One of the problems as a young director if you have early huge success, which is what happened to M. Night Shyamalan in 1999 with “The Sixth Sense” is that if you make a movie that good with such huge box office success in the beginning of your career, you will probably be forever chasing success like that for the rest of your career. In my opinion, Shyamalan got very close with the movie “Unbreakable” in 2000 that had a very good story, a great conceptual idea that even involved comic books and a surprise ending, but this movie had nowhere near the box office success and critical acclaim as The Sixth Sense. I thought the movie Devil, that came out in 2010 and was written but not directed by Shyamalan was good but the overall result was not nearly as impressive as the Sixth Sense or Unbreakable.

Shyamalan’s latest movie “Split”, which he both wrote and directed is his first movie since “The Visit” is an attempt by Shyamalan to create something new, which is always the first and most difficult challenge any screenwriter has to overcome. There have been many movies about kidnapping or abduction, but this is probably the first movie where the insane criminal who kidnaps 3 young women has 23 distinct personalities and also makes regular visits to his psychiatrist played very well by Betty Buckley. The insane kidnapper with 23 personalities is impressively played by James McAvoy in what had to be the most challenging role of his entire career. I also appreciated the depth of the story here, showing not only a man with 23 personalities and one of the disturbed kidnapped women, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, but explaining through flashbacks throughout the film, how they got to be the way they are, by various forms of abuse during their childhood.

I noticed no real surprise ending that Shyamalan is famous for in this movie, as the conclusion of the story seemed to be a nothing out of the ordinary. Overall the acting is very good in this movie and I thought that the young actress Anya Taylor-Joy may have gotten her breakthrough role and should have a very promising career in the movies. She has very symmetrical looks and big eyes that are very dark and unusual. Her previous movie “Morgan” was not good, so its good to see her bounce back with this solid movie. There is a unique surprise in the ending of this film, involving the actor Bruce Willis, where he mentions “Glass Man”, which is a reference to the movie Unbreakable. I thought this idea to end this movie was very original, but many people who have not seen Unbreakable will probably not understand this reference.

I give a marginal recommendation for Split, mainly because of the solid acting and because of newcomer Anya Taylor-Joy

“When the competition is drowning, stick a hose in their mouths.”, Ray Kroc

The best line in this great movie is the one above. I have never seen a movie about the reality of money, business, success or failure that is better than the film “The Founder” which is the true story about Ray Kroc and how the corporation Mcdonald’s was originally founded.

Prior to getting involved with McDonald’s, Ray Kroc was a failure, trying to sell milkshake machines to restaurants around the United States before he stumbled onto two fast food founders named McDonald in San Bernadino California who amazingly to Kroc, wanted to buy eight of his milkshake machines. During his entire life, Kroc failed at many ideas he tried, but due to the success recordings he was encouraged by, he relied on his perseverance to rise above all the bad times he had in his career. While watching this movie and all that Kroc had to go through, you just had to admire him for surviving all he had to endure to finally become successful.

The Mcdonald’s brothers were the original founders of the fast food idea in the 40’s, inventing a brand new mass production technique for food, much like Henry Ford who did the same thing for the automobile. Most fascinating was their story about the large number of setbacks they had to go through and their move from a small town in California to San Bernadino. This included putting their restaurant on a truck and then sawing it in half so it would clear a bridge in the town of San Bernadino. After that amazing feat, they ran into problem after problem until they finally perfected the idea of fast food. The Mcdonald brothers were two very honest men and two very nice guys and what this movie shows so well, is that very often in both business and in life, “Nice guys finish last”.

Everyone who sees this film will have to make up their own mind of how good or bad Ray Kroc is as a person is in this true story. In my opinion, some of the things he did were justified and some were more than just because of business, they were about revenge and perhaps taking out his many years of frustration and money problems on other people. Much like the true story in the movie Joy, even after Kroc had success, he still had major money problems and many huge obstacles in his way that he had to overcome. Kroc needed a ton of perseverance to be successful, but as this story shows, he also needed quite a bit of luck too.

The Founder is a great film and one of the best acting performances in Micheal Keaton’s entire career. There is a scene in this movie that was remarkably like the movie “Pacific Heights”, that starred Keaton and came out in 1990, where Kroc walked into a hospital room holding flowers where one of the Mcdonald’s brothers was having a major heart problem because of extreme stress. I was rather amazed at how similar this scene was to a major turning point scene in Pacific Heights, which is another great movie that Keaton starred in.

I highly recommend this movie because the story is amazing and its message about success and failure in business and in life is very significant.

I remember thinking when I saw the great war movie “We Were Soldiers” in March 2002, that it was probably one of the best and most realistic war movies ever made. Mel Gibson has now made two of these, this one and the recent Hacksaw Ridge, that is the equal to this movie with its battle realism and story. War is a horrible reality of life that never should exist but unfortunately, it probably always will. Humanity has always been extremely adept at killing people.

This movie is outstanding for showing the strategy of a battle, this one taking place in Vietnam and known as the Battle of Ia Drang which happened on November 14, 1965, one of the worst battles in the entire war. Mel Gibson played Lt. Col. Hal Moore and most amazing about a man with his high rank in the military is that he stood right in battle with all of his men and always insisted on being the first soldier to enter a battle and the last one to leave.

The other memorable parts of this movie included all the wives back home who for days during that battle in Vietnam were receiving telegrams telling them that their husbands had been killed in battle.

We Were Soldiers is not for the faint of heart, but no movie that shows what war really is all about should ever not be truthful about its extremely harsh reality. I highly recommend this film.