The idea for “Brightburn” is a good one. What would happen if the parents who found Superman when he crash landed on a Farm somewhere in the Midwest, adopted an infant that turned out to be evil rather than good? The entire idea of both Superman and Brightburn are ridiculous from the start because the odds of an alien child landing on earth that looks human are impossibly remote. Any two adults who found any alien child in a crash landed spaceship would call the police or the FBI long before any thought of adoption would set in. Setting aside any level of common sense or logic gives us science fiction or in this case horror movies like Brightburn. Most of this inane logic can be acceptable because its science fiction, but when a story gets too preposterous, this is where the movie becomes more annoying than entertaining.

The problem with Brightburn is a problem with most horror movies. People just do not react or behave in these movies like an average person would behave when faced with circumstances like these. The police would have been called long before horrendous problems and murder would happen. The boy, a who is about 12 years old when the mayhem begins, would have been sent off to an scientific observation center as soon as any dangerous super powers would be revealed. It has been rare in my experience as an avid moviegoer where people in insane situations react like any average person would. One reason for this is dramatic effect and another reason could be that the producers of these movies believe that people like to feel superior to the actors in the movie, who are running for their lives.

Brightburn stars Elizabeth Banks and avid Denman as the boys parents and Jackson A. Dunn, who plays the superhero gone bad. Dunn shows very little acting ability in his role and seems more like a robot than a 12 year old boy with super powers.

The Rotten Tomatoes review for this film are only 58% and I mostly agree with this opinion and give a very marginal recommendation to this film because of all the easily fixable problems in this story.

As a professional movie blogger, a must see movie is any movie that is rated 95% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes. Almost without exception a movie ranked that high is either very good or great, with the exception of “Booksmart”, that is at best a below average teenage comedy.

For me, the entire premise of this story did not work. Two girls about to graduate from high school realize that all their years of never partying or having any fun was wasted, because other students who partied and skipped school also got into the best schools. Already this is a bad idea, because this would never happen in real life. The two girls then decide that they will make up for all this lost fun in one night, another bad idea. This movie was somewhat raunchy but mostly not funny and did not work as a comedy. Why the critics liked this movie so much I makes no sense. My rating is only 50%.

Booksmart is the directorial debut of actress Olivia Wilde and I thought the directing for this film was OK, but nothing that stood out as out as memorable.

I do not agree with the critics for Booksmart and I do not recommend this movie.

Getting thrown into jail for something you did not do is bad enough for any human being to live through, but to be put on death row when you are innocent is for most of us a fate worse than death. What the new movie “Trial By Fire” shows better than just about any movie I have ever seen is a true story of massive injustice. The main character Cameron Todd Willingham, played very well by Jack O’Connell was railroaded onto death row in Texas for arson and the murder of his 3 young children, even though he was completely innocent.

The corrupt court system in Texas in the early 1990’s that illegally forced an innocent man onto death row by convicting him of arson and the murder of his 3 infant children was one of the most outrageous stories of incompetence and the treatment of the poor that I have ever seen. Witnesses were paid off and given reduced sentences, Willingham’s lawyer did not care enough to do his job at all, the arson experts who testified that the fire was set on purpose were 100% wrong. Despite all of this Willingham was on death row for 12 years until Elizabeth Gilbert, played by Laura Dern, through a series of letters became involved with Willingham’s case. Gilbert’s efforts over several years eventually became more desperate as Willingham’s execution date became closer and her realization that nobody in charge cared enough to help an innocent man.

The state of Texas has executed more people than any other state for many years and this movie showed at the end that as many as 158 people in recent years, were days away from being executed before new evidence was found to save them. In the case of something as extreme as the death penalty, killing another human being should not only be the last resort, it should be something that happens only when all avenues of evidence and doubt have been completely exhausted. Unfortunately because of the politics and corrupt, incompetent people in charge, too many innocent people have been put to death in this country.

I thought that this movie was very well done, despite the low 61% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and I give a strong recommendation to this film.