Everybody who will see this movie will expect to see what they saw in the original Pacific Rim; giant robots fighting giant monsters that came out of the Pacific Ocean. What they will not expect is too many giant Robots fighting other giant Robots and not nearly enough monsters until the end. Perhaps there was not enough budget for the monsters this time around? Like the last movie the producer’s strategy was still the same – people come to see the fighting giant creatures, who the hell needs a screenplay. I believe that movies like this follow the Michael Bay paradigm of special effects movies, “create the effects first and then just slap the story around the effects”. Of course this is a stupid idea, but it must work in terms of money making, but it definitely does not work as far as making any kind of a good movie. The slapped together story for this second Pacific Rim installment makes absolutely no sense, and is all over the place.

Like the last Pacific Rim, I thought the overall quality of the film itself seemed less than a top notch special effects movie and I remember wondering while sitting through the long 2 hours, what is it about Japanese people that they are so fascinated with giant creatures that try to kill people running for their lives? For me this gets old pretty quickly. This Pacific Rim stars John Boyega the lead actor in the recent Star Wars movies who is clearly going for the money as an actor rather than quality roles. This is a risk for any actor who is interested in longevity in the movie industry. Sometimes this works out and sometimes it doesn’t but the list of those who went for the money and not the quality and are now no longer viable is long.

This is a movie for 9-10 year old kids who go for the robot fighting scenes, but even for them, there are not enough fighting scenes to keep even a 10 year old from falling asleep. This film, like the last one, should be missed.

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.