Kevin Hart has always understood that great stand-up comedy is about rhythm and timing more than anything else. During his stand-up performance in the new movie “Kevin Hart: What Now” Hart demonstrates his deep understanding of comedy rhythm and also has a great rapport with his audience. Hart also understands that jokes have never really been that funny, what is funny are stories and situations that people can strongly relate to and Kevin Hart is the master of this kind of comedy.

Hart’s stand-up act which is the subject of this movie was filmed at a football stadium in Philadelphia in front of the largest audience in the history of stand-up comedy. Before the performance part of the movie started, there was a James Bond-like mini-movie with actress Hallie Berry that I thought was a good idea that mostly worked. The actor Don Cheadle also made an appearance in this part of the film as well and was pretty funny with his argument with Hart. There were several new ideas during the stand-up act that I thought also worked for the most part, including showing scenery on a giant screen behind Kevin Hart and displaying visual aids that even included phone texting messages that complimented what Hart was talking about during his act.

It is clear to me that Hart is more successful with this type of a movie more than some of the other movies he has made in the past, which for the most part have been pretty average. Overall this movie was good, but not great and not too much different than Hart’s four previous concert movies. For fans of Kevin Hart and fans of quality stand-up comedy, this movie is a must see event. There were several moments of solid laughs during Hart’s stand-up act but not too many that are laugh out loud funny. This concert film was a solid addition to Hart’s other comedy movies and I do recommend it.

For me, movies always remind me of what was happening in the world or my personal life at the time I first saw the movie. For the movie Castaway, it came out in late December 2000 and as for anyone who ever invested in the stock market, the year 2000 was a total disaster, except those who were only invested in bonds. For me, I will always be reminded of the horrible bear market that started in March 2000 and ended in October 2002 whenever I see the movie Castaway.

Over the years there have been actors who have sacrificed their health by either gaining or losing a great deal of weight for a movie. The most recent example of this was “Dallas Buyers Club”, where both Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto lost a tremendous amount of weight to play their characters who were both dying of AIDS. On the one hand, I have always greatly admired the ability of anyone to starve themselves for so long just for a movie. As far as both of these actors, they deservedly won Academy Awards for their extreme sacrifice for the film, but I always wondered how anyone could justify perhaps permanently ruining their health or losing their life for a movie role? What if you get sick because you are so dangerously thin, especially in the case of McConaughey. Probably the first actor to do this was Robert Deniro in 1980 to make Raging Bull and he also won best actor for this role. Deniro gained a total of 60 pounds after being in perfect shape to play the boxer Jake Lamotta and I have heard during interviews that he was feeling very bad during the months of overeating. One has to wonder what is more damaging to your health; starving yourself or gaining a great deal of weight in a short period of time?

Tom Hanks is another example of an actor who first gained weight and then starved himself for the movie role for the movie Castaway, that came out in 2000. For a role like this, obviously, there is no workaround to look like a person who has been living alone on an island for years so Hanks had to starve himself for a long period of time to get ready for this part. Hanks was nominated for an Academy Award for this role and I felt he should have won, mainly because he carried the entire movie himself and then because of the extreme physical sacrifice he made for this movie. If you have not seen the movie Castaway, I highly recommend it.

The movie Aliens came out in 1986, a full 7 years after the original Alien that changed the movie world of science fiction forever. When you see an idea for a movie that is so groundbreaking like the movie Alien, released in 1979, you wonder why an idea this profound was never thought of before. Alien creatures are able to inject their offspring into the stomach of a human host and in a few short hours they break through the chest of the victim and in a few days are able to fully develop into very large and dangerous lizard-like alien creatures that have acid for blood. The movie Alien was so good I remember being surprised that Aliens took a full 7 years to come out after the first movie. Perhaps the reason was that a script good enough had to be written and new ideas good enough had to be created before they were able to get enough funding to make the sequel in 1986. James Cameron wrote the script for Aliens and it was so well written that in my opinion it should be considered to be the greatest action movie script ever created. Practically throughout the entire movie, the level of tension remained extremely high and the ending was one of the best I have ever seen. This is one of the few movies I can remember seeing twice within a few weeks of its release; it was that good and arguably even better than the first movie. Sigourney Weaver’s line at the end of Aliens is also one of the best ever, “Get away from her you bitch” (see video below). The movie Aliens was released 30 years ago this past summer and that is a reality very hard to believe.

Sigourney Weaver is the main character in all four Alien movies and unfortunately the last 2 in the series were not very good movies. The first movie Alien was groundbreaking due to the scene where the alien broke out of the chest of one of the astronauts while eating dinner, played by John Hurt. It was this one scene that was the huge catalyst for not only the rest of the movie but also for the 3 Alien sequels that followed, ending with Alien Resurrection in 1997. Right now in production, a 5th Alien movie directed by Ridley Scott, who directed Alien, a new movie Alien Covenant will be released in August 2017 and it’s obvious to me that because Ridley Scott is involved with this movie that it will be on a par with the first two movies (see trailer below). The story of Alien and Aliens is one of the greatest science fiction concepts ever created.

I highly recommend both films that both have extremely high IMDB ratings of 8.5 and 8.4 respectively.