For the new movie “Love, Simon”, I didn’t notice anyone acting or anything contrived or forced during the entire two hours. These two simple things for me made this movie memorable and justifies the high scores on Rotten Tomatoes which are 91%.

The story of Love, Simon is a simple one. A 17 year old young man has known that he is gay for 4 years and he is afraid to tell anyone about it – understandable considering the pressures of being in high school and social media in today’s world. The series of events that happen through social media after finding another young man his age by chance going through the exact same thing, are rather involved and elaborate but I thought, very well done and believable. The main character Simon, played by Nick Robinson is not overtly gay and plays the role with a very mid-America normal personality. Simon has 4 friends 3 of whom he drives to school every morning within a ritual that involves buying 4 ice coffees and having a group lunch in the cafeteria every day. Nothing unusual here, but what is unusual is the dialogue, every well written and the series of situations that lead Simon to his decision to announce to the world he is gay.

Jennifer Garner plays Simon’s mother in a role as a mother that it seems she has played many times before. The message of this movie is just how desperate human beings are to be accepted and that most of us care too much about what other people think. The fear of not being accepted sometimes makes cowards of us all.

I thought Love, Simon was a very well done story and I do recommend it.

The original Tomb Raider series started in 2001 with Angelina Jolie as the star of that movie franchise. I wondered while watching this remake if it was made more because of the looks and star power of Alicia Vikander or because of the popularity of the original Tomb Raider movies from 17 years ago. When you think about movies like this and an upcoming star who is trying to make the big money in a movie role, you have to admire the months of training and hard to work to get into the shape necessary for all of the stunts and fight scenes that were all very impressive in this film. The problem now is, how do you make this new Tomb Raider movie unique enough so that is memorable or at least more memorable than the first Tomb Raider franchise?

I thought the story was just OK, nothing really special. A trip to Hong Kong, Lara looking for her father, a boat trip an island with caves, and very old machines that open up walls and ancient burial grounds and mummies. What makes this movie watchable are some of the impressive fight scenes, action sequences, special effects and the perfect Hollywood face of Alicia Vikander, but not the story. For these reasons, I do recommend Tomb Raider.

I frequently talk about how difficult it is to write a great new screenplay on this blog. First of all the story has to be a brand new idea, maybe even something that never has been done before. Then in order to be memorable, a story twist or a scene of great acting has to be involved somewhere so the movie stays in your mind. Unfortunately “Gringo” is not unique enough to really remember, other than one line where the main character played by David Oyelowo says “we are living in an upside down world, it doesn’t pay to be a good person anymore”. While sitting through this movie I kept thinking too many times that I have seen this before, so for that reason I did not find this movie compelling enough to recommend.

Gringo stars Charlize Theron, David Oyelowo and Thandie Newton and for the most part the acting is good throughout this film. At times I found the plot, that involves kidnapping and some twists and turns unnecessarily confusing and at times rather boring. While this is not a bad movie, its not that good either. Overall I will pass on Gringo.