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Ridley Scott’s new flick The Last Duel has brought together Matt Damon and Ben Affleck to collaborate on writting the screenplay, for the first time since the duo won the Academy Award for Good Will Hunting in 1998.

Its a tale of treachery of two fourteenth century French soldiers under the reign of juvenile, King Charles VI, which get told not one, not twice but three times, each time with
a different point of view.

The casting is interesting giving the actors characters you have not often seen them in, from Affleck as the arrogant count, Damon’s awkward and uninteresting portrayal of Carrouges, Adam Driver is dashing and compelling as Le Gris and finally, Jodie Comer, as Marguerite is centerpiece of the story and the real scene stealer in this flick.

You can give it to Ridley Scott for attempting to create a medieval period drama with a modern day social consciousness sensibility. The Last Duel is intelligent, impressive, daring and memorable… just a bit too long at two-hours-and-twenty-minutes. Definitely getting a THUMBS UP from me.

As Daniel Craig concludes his tenor as the fifth 007 (following in the footsteps of Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan) and having had to hold the title for an extra year because the pandemic delaying the release of his swan song performance, it was great to see how director, Cary Fukunaga, created a deserving send off for Craig in No Time to Die.

The story starts with Bond leaving active duty of Her Majesty’s Secret Service and finally enjoying some time off in Jamaica, but that doesn’t last very long when an old buddy asks for his help.

Believe it or not, Cary Fukunaga is the first ever American director in all in the (Silver Jubilees’) franchises history. Fukunaga created a thrill ride that has all the classic antics of what you would expect of a James Bond flick including a very tight storyline, captivating energy and giving credit where credit is due for a departing 007. There really is not a dull moment and that is not an easy task when the movie is two-hours-and-forty-three-minutes long… or the longest Bond movie in history.

It was almost surprising to see, that other than the main character, the movie also had enough space for other characters to shine. Academy Award winner, Rami Malek, as the villain certainly makes his presence felt and then there was Lashana Lynch, as the rising MI6 agent with the peculiar codename: 007, a mystery that shall probably be revealed in the next movie.

I gotta admit, the last scene of the movie had me quite emotional, truly remarkable if you consider this is a franchise movie. Fukunaga truly checks off all the boxes in the handbook of how to deliver a memorable movie. (After Sean Connery) Daniel Craig will surely stay in everyone’s mind as a Bond to remember. I enjoyed every minute and easily give it a THUMBS UP!

In the spin-off of to the spin-off of the Spiderman franchise, we see yet another superhero with a reporter alter-ego, who is attempting to reinvent himself by landing an exclusive interview with a serial killer.

The original Venom has proven that even with being the worst reviewed Marvel Universe movie it still was able to gross close to $900 million, so a sequel was a given, what was not predicted was that the release would be delayed a whole year because of the pandemic and make it lose its momentum.

Director, Andy Serkis, is no one can deny understands moviemaking, yet here he created a flick that seems very unpolished compared to what we are used to see in Marvel flicks, there are way too many digital characters making the flesh-and-blood actors seem like some kind of an accessory, and the script feels like it is missing bits and pieces that you might suspect have been dropped on the editing floor, being the end product is less than 90-minutes long.

Even though the Venom sequel is an extremely violent bloodbath, it is also at the same time very entertaining, if that makes any sense. You wanna look away but you just can’t.

It’s almost unbelievable that accomplished Academy Awards nominated A-listers like Woody Harrelson, Michelle Williams and Tom Hardy (who also collaborated on the screenplay), have agreed to have their names associated with a movie like this. It’s not sure who drives whom crazier, but undoubtedly Tom Hardy and Woody Harrelson drive the viewers crazy… for sure. This one deserves only a THUMBS IN THE MIDDLE from me.

This was probably one of the first Broadway musicals to tackle the social media frenzy of Gen-Z. It was groundbreaking, breathtaking and, in a way, eye opening. It didn’t take too long for Dear Evan Hansen to become a phenomenon, so now, producers believed it was time to make this musical into a movie. The story will definitely speak to those who have at some point in their lives struggled with depression, alienation or loneliness to name a few of the teen angst it addresses.

It was a no-brainer to get Tony, Grammy and Emmy Award winner, Ben Platt, to reprises the role of Evan in the movie, however, one thing that puzzled me throughout the movie is why did the producers cast actors who are way older than their characters? Is it because Ben Platt is 27-years-old and the other actors shouldn’t look like they could be his children or is it that the producers have not gotten over the Hollywood casting trend from the last century?

Playwright, Steven Levenson, also had the benefit of writing the movies script, which kind of makes you baffle why would he change it so much in the big screen version. The transformation from stage to screen will even make people who know the source material buffle, I do get the original material is over five-years-old and in social media that is an eternity, yet you get the feeling that there is an unjustified exploitation of vulnerabilities young people go through. Yes, adolescence is difficult, but should it be so difficult as this flick portrays it for well over two-hours…

Undoubtedly, the movie introduces a whole new generation of fans to Evan Hansen, yet this movie is a good example for when a stage show should stay where it originated (on stage) and don’t jump too high to a territory that might ruin it. It is not an easy decision, but I will still give it a THUMBS UP!!!

Cry Macho is a fable about redemption, it’s the journey of an old man, bringing a teen from Mexico City to his estranged American dad. Their long journey is one of two men each attempting to win the upper hand.

The movie is adapted to the screen by Eastwood and N. Richard Nash, who wrote the novel this movie is based on back in 1975, but the mostly two-character movie is very slow and doesn’t really elevate.

Eastwood vulnerability in Cry Macho is one of an older man with minimal careful movements, dry slow speech and a look that is closer to what his real age.

For the ingenious filmmaker who has been retiring for the past thirty years, Cry Macho, marks his 40^th as a film director. This feels like a movie that might probably only be remembered as a placeholder the next Eastwood movie, which usually comes once a calendar year, yet with pandemic slowing down Hollywood, at this point, no new Eastwood film is in the works!

At the end of the day, this is an Eastwood movie, and one can’t go against an instant classic, so it gets a THUMBS UP from me.