfect murder look like? The victim deserves it, the murderer is just, and no one gets caught. Turns out if you've got enough education you can justify any of those points.

    Brandon (Dall) and Philip (Granger) have strangled their friend David to death. Believing themselves to be above reproach of the law and David's friends and family, the two then throw a party with David's body stuffed in a chest they use as a buffet table. As the party goes on, their old schoolmaster Rupert (Stewart) becomes suspicious.

    I won't say everything everyone else says about this movie. Alfred Hitchcock's grand experiment in long shots, the film composed of ten long shots with a few edits, Rope is a novelty of a movie. I won't mention how the homosexual undertones inform on the rather problematic motives of the upper crust privilege. I won't even say how the plot was based on a stage play and was based on the real life Leopold and Loeb murder. Not going to say any of that.

    Not Jimmy Stewart's favorite of his work with Hitchcock, the movie holds up as both a cultural artifact and a damn good movie. It's a masterclass in blocking and small space acting. You have no choice but to rent this or do what I did and get if from the library.

18. Wild Bunch (1969) Movie Review: Because the old west myth had to die

A man in a white hat on horseback saving the locals from a gang of evil black hats. That's the image of the west, of John Wayne and heroes, until Sam Peckinpah destroyed it. All it took was two hours and change and all the bullets in Mexico.

    It's just around World War I and the old west is dying. A group of outlaws with a code, the Wild Bunch, are robbing banks and escaping to Mexico. Two men oppose them, an ex-member of the gang hired by the railroad and a general of the Mexican army with a violent side. From the opening bank robbery gone wrong to the ending bullet-filled spectacle, the Wild Bunch caused a turn in our national obsession with violence by turning the dial way up.

    We follow the Wild Bunch as a dangerous group of men, not the heroes of yore. The first scene we see, the bank robbery, shows the men threatening everyone there to die. The town shoot out that follows continues this. Men and women die at random, children clutch each other in the street. The chase of sex and violence that continues the narrative hammers home the death of the heroic ideal, acted brilliantly by Holden, Borgnine, and the rest as aging outlaws coming to their end.

    Best viewed on a large screen, see this movie however you can. Modern audiences may see it as tame compared to modern violence (there are no robots destroying cities), but the strong characters and melancholy on the production reaches across the decades.

17. I, Tonya (2017) Movie Review: We All Abuse People We Don't Think of As People

When Margot Robbie looks you dead in the eye three-quarters of the way through I, Tonya, when she looks right out and speaking as the white trash queen Tonya Harding she says we're all her attackers, she's damn right. We took a person, guilty or not, and judged and beat on her as a world. As a tribe. The audience, even by watching the movie, made Tonya Harding the spectacle and we loved it.

    Tonya Harding (Robbie) grew up abused and abandoned by her parents, her overbearing mother forcing her to be the best using the worst means necessary. Growing up, she finds in her husband Jeff (Stan) both a companion and abuser. The two go down in the history books, along with their dim witted "bodyguard," as the ones that brought violence to figure skating. Nancy Kerrigan will never forget, that's sure.

    Knowing winks are the center of this picture. Because the history of everyone involved is contradictory and full of holes, the filmmakers decided to place knowing asides and glances as well as "to-the-camera" style interviews. We are all in on the joke that everyone involved lied. And we are all in on the abuse Harding felt and still feels.

    When the subject of a story has to ask, to let the audience know, that she's a good mom… Well, that's a button right there.

16. I'll Push You (2017) Movie Review: Man, they really like each other

In 2004, my best friend and I went to Key West for New Year's Eve. We drove the whole way, seventeen hours down Florida and seventeen hours up. Near the end we were just about done and still had to live together as roommates. I thought about that while watching I'll Push You.

    This documentary tells the story of two men, Patrick and Justin, and their hike on the Spanish pilgrimage trail of El Camino de Santiago. What makes this special is Justin, wheelchair bound and totally dependent on Patrick during the journey. We watch as the two cross the Spanish countryside with help from friends.

    That's the bulk of the story. One guy laying there, the other struggling to walk and push and pull and get his friend where he wants to go. We learn about Justin's degenerative condition. and Patrick's utter devotion to his lifelong friend. The story becomes one of hope for humanity, a call to go out and help others by giving the extra mile. To realize that humanity is one thing, not seven billion separate lives struggling.

    At the end, I revisited my friendship with my oldest buddy. We've known each other since I was four and he was five and I poked my head under a fence to see what all the noise was and who my neighbor was playing with. Over thirty-four years of knowing each other, facing tragedy and heartache, supporting one another. Would I push him across mountains and through mud and down slopes until I bled?

    Hell no. And he'd do the same for me. But we'd laugh about it.

15. The Way Back (2010) Movie Review: Whole Lot of Walking Going On

The human spirit forces itself on so many movies you have to wonder if that's the whole reason we make the damn things. Gruff, no nonsense men learning lessons about being brothers while overcoming uncertain odds. That's pretty much the whole story here.

    Our story starts in Siberia where men are kept like cattle by communist Russian forces. This prison camp holds any and all enemies of the state, from the idealistic and funny to the gruff and mean. Political and violent alike. Then a bunch of them escape and its those assholes we follow.

    The true star of this film is the direction and cinematography. There's some good acting, to be sure, but views of snowy forests, mountain lakes, vast empty deserts, and peaks of Eastern Asia fill the screen and demand to be seen. As the men walk to each new climate, you have to wonder how this new and beautiful piece of the world is going to kill another man.

    Make no mistake, this film is brutal as it is beautiful. When the prison camp is the most hospitable place in the story, be sure challenges continue to mount. No one gets off this planet alive, but it's amazing when there's good views.

14. Blackway (2015) Movie Review: Where did this come from?

When movies get released, they often have some fan fair. Somebody, somewhere, spent money and they are going to damn sure let you know. Except in rare occasions a few big stars get a film and it just fades away.

    Blackway stars Julia Stiles as a waitress in the Pacific Northwest trying to blend in to her mother's hometown after inheriting the house. She's made an enemy of Blackway (Liotta) a former cop now drug kingpin who is stalking her. The police can't help her so she goes to logger Anthony Hopkins for help.

    Yeah, I wrote that description and I don't believe it. This movie forces you to suspend your disbelief that the only part that makes sense is Ray Liotta as a crazy violent nutbag. Julia Stiles still looks like she should be ordering Jason Bourne around rather than waitressing. Anthony Hopkins as a far from a revenge-bent Pacific Northwest logger than I can imagine. And the plot is so simple and straightforward that it becomes a slow, boring slog by the end.

    Should you watch this movie? Yeah, why not. Another lazy Sunday afternoon hangover movie, the only thing this movie has going for it is nobody has heard of it. Then when someone else sees it and says "did you see that movie where Anthony Hopkins plays a logger who revenge-kills Ray Liotta with Julia Stiles?" you can say, "Yeah. Kinda boring."

13. Masterminds (2016) Movie Review: It'll steal you time because it's kind of a waste

When people sit down to make movies, they don't say "Let's stink up the joint." It doesn't matter if they don't say it, though, because more often than that they crap the toaster. Masterminds aims for middling humor and falls short.

    The plan was simple: dumbass David Ghantt (Galifianakis) is to use his armoured car job to hijack millions of dollars. Then he runs to Mexico and hides out. Soon his lady love (Wiig) follows, and they live the big life after the man with the plan (Wilson) sends them their cut of the cash. Then it all goes to hell.

    When the Berlin school began developing Gestalt theories of psychology, they did not reckon on so many right pieces creating such a wrong whole. The acting is solid with Galifianakis and Wiig pulling off convincing dumbass yet lovestruck roles. Even Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis come off as menacing evil doers. The plot meanders but is pretty straight forward. Moments come that are hilarious, I remember laughing, but none of them come to mind now.

    In my capacity as a guy who watches movies and then pretends to give and honest opinion, I can't recommend you watch this. I can not say to log into Netflix, now $9.99, and find for "Masterminds" using their simplified search feature. Netflix, for when you want to watch something on your television through the internet.

Mississippi Burning Murderer Dies: A Children's Story

This tale is about three men: Andrew Goodman, Michael "Mickey" Schwerner, and James Chaney. These three men, well, boys really, they were college age and down in Mississippi in the summer of 1964. Freedom Summer. They were there helping people of color register to vote.

    On June 21, 1964, a church was set ablaze by the Ku Klux Klan.  Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney went out to the church that night to see if everyone was okay. On the way back, they were pulled over and arrested. They were held by police until ten o'clock at night when they were freed. Their ride along Highway 19, followed by a police car, could only be one of creeping dread.

    Eventually they were stopped again by police. The officer told them to follow him back the way they came, toward Philadelphia, Mississippi. Other cars joined the caravan and they were lead out to a deserted road.

    Cheney, a black man, was beaten and shot while over half a dozen men looked on. Schwerner and Goodman were shot as well. The three were buried in an earthen damn and not discovered for forty-four days. It took the combined efforts of the FBI and other federal agencies to find the bodies. Seven men were convicted of federal court for civil rights violations because the state of Mississippi would not charge anyone with the state crime of murder. None served more than six years total for the crime.

    In 2005, Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of planning and organizing the killings. A recruiter and organizer for the Klan, Killen made his living as a saw mill operator and part-time preacher. On January 11, 2018 he died in prison. Reports say near the end he changed his ways, signing over his land and power of attorney to his black cellmate.

    Franklin Roosevelt said, "“I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.” Killen made enemies for himself of three college aged boys, boys who only came to help and who had their lives sprawling out before them. He and over half a dozen other men judged those boys and killed them. Cheney, Goodman, and Schwerner did not get the fifty-three years of life Killen got. I hope he used the years well. I hope he did his enemies proud in the end.

    So go out and tell your children that bad men exist. Tell them bad men can change. Evil can be defeated and all men die. Tell your children that sometimes, though, justice takes a long time after the heroes are dead and gone.

12. Pitch Perfect 3 (2017) Movie Review: Did that girl say she was possessed by a demon?

Trilogies are hard to pull off. Just ask George Lucas and the cast of Big Momma's House. I've covered some sequels this year already, from the regrettable Insidious: The Last Key to Darkest Hours filling in the plot between King's Speech (2010) and Dunkirk (2017). Never have I been more confused, though, than watching Pitch Perfect 3.

    The Bellas are back and singing their asses off on a USO tour. Why? Who the fuck cares? Talented hot girls, y'all. What's against them this time? Ultimately, the character of Fat Amy appears to have been birthed from the evil loins of John Lithgow and he wants her money that she didn't know she had. Confused? Well, so was I through most of this mess, especially when one girl says she was possessed by a demon the whole time.

    Let me let you in on a secret: I've never seen the previous Pitch Perfects. They didn't seem to be anything I would touch with a ten foot pole on a Friday in a town with only warm melons for fun. According to my fiance, this is not a good entry place in the series.

     I concur.

    The best thing I can say about this is it was entertaining. When the jokes didn't land, they were at least delivered competently by people who seemed to be having a great time. That wins something in my book because, honestly, I don't like watching movies with assholes who hate each other having to fake emotions.

    Looking at you, Hallmark Christmas Movies.