One of the things you never expect with an action movie, where the entire point of the film is an excuse for explosions, fights and gunplay is for that movie to be extremely boring. You might expect the movie to be stupid, as are all of the XXX movies, or it to have a ridiculous convoluted story that mostly makes no sense, corny over the top dialogue maybe, but never boring. The new movie “XXX The Return of Xander Cage” achieved this one rare feat of being boring and for the entire middle of this film, nothing really happened as it seemed that everybody in the film was sleepwalking through their part. I actually lost interest in the entire story at around the mid-point of this ridiculous movie. As far as the script for this bad film, it is all over the place and mostly makes very little sense. The entire process of getting from the beginning of this very bad film to the end, where there is some action is long and drawn out waste of time. I was looking at my watch the entire two hours hoping and waiting for the whole nightmare to be over.

Vin Diesel returns to the XXX series for the first time since 2002 as does Samuel L. Jackson. In 2005 Ice Cube took over the starring role in the movie “XXX: State of the Union” that was another bad movie and Ice Cube makes an appearance at the end of this film, that all movie goers pray will be the last in this series, but it probably will not be.

Run from this very bad movie that is a total waste of two hours.

Without a doubt, “Back To the Future” is the best science fiction movie about time travel ever made. The idea and the story of this movie are brilliant, using a Delorean car because of it was built with stainless steel, using plutonium and nuclear energy for power and then having to reach a speed of 88 miles before you are transported anywhere in time. On top of all of this, this movie is funny and that is rare for any quality science fiction film. It is hard to believe that it has been almost 32 years since this great movie came out in the summer of 1985. This movie is so good it spawned two sequels and the producers were confident enough in the box office for the first film that they almost guaranteed part 2 at the end of this movie. This movie is also one of the first big hits for Robert Zemeckis who did a great job directing this film.

Back to the Future is the high point for Micheal J. Fox in his movie career, he has made several other good movies, but nothing as good as this one. Christopher Lloyd is also at the top of this career in this movie as he is both funny and believable as the scientific genius who invents a time machine. Thomas F. Wilson who plays Biff is one of the best villain/bullies in movie history. Biff Tannen is as unlikeable as any fictional character I have ever seen in any movie and as hateful and miserable a human being as ever been portrayed. This movie is such a great escape because all of us like to see the bad guy get what he deserves in the end, that way too infrequently happens in real life.

Back to the Future is an American classic and if you have never seen it after all these years, you owe it to yourself to see it, at least once.

One of the problems as a young director if you have early huge success, which is what happened to M. Night Shyamalan in 1999 with “The Sixth Sense” is that if you make a movie that good with such huge box office success in the beginning of your career, you will probably be forever chasing success like that for the rest of your career. In my opinion, Shyamalan got very close with the movie “Unbreakable” in 2000 that had a very good story, a great conceptual idea that even involved comic books and a surprise ending, but this movie had nowhere near the box office success and critical acclaim as The Sixth Sense. I thought the movie Devil, that came out in 2010 and was written but not directed by Shyamalan was good but the overall result was not nearly as impressive as the Sixth Sense or Unbreakable.

Shyamalan’s latest movie “Split”, which he both wrote and directed is his first movie since “The Visit” is an attempt by Shyamalan to create something new, which is always the first and most difficult challenge any screenwriter has to overcome. There have been many movies about kidnapping or abduction, but this is probably the first movie where the insane criminal who kidnaps 3 young women has 23 distinct personalities and also makes regular visits to his psychiatrist played very well by Betty Buckley. The insane kidnapper with 23 personalities is impressively played by James McAvoy in what had to be the most challenging role of his entire career. I also appreciated the depth of the story here, showing not only a man with 23 personalities and one of the disturbed kidnapped women, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, but explaining through flashbacks throughout the film, how they got to be the way they are, by various forms of abuse during their childhood.

I noticed no real surprise ending that Shyamalan is famous for in this movie, as the conclusion of the story seemed to be a nothing out of the ordinary. Overall the acting is very good in this movie and I thought that the young actress Anya Taylor-Joy may have gotten her breakthrough role and should have a very promising career in the movies. She has very symmetrical looks and big eyes that are very dark and unusual. Her previous movie “Morgan” was not good, so its good to see her bounce back with this solid movie. There is a unique surprise in the ending of this film, involving the actor Bruce Willis, where he mentions “Glass Man”, which is a reference to the movie Unbreakable. I thought this idea to end this movie was very original, but many people who have not seen Unbreakable will probably not understand this reference.

I give a marginal recommendation for Split, mainly because of the solid acting and because of newcomer Anya Taylor-Joy