Upgrade is an unexpected triumph.  I call it unexpected because the title of this movie is horrible (every time I say the title, I say it like Maya Rudolph’s character in Idiocracy, where it sounds more like “upgrayde”), and the marketing of the movie made it look like the kind of throwaway action flick we get every year: low budget, violent, minor actors, etc. But Upgrade is far more than that.  Upgrade is a smart, thrilling, compelling,…

      Here’s a brief conversation between myself and my girlfriend while watching Adrift:   Girlfriend: How long is this movie? Me: Two hours. Girlfriend: How much longer do we have? Me: *looks at watch* an hour. Girlfriend: *sighs* I feel Shailene Woodley’s pain.   I wasn’t in nearly as much pain watching this movie as my girlfriend was, but this brief conversation sums up a lot of how I feel about Adrift, a poorly constructed,…

In one of the first scenes of Ron Howard’s Solo, we get an encounter between Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) and an Imperial desk clerk.  Solo is a small time crook who has found his way off the streets by joining the Imperial Army.  Here is how the encounter went down: Imperial Desk Clerk: Name? Han Solo: Han. Clerk: Last name? Han stares silently into the distance. Clerk: Your last name?  Who are your people? Han:…

      Deadpool is back!  But this time, it’s personal.  After the funny, entertaining, game-changing first film, the Merc with the Mouth changes gears in this sequel, which offers up more blood, characters, action, and, more impressively, more depth and emotion. After tragedy strikes our foul-mouthed mercenary, Wade Wilson/Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) must find a new meaning of life and does so in a troubled mutant named Russell (Julian Dennison).  When Russell is being hunted…