Caro the Movie Critic

Yeah, the summer movie season is about over as there are good indie movies out there such as Wind River , Ingrid Goes West , Good Time  (coming soon) and it is a taste of what sort of movies will get in the fall season from award contenders to blockbusters. However, to sum up the season, it is no question that it is better than last summer because last summer that there were one or two highlights. And, this year, there are just enough: about 5-7. But, you cannot discount the vast disappointments such as Baywatch and The Mummy . In this article, I am not going to rank my favorites but I'll highlight which movies were the ones that people were raving critically and commercially. And, a few of the losers will be highlighted that it had a critical reception but it did not do well audiences. But, more losers will just be plain bombs. WINNERS of Summer 2017: Marvel movies ( Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2  and Spider-Man: Homecoming ) Wonder Woman Baby Driver ...

Oh, man! To be quite honest, I did not know much about this movie except it starred Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen and O'Shea Jackson Jr. and Plaza's character goes west. So, I saw the trailer, got a taste of the tone of the movie and laughed a little bit as it connects social media to Plaza's character's state of life. I was worried, though, I thought it would be one-dimensional with Plaza being snarky and using her comical shtick to appeal to me and the audience. However, even though I don't like devoting a movie being good on one single component, I thought Aubrey Plaza's performance took the movie on another level with her unusual antics and her mental states that incorporates the humor with a social commentary that is executed real well and is finished real well. There's a lot more than I thought that was riding on this movie and it is an insightful comedy about how you handle yourself when it comes to the obstacles of social media. A mentally unsta...

I would love to go somewhere in Colorado and Wyoming one day in the future because I've never been. But, based on friends' praises, I trust them. However, after watching this movie, I may be hesitant because of the mystery that is going on for this movie. Nevertheless, this is from the director, Taylor Sheridan, who has written two great movies, Sicario and Hell or High Water , which were both in my top 10 in both years. So, I was excited for his directorial debut and also his next screenplay which concludes his own trilogy of stories told in different frontiers but wrapped around in a mystery. Even though this movie is not as great as Sicario and Hell or High Water , this is a chilling (no pun intended) and brutal drama that also extends into a more humanistic story about the characters. As US Fish and Wildlife Service agent Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) has come across a body on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, she tries to identify who it is. She is 18-year ...

I knew that director Steven Soderbergh was coming out of retirement to do another movie. I knew it because even though it was bitter to see him depart from his moviemaking, there was a thought that he could provide us some more original stories that will be shown in the theaters. Yes, he had made a couple of TV movies like the solid Behind the Candelabra . But, Side Effects , one of his best movies in his pedigree of movies, left a great impression. So, is he rusty or is he capable of making a good movie? I definitely think the latter because the movie has an independent feel to his caper flick, this is a fun independent caper flick that is somewhat similar to two of his Ocean's movies. It aims at a good, entertaining level with such precision thanks to the cast and his direction. It has been a tough life for Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum), a laid-off, divorced blue collar laborer. He has been let go from his job at Charlotte Motor Speedway and his ex-wife, Bobbi Jo (Katie Holme...

After a summer of some very solid movies and some disappointments, I was looking at the slate of fall movies and I concluded that there are very few standout movies that I am anticipating. Now, as you read this article, you may think that it is a bad thing but I think it is a good thing. It is because as I was looking at this slate of movies during these last four months of the year, there is a variety of movies from almost every other genre that I am looking forward to, both big-budgeted blockbusters and indie movies. I would not say, in comparison to last year, that many people will be excited but you glance at some of these trailers here with an open mind, then your curiosity will turn into attentiveness. Now, #1 is pretty easy to figure out which movie is actually my most anticipated. So, rather than addressing that as my number one. I will put out my most anticipated 10 movies list following that particular and predictable choice. Like I said, this is such a variety of genres...

The Conjuring franchise is slowly become somewhat of a horror phenomenon for its more original and subdued way of scaring your pants off in a non-cliched way. I liked the first movie very much and the second movie was good enough to recommend. However, it did not start well with the first Annabelle as its first spin-off was very bad at best, nearly a train wreck. So, when hearing about a sequel to this movie or a prequel to Annabelle,  I thought and asking myself, "Really? We need this?" So, I would give this spin-off franchise one more chance because I do not want derail my anticipation or hopes of another spin-off idea from the Conjuring from watching another bad Annabelle movie. I thought this movie had a decent plot but it is saved by solid performances and some creepy thrills the jolted me out of my seat that I had a good time to say I can recommend it but I do not want to maybe watch it on a repetitive basis. Back in 1943, Samuel Mullins and his wife, Esther, (Anth...

Stephen King is making a comeback this year with this movie and the movie, IT , coming out this September. I have to admit I have only a partial segment of a Stephen King book and that would be The Shining, and on writing, it is still a scary movie as a man is slowly creeping up to kill his family in an isolated hotel on a snowy night. But, as his genre is making a comeback, there is much speculation about the behind-the-scenes of the film as they distribute it on the Sony lot where the buzz of its early screening was not good. So, the Sony executives made a decision to shorten this movie that was adapted from the Dark Tower series. Think about it; a 4,000-page book into a 90-minute movie? Umm...yeah, from my experience of watching this movie, the movie felt like it was rushed with many scenes missing and instead the product is basically atmosphere, tone and two solid performances. Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor), an eleven year old boy who has had a traumatic year because of his fathe...

This movie. While I was researching this movie, I found out that this finished project was stored in the shelf for three years as Relativity Media was facing their financial crisis and was filing for bankruptcy. Here's the thing: ransom/kidnapping movies are inconsistent because sometimes the villain's antics do not make sense or the villain itself is not memorable, or the main character's logical plan to get his/her child goes "bananas". I had to admit that I was a bit skeptical about this movie because I have not seen Halle Berry in a main role in quite a while. Even though there are cheesy elements that I partly enjoyed, this movie felt like a throwback to B-movie-level kidnapping cliched fun but the production and the logic behind the movie and the plot respectively are ridiculous that I could not even give it the benefit of the doubt. Karla Dyson (Halle Berry) is a single mother of her son, Frankie (Sage Correa), as she works as a diner waitress to suppo...

Director Kathryn Bigelow's last two movies have gave us an outlook of different sides of both the Iraqi War and the hunt for Bin Laden. In The Hurt Locker, she gave us an inside look of how the soldiers handle the pressure while a combat but also when handling a bomb. Almost, every scene involving a bomb there is suspenseful. She gave us the same amount of suspense in Zero Dark Thirty in which the soldiers and a determined leading female character sacrifices their time and lives into hunting down Bin Laden. With her two great movies surrounding two real-life events, I have the confidence and anticipation of watching how Bigelow will handle her next project surrounding a real-life event. Now, she goes back into the 1960s in which she tackles the Detroit riots in which it is centered around the incident in the Algiers Motel. The movie is a harrowing experience to conceive, however, both Bigelow's and writer Mark Boal's ambitions are overwrought with so much tension that th...