The CEO of Spanx, Sara Blakely recently made a statement, “I have to get better at not caring about what other people think”. This comment from a self made billionaire is one of the key ingredients to winning in life and being successful. Unfortunately, when you’re 13 years old and about to go to high school, caring about what other people think is your entire world. When you are 13 years old and the early stages of adolescence all you care about are the opinions of other kids in your age group. Most of this need to be accepted is an innate part of growing up, the other part of this is the extreme fear of being made fun of, of feeling like you will never belong, as if you are not as good as everyone else – an outcast, a freak.

Age 13 has always been a very tough time in anyone’s life but today, with cell phones, the internet, email and social media – its exponentially much harder, so difficult that bullying causing suicide is a common story in the news. Age 13 is especially difficult for adolescent girls who have to tolerate the subtle cruelty of other girls who can destroy another girl with one nasty look, eye roll or well placed debilitating comment during a lunch hour. This form of bullying where one individual can give themselves a temporary high by totally destroying another person is a fundamental evil in far too many young people – and adults.

What is most impressive about the new movie “Eighth Grade” is its realism about how difficult it is to be 13 years old in today’s world. I saw no evidence of acting in this movie, most especially with the lead actress Elsie Fisher, who in my opinion should receive and Academy Award nomination for best actress this year. Elsie plays Kayla who is the child of a single father and she has bad skin, is a little overweight and is terrified of not fitting in with everyone else. One scene that stood out the most was a phone call that Kayla gets from an older girl who is trying to help her get ready for high school and Kayla cannot stop pacing during the call – because her nervousness over the importance of this one call is so profound. Why do so many of us put so much weight on what people think of us? What makes the random opinion of someone who we don’t even know an important barometer of our self worth? Why is their opinion ever even relevant – have they walked a mile in our shoes? What makes this even worse is the bully’s that frequent this age who feed off the terror of someone feeling like they are not accepted by others and delight in adding fuel to their misery.

Kayla’s father Mark is played extremely well by actor Josh Hamilton, who is desperately trying to understand his only daughter and rescue her from her pain, even though Kayla is too anguished to ever listen to a word her father says. Mark is also raising his daughter as a single father and his wife’s absence is only explained late in the movie as “she left”. I thought the acting with this cast was outstanding.

Eighth Grade has a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and I agree with this assessment. This film is the most real life depiction of what it is like to be a 13 year old girl about to go to high school that I have ever seen. This movie will make you wonder how you survived when you were 13 years old – realizing that there is a big price to pay for being young especially in today’s world.

Eighth Grade gets my highest recommendation and should receive a best picture nomination.

There are so many things bad about being an alcoholic – the list is almost endless. The new movie “Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far on Foot” is a true story about just one of many scenario’s that happen to far too many people. The horrendous potential dangers of driving while drunk or in the case of this true story about Cartoonist John Callahan – getting into a car, at age 21 that is driven by someone who is seriously drunk. The result of the car accident was that Callahan was crippled for the rest of his life and wound up in a wheelchair and the driver walked away from the accident with a few scratches. This was despite the fact that the car he was driving was a Volkswagen Beetle and ran into a pole at 90 miles and hour. This movie is a survival story about a man who was an alcoholic most of his life and there are many scenes of Callahan attending Alcoholic Anonymous meetings and trying to get through a 12 step recovery program.

This low budget movie was written and directed by the great director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting) and is based on a book written by John Callahan. The acting in this film that included Joaquin Phoenix, Jonah Hill, Rooney Mara and Jack Black was outstanding and I have always been impressed at the career decision of Joaquin Phoenix to only make low budget high quality movies for far less money.

This story is about a very depressing list of subjects including alcoholism and trying to recover from losing your ability to walk and take care of yourself. One cannot help but put themselves into the position of John Callahan who knew at age 21 that he would never walk again. Many people would commit suicide when facing something this horrendous at such a young age. This story is about survival, rationalization, trying to heal and understand why someone drinks to escape unbearable pain – in this case of Callahan his mother abandoned him as a child. Much of this was difficult to watch, but in the end the story was extremely well told.

Throughout this film, some of Callahan’s cartoons were shown – some of the better ones were:

“Two Ku Klux Klansmen heading out at night in their white sheets. Says one: “Don’t you love it when they’re still warm from the dryer?”

“A beggar in the street wearing a sign that reads, “Please help me. I am blind and black, but not musical.”

“A sign in the window of a small, street-side restaurant says: “The Anorexic Cafe, Now Closed 24 Hours a Day!”

I thought this film was a high quality low budget movie worthy of a great director like Gus Van Sant and I recommend it.

The only problem with an action movie that was this well made is the danger in making it so spectacular and the belief that in the next movie, dangerous stunts and action scenes can be made even more amazing than the previous film. It has been a forgone conclusion for many years now that there is no doubt that Tom Cruise is by far the best stuntman in the history of film making. For reasons that can only be attributed to some kind of a brain abnormality – Tom Cruise has no fear of anything. This one abnormality may one day kill Tom Cruise while making an action film. The thought of “Its only a movie” seems to not be part of Cruise’s thought process.

In the latest Mission Impossible, “Mission Impossible – Fallout”, Cruise sky dives out of a plane at 25,000 feet, he climbs up a rope to a Helicopter, only to fall and save himself on a giant ball the Helicopter is carrying. He rides a motorcycle through dangerous streets in Paris France with no helmet and then crashes into a car and flies over the car. He flies a Helicopter at very low altitudes and at top speed, and very dangerous stunt flying. In this movie he broke his ankle and considering all the risks he took making this movie and all the takes (the sky diving scene took 106 takes) he is very lucky to be alive. Many have said recently about this 6th Mission Impossible movie that Tom Cruise must have a death wish and after seeing this incredible film – I agree with this assessment. Tom Cruise is worth close to 600 million dollars and he will be 56 this month. He has nothing more to prove – so why he or anyone like him would take risks like this makes no sense. With today’s technology using computers can create extremely realistic special effects and any number of stunt men could have done most or all of the action sequences that Cruise insisted on doing himself in this movie. So the question is, why does Cruise insist on risking his life so many times? Its not just the strong possibility of dying while making a movie – what about being crippled for life or a paraplegic from the neck down – which for someone like Tom Cruise would be worse than getting killed. One can only wonder the cost of hiring an insurance company to insure a movie like this one when the main star insists on doing all the most dangerous stunts himself.

As far as this film, I thought it was the best of the 6 Mission Impossible movies right above Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol that was released in 2012 and in that movie Cruise ran down a rope on the tallest building in the world. This is the first Mission Impossible movie that has a direction continuation of the previous one and I thought the story, which at times was a little far fetched was extremely well done and kept my attention for the entire 2 1/2 hours. This movie probably contains more dangerous and impressive action scenes in the entire history of film making.

With the exception of Jeremy Renner who starred in the last two Mission Impossible films this new film has all the regular characters, played by Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Alec Baldwin, Angela Basset, Michelle Monaghan and newcomer Henry Cavill and all were outstanding in their roles.

This film is one of the best, if not the best of the entire year and considering the work involved, the great directing and incredible action sequences – should be nominated for best picture, but probably will not be because its not the kind of a movie that the Academy nominates – unfortunately.

Mission Impossible – Fallout gets my highest recommendation.