The logline for the new movie “First Reformed” goes something like this. “A man about to have a baby is extremely concerned about the environment and global warming, worried that in the year 2050, when his child is 33 years old the planet Earth may no longer be a viable place to live”. The man consults a priest, who himself is having major problems including his health. From this point the quality of this movie is overall very well done, receiving a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

The acting of the 3 main actors, Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried and of all people Cedric the Entertainer in the first serious role I have ever seen him in – are all outstanding in their roles. The problems with this movie – like many movies that are made today is that in some instances, it is trying too hard to be different and because of this, some parts of the movie just do not make sense. This includes one scene that actually involves levitation – coming out of nowhere. This movie also has one of those endings that will confuse and infuriate many viewers, for me it was just OK, although part of the ending did not make sense. Somewhere along the line, people have to react and behave in ways that make sense to a normal person. In many cases when it comes to a good solid story idea, less is more.

This movie is very low budget and was made for only 2.5 million dollars and shot in 20 days. Its also rather dark and depressing when you consider the possible end of the world scenario’s discussed. Despite the 95% recommendation on Rotten Tomatoes I give First Reformed only a mild recommendation.

As far as movies I have seen about basketball over the years, the best one by far has always been “White Men Can’t Jump”, released in 1992. White Men Can’t Jump hit all the marks, including great basketball action and a very funny and good story. Its impossible to believe that its been 26 years since this very good movie was released.

As far as the new movie “Uncle Drew”, I was impressed with most of the basketball scenes, but the story had too many road trip diversions and not enough good story and basketball. I was most impressed with the acting of NBA star Kyrie Irving who showed not only his incredible ball handling skills and the fact that he can act too. By far the best line in the movie was when Kyrie said twice “You will miss 100% of the time, if you never take a shot”. The actress Tiffany Haddish is also in this movie – and her career is exploding lately. Considering she was living in her car trying to make it in show business, she is a very lucky person. I thought this film was a good family movie with an average story and some humor but could have been more memorable. I give Uncle Drew a marginal recommendation.

It was very hard to see the message or even the reason for the new movie “Sicario: Day of the Soldado – other than its a sequel to the much better original Sicario, released in 2015. For me, I thought the message was, “when you are dealing with terrorists who are willing to blow themselves up along with hundreds of other innocent people, then any thoughts of fair play and humanity when we fight people like this are out the window”. When you deal with animals who are willing to murder innocent people with suicide bombs – you have to be ruthless and this part of the message I agreed with.

Unfortunately this movie degraded from something that started out to be a promising insight into Terrorism into the kidnapping and transporting a young Mexican teenage girl played by Isabela Moner. Too much of this part of the story dominated this film and was too long and at times boring. The good part of this movie was the acting and presence of Moner who should have a very bright future in movies.

Some of the scenes of terrorists blowing themselves up were well done as far as the horrible special effects, but it was unnecessary to be that graphic showing what something like this would look like at close range. The acting of Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro I thought was as good as the last movie, but nothing that stood out. The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this movie are an anemic 60% and I would have rated it about 45% because the story mostly went nowhere and had no real message. For these reasons I do not recommend this movie.