You may — or may not — have noticed that for all the Argento films I’ve reviewed, I’ve never spoken about 1977’s Suspiria. This supernatural horror — not giallo — movie is hard for me to write about because it’s above reproach. It is, as I’ve mentioned about other films, an absolute movie, one whose kaleidoscopic and sonic assault — courtesy of Goblin — blast you from the moment the film begins. I can’t really say anything new or add anything that hasn’t been said and I doubt anyone wants to read me gushing about the colors or murders in the film ad nauseam. If you haven’t seen it, do so. Please watch it instead of this movie.

That’s the hardest part of this article. I am predisposed to hate this movie. And I’ve tried to be objective and open-minded, because in the past, I’ve hated movies before I even had the chance to watch them. I didn’t want this to be the case. I wanted to not be taken in by the hype or other reviews and watch this on its own merits. But I’ll be honest: it really has none. If it were a movie by any other name, no one would care about it.

Life is short and there isn’t enough time to tell people how much you love them or to enjoy all the magical art and fun there is in the world, so wasting two hours and thirty-two minutes on this meandering slop has me a little peeved. And that’s when I remember the indulgent reviews and the top movies of the year list that this topped. Have the standards for what makes a great movie really slipped so much in the last decade or two? Of course, they have. That’s a rhetorical question.

Now, I could raise issues like the fact that at no time did I know or care about the characters and their motivations, but in truth, the original has the same problems. It’s kind of patently ridiculous to complain about narrative structure when you’re discussing a film inspired by Argento.

Maybe I never danced. Maybe I don’t speak enough German. Or French. Maybe I don’t appreciate winter colors. These are the questions that, well, pirouetted through my head as I endured this movie. It had that dreaded moment where I paused the film, sure that this had to be the conclusion of the proceedings, only to discover I still had fifty-one minutes of pain left, minutes that would feel like the hand on the stove versus the time spent with a beautiful woman.

Let me see if I can summarize this: Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson, who has darkened my screen way too many times recently and yet I give her chance after chance, perhaps because her dad was the voice of Chuckles in GI Joe: The Movie and her mom was both Cherry 2000 and Holly Body) is a Mennonite from Ohio who gets into the Markos Dance Academy in West Berlin. The school is still recovering from the loss of another student, Patricia (Chloë Grace Moretz) who disappeared after she told her therapist Josef Klemperer that all of her teachers are witches.

Just a moment here to let you know that Tilda Swinton as Madame Blanc, Mother Helena Markos and Dr. Josef Klemperer (which she is credited for as Lutz Ebersdorf, with Eber meaning boar/swine and dorf meaning town, hence the last name is Swinton). You won’t be snowed by this stunt casting. In fact, you’ll notice it and keep wondering about it and it will make you escape the flimsy plot and wonder when you can put another movie in your blu ray player. It’s amazing to see Swinton in what manages to be an Eddie Murphy role, ala Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, where you keep saying, “Look, there she is. She’s in a man costume. Now she’s herself. Now she’s an old woman! Wow!” Except you don’t really say wow. There’s no moment that I uttered those three letters and I had plenty of running time to get them out of my mouth.

The truth is that the Three Mothers — Mater Tenebrarum, Mater Lachrymarum, and Mother Suspiriorum — are running things. Susie will be their instrument of taking out others, like Olga, who is basically turned inside out by dance. Supposedly this scene upset people so badly that they left. I have no idea why. I mean, it’s certainly gross, but nothing that blew my mind as was promised.

Also: why is there so much pee in this movie?

The witches all have an argument about who is in charge and decide that Mother Markos, an ancient crone who has controlled the coven for as long as anyone can remember, will remain in control and get a new body. All of the witches taunt a cop who comes to investigate and also have knives that look like rib bones.

All sorts of exploration — by another student named Sara — leads to her leg being broken and her switching eyes with Susie, then they all dance this performance called Volk. Sara dances robotically, controlled by the slowly giving in to evil person who we’ve been led to believe is our heroine. The dancing nearly kills everyone, because like fashion, dance is danger. As Klemperer escapes the performance, he meets up with his wife (original star Jessica Harper) who he thought long dead. In truth, she leads him back to the school.

I have no idea how to put together the end of all this, but damn, I’m gonna try. Susie renounces her mother, who dies somewhere in Ohio, just as that old woman — who has been on her deathbed for the entire movie — mentions that her daughter is the stain that she let loose on the world. That’s because everyone else is a false mother and Susie really is Mother Suspiriorum. Nearly everyone dies by being danced to death. There’s also so much red light in this scene that it becomes difficult to watch. This aspires to high art, one assumes. I could also be totally off and there’s some intricate meaning that I haven’t grasp, but I also compared this movie to an Eddie Murphy fart movie a few paragraphs ago.

Somehow, Blanc and Klemperer survive. Then, Susie comes to his bedside and explains how his wife died in a concentration camp before erasing his memories. Actually, I had no idea that that was what happened and Wikipedia was my friend, so there you go.

After the credits, Susie breaks the wall of reality and erases the audience’s memories, which is an awesome idea, because then they can forget the sheer boring snail race that they just crawled through. Sadly, I shut the movie off before this happened so I will have to always live with the Bataan Death March-like pain of this inept piece of offal.

Other than that, Mr. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?

Thanks for asking.

Before Luca Guadagnino directed this, David Gordon Green was attached, in his bid to ruin every auteur horror film that I have ever loved. He had to settle for last year’s Halloween, another movie I hope I never have to see ever again. Then again, seeing as how my wife just bought the DVD, all hope is gone.

I also have no idea what the Red Army Faction and Lufthansa Flight 181 subplot had to do with any of this. Maybe I’m on the side of Richard Brody from the New Yorker, who said that this movie “…has nothing to say about women’s history, feminist politics, civil violence, the Holocaust, the Cold War, or German culture. Instead, Guadagnino thrusts some thusly labeled trinkets at viewers and suggests that they try to assemble them. The result is sordid, flimsy Holocaust kitsch, fanatical chic, with all the actual political substance of a designer Che T-shirt.”

Suspiria desperately wants to be about something, anything, to appear to be a movie that matters. It is, to use that hoary old chestnut, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. As much as I like Radiohead, that sound here is blah. As much as I like drone, it doesn’t work here, as the soundtrack is bleats and blips against a grey canvas that does not inspire.

It might be about women. It might be about 1977. It might be about witches. But ultimately, it is a film about nothing. It has convinced some of the filmgoing public that it has deep and meaningful things to say. I’ve always seen the original as a haunted house on film — a bewildering odyssey into colors, noise and terror. It ends just like a real-life scarehouse — Jessica Harper’s Suzy is running away from the burning school, a smile on her face, breathlessly alive despite all she has witnessed. It’s the exhilarating thrill of someone working as hard as they can to scare you and the release that comes from that. None of those feelings were conjured here. The only one I received was relief that I could finally turn this off as the credits ran.

Plus, there’s also the issue of the film being sued for copyright infringement by the estate of artist Ana Mendieta, with a total of ten images being mentioned as direct lifts of the artist’s work. A settlement has been reached, but I guess true art still steals?

Guadagnino has mentioned making prequels and sequels to this film. There are no films I look forward to watching less, unless someone forces me to watch this again.

I have night terrors. Every few evenings, I wake Becca up as I start screaming. Usually, the dream that causes this to happen is one where I’m looking at the sky and suddenly see a UFO which begins to follow me. I’ve had this dream since I was a kid, when Battlestar Galactica ended with that disclaimer about Project Blue Book. I was convinced from them on that I was about to be abducted.

Strange other-worldly sounds are being heard echoing all over the Earth, so a group of researchers, led by expert ufologist Lorraine Gardner (Angela Cole, White Boy Rick), start tracking down the sounds to their point of origin and come face to, well, whatever face an alien grey has.

There are two scenes in here that are going to totally fuel the night terrors I mentioned before. First, a scene where the main characters sit in the grass and stare at the sky as a UFO fades away, hoping that it doesn’t come back. And then there’s an Emergency Broadcast System alert of an Unidentified Flying Object landing and its inhabitants attacking people. It feels real.

Otherwise, there’s a lot of screaming and teenagers in peril, facing off against Adobe After Effects powered spaceships and rubber suited aliens. That’s not a bad thing. I had fun with this and if you enjoy abduction or alien tales, you probably will too.

Fighting the Sky beams up to digital and DVD on February 5.

NOTE: The movie’s PR team sent this our way, but that doesn’t have any impact on our review.

Remember when Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction made their initial splash for Quentin Tarantino and studios rushed to get their own chopped up narrative films in theaters? Killing Zoe, 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, 2 Days in the Valley, Smoking Aces and plenty more, it seemed like everyone was trying to make a movie that didn’t follow a linear track, had overly erudite killers with a skewed moral code and plenty of strange MacGuffins. As if 1992 was back again, I threw Bad Times at the El Royale into our blu ray player and sat back to watch.

One night in 1969, on the California/Nevada border, seven strangers all spend the night in a shady hotel — the  El Royale itself. The hotel — which has seen better days — is split in half between the two states and is pretty much a “pervert hotel” now, although once it was home to the Rat Pack when they weren’t in Reno or Las Vegas (the hotel is based on the Cal Neva Resort and Casino that was once owned by Sinatra).

Catholic priest Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges), singer Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo, the best part of this movie), vacuum salesman Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm) and Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson) all arrive and wait for the hotel’s only worker, Miles Miller (Lewis Pullman).

Much like Tarantino, each section of the story overlaps and features title cards. It starts with the reveal that Sullivan is really an FBI agent who was sent to remove listening devices in one of the rooms. After finding double digits worth of them, he also discovers a tunnel filled with one-way mirrors and cameras that film everything in each room. Although he witnesses what he thinks is a kidnapping in Emily’s room, he is told by no less than J. Edgar Hoover himself to not interfere and to sabotage all of the vehicles so that no one can leave until he finds a critical piece of film. However, he can’t stop himself from trying to rescue Emily’s captive, who ends up being her sister, Rose (Cailee Spaeny). Emily ends up blowing him away with a shotgun.

Meanwhile…

Father Flynn and Sweet have dinner at the hotel’s automat diner. She notices him spiking her drink, so she knocks him out and tries to escape. As she watches Emily murder Sullivan, he recovers and discovers the hidden hallway and Miles confesses that the management of the hotel has asked him to film incriminating moments. However, he has kept one film that incriminates a recently killed public figure. As Miles watches the hostage situation in Emily’s room, he catches buckshot from her killing Sullivan right in the face.

Sweet tries to escape, but the cars have all been played with. Father Flynn gets into her car and reveals that he’s really a criminal who has spent the last ten years in jail only to learn that he has dementia. He knows that his brother (Nick Offerman) has hidden money in the hotel, but he has no idea which room it’s in. He offers to split the money if she’ll let him in her room. As she sings (this scene took over twenty takes of live singing), he finds the money.

Emily and Rose discover the tunnel and start to question Miles, who somehow survived. The older sister has removed the other from a cult run by Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth, who even has his own Hairdresser to Mr. Hemsworth employee in the credits), a Manson-esque figure who is responsible for the killings we keep seeing on the TV in the hotel’s bar. Even worse — he’s on his way to the El Royale.

The killer and his cult arrive, playing a brutal game of roulette with the lives of the survivors. After a Mexican standoff — yes, another Quentin trope — lives are lost, people are absolved and a few people survive.

This is 2 hours and 21 minutes long and the last act feels like forever, with near glacial pacing. At first, I defended it to my wife that everything was leading to this. However, it went on. And on. And then on some more.

This movie was written, produced and directed by Drew Goddard, who also directed The Cabin in the Woods as wrote Cloverfield and adapted World War Z for the screen. He was also part of Deadpool 2 and will be working on the next sequel, X-Force.

TV lovers will enjoy seeing William B. David (the Cigarette Smoking Man from The X-Files) show up as a judge and Jim O’Heir (Jerry from Parks and Recreation) as Reno host. These are simply cameos, but still nice to see these actors in a major movie.

Some may enjoy this film, but the more I thought of those unremarkable wannabe Tarantinos, the more this film felt like it fit right in. It’s certainly not a bad film, but it’s not one that you need to go out of your way to see. It just is. With time so limited these days, I feel like things have to be better than just fine.

Teen punks, on the run from the cops and hiding out in the woods, face off against the local authority– an unhinged park ranger with an axe to grind. I’ve been wanting to see this movie for awhile — how can you not want to see a film with this tagline? “Each year, millions visit our national parks. Not everyone gets to leave.”

After the police raid their favorite club — and one of them stabs a cop — a gang of punks decide to hide out at Chelsea’s (Chloe Levine, The Defenders) dead uncle’s cabin. There’s an initial confrontation The Ranger (Jeremy Holm, Mr. Robot, House of Cards) who is kind to our heroine (a flashback shows him cutting off the crusts of a sandwich for her and asking to be remembered as the cops arrive), yet in the face of everyone else.

This is Jenn Wexler’s debut feature and it totally has the punk rock feel of Return of the Living Dead, which is a huge compliment. Plus, in this interview, music supervisor Middagh Goodwin talked about just how important it was to have a great soundtrack that would lead to viewers discovering some great punk bands.

That same park ranger who helped Chelsea years ago has now gone completely off the rails and is ready to stop these punks from vandalizing his park, much less blasting loud music and tossing their beer cans everywhere. It’s not like he didn’t warn them from the beginning.

Holm is just great in this, a true joy to watch. It’s interesting to see a slasher villain who isn’t tormented or disfigured or conflicted about what he does. He tells one of his victims that he’s sorry that things had to be this way, but he has a job to do keeping these woods clean — and then he heartily chuckles.

A lot of the story has to do with what exactly happened between Chelsea, her uncle and The Ranger. Did she shoot him? Was he killed by wolves? Can she even trust herself with all the junk in her system and the way her memories have been hidden?

I really dug this one. It’s a film that throws it back to the slasher 80’s but certainly could have fit within it. It’s a bit smarter than your average slasher was, but has no shortage of gore along the way.

You can grab The Ranger at Redbox now, pre-order the DVD or blu ray at the official site or just wait until it shows up on Shudder later this year.

Hell Fest is unapologetically a slasher film, bringing together six teenagers to be stalked, slashed and brutally offed by a masked killer who never speaks, only mumbles a child’s song and has no apparent motivation other than the need to kill. This fact has been harped on by nearly every reviewer — it’s derivative and has no explanation for the villain. Obviously, none of them were around for the slasher cycle. This is a film that has no need to be elevated or called anything other what it is — a popcorn horror movie that’s out to entertain you by any means necessary. It’s exactly what I hoped for — a competently made film with plenty of jump scares and no shortage of the red stuff.

Hell Fest is a traveling horror theme park that — for now — is making its home in Cincinnati (that said, the film is shot in Atlanta, using the Six Flags Over Georgia’s Fright Fest decorations and the haunters from the Netherworld Haunted House). A young girl is separated from her friends and soon murdered by The Other (Stephen Conroy, who has quite the resume for his stunts). As the camera pulls back from her corpse, we notice that she’s now become a prop in the haunted house.

Natalie (Amy Forsyth, who braved the No End House on the SyFy show Channel Zero) comes back to town to ger former apartment where her best friend Brooke is now living with Taylor (Bex Taylor-Klaus, Dumplin’). Our heroine doesn’t get along with the new roomie and the feeling is mutual. But things have been off lately — instead of partying, she’s only cared about school and work. But this weekend, she’s here for a good time, which means that she gets set up with Gavin as the girls get VIP wristbands for Hell Fest, along with Brooke’s boyfriend Quinn and Taylor’s man Asher.

Natalie first notices The Other in line, as a girl insults the haunters and yells at the killer. He steals a snow cone knife and stalks her through a maze as the girls are seperated from the boys. In the last section of the haunt, that very same girl appears and they think she’s just one of the actors. The Other kills her in front of Natalie, who demands that she just get it over with, not knowing that she’s seeing the real thing.

The killer stalks the group as they move through the massive Hell Fest, including stealing photos of Natalie and Gavin making out in a photo booth. As the teens move into the more intense sections of the park — the Dead Lands — The Other begins offing them one by one. But he’s also pretty inventive, stealing Gavin’s phone to stay in touch with Natalie. As the group rides into the next section of the park, it’s revealed that there are many Others and it’s simply a mask worn by employees.

However, after a haunter dressed as The Fly sprays Natalie with goo, she cleans herself up in the bathroom while reconnecting with her best friend Brooke. She texts Gavin and hears his phone beep in the next stall, revealing that The Other has been after her the whole time. There’s a great part here where she’s drying her hair and we just see him show up and touch her hair and disappear that’s incredibly well shot.

They try and inform security, but the guard tells them if he arrested every employee that scared someone, there wouldn’t even be a Hell Fest. While all that’s going on, Taylor agrees to be beheaded on stage as part of a magic show. The girls believe that the killer is really going to get her, but it’s all part of the act…until the killer reveals himself backstage.

Taylor escapes, only to be sliced up in public, causing a panic and the two final girls — Natalie and Brook — go on the run from The Other.

The best part of this film? Tony Todd plays The Barker, whose voice is in every ride and attraction, as well as appearing on stage for the magic show. It’s always a joy to see him in any film and his distinctive speech pattern made me applaud from my couch.

What really pushed this movie forward for me was the skill that director Gregory Plotkin (who edited Get Out and Happy Death Day) and cinematographer José David Montero displayed. There’s plenty of moody fog and Bava-esque lighting, as well as the kind of stalk and slash jump scares that I felt the Halloween remake was sorely missing.

Hell Fest is nothing more than a slasher in the best traditions of the genre. And that’s exactly what it should be. There’s an eye decimating kill that will please Fulci fans, someone’s head gets smashed open with a hammer and all manner of folks are placed in danger by a killer who could really be anyone. Sure, there could have been more subtext. Of course, there could have been more motivation. But really, all we want out of a haunted house is to show up, be scared and have plenty of fun. This movie does exactly what it was made to do and does it quite well.

After being denied the bonus and getaway that he was promised, a low-level mobster is nearly killed by the boss that he’s trusted for his entire life. Now, he’s coming back to get what’s rightfully his by force in writer/producer/director Ashley Scott Meyers’ latest movie.

Known for the film Ninja Apocalypse and writing Snake Outta Compton, Meyers is also behind the site Sell Your Screenplay. Here, he tells the story of Rob (Gunner Wright), who is trying to get what’s his from Kain (James Aston Lake, who did stunts in Deadpool).

Rob had been a courier for Kain and was caught by the police, but agreed to stay quiet and just go away. However, Kain sends killers after him instead. The cops are also on their way to try and get everyone put away while Rob’s girl Gina (Candice Bolek) is caught in the middle.

This movie aspires to be a Tarantino-esque film despite its low budget. James Ashton Lake is pretty funny in his role, but it feels like there could have been a bit more twists and turns in the tale. I’m also not a fan of CGI gunshots and wounds over practical effects, but understand the budgetary concerns.

You can watch this for free with an Amazon Prime membership.

Note: I was sent this movie by its PR team but that has nothing to do with this reviewer’s thoughts.

Damian Seryph (Leo Wyatt from TV’s Charmed and Sleepwalkers) is a police detective with a haunted past and a head full of visions he can’t understand. As he investigates a series of cult murders, he learns that they worship the four king demons of Hell and are planning on bringing them to Earth to start the Apocalypse. Can he come to grips with both his birthright and destiny?

With a name like Damian Seryph, he better! He soon learns that “The stories are real and Lucifer came to Earth to start his bloodline. To protect all of us!” By the end of the film, he’s the “devil of devils,” arms tattooed with symbols that can become filled with fire and ready for a few sequels.

Along the way, there are plenty of Satanic rituals and even some Elizabeth Bathory style bloodletting into a bathtub, for those that enjoy that sort of thing. It’s a pretty decent film — sure, it’s made on a smaller budget, but if that stops you from enjoying movies, why are you even on our site?

The Demonologist will be available on Demand starting January 1.

DISCLAIMER: I was sent this movie by its PR team, which has no bearing on my review.

Directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, Gangster Squad), Venom has appeared on plenty of worst of lists this year. I held back judgment until I saw the movie. I can sum it up in one word: underwhelming. But after all, who was clamoring for a Venom movie after Spider-Man 3? Who was needing one in 2018? And after the magic of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, why do filmmakers feel they can still be so lazy with superheroes?

That said, Venom is critic proof. After all, it was a box office success, ultimately earning $855 million worldwide, becoming the fifth highest-grossing film of 2018.

It all comes down to one good thing: Tom Hardy. It’s like this dude has to have the craziest voices in movies. His Eddie Brock voice is just the most need to please accent ever, while Venom, in his own words, is a “James Brown lounge lizard.” The relationship between these two characters — who become one person — is the best part of the movie. Hardy also improvised a lot, such as when he jumps into a lobster tank to cool down. I kind of love that the dude was pretty much making up his own film. The actor claimed that he based his performance on Woody Allen, Conor McGregor and Redman.

Everything else — from the villains to Eddie Brock’s relationships — is as generic as it gets. Big points for having Jenny Slate in here, even if she does nothing. It’s like the film felt it had to give us an origin when all we want to see is Venom break stuff. The end of the film, where he eats a criminal and meets Cletus “Carnage” Kasady (and come on, who doesn’t want to watch Woody Harrelson against Hardy in a battle of accents and overacting) is exactly what everyone really wants, not nearly two hours of generic soldiers and Venom battling Elon Musk.

In the spin of selling this movie, Columbia Pictures president Sanford Panitch claimed that “Venom was considered a spin on a horror film, inspired by the works of John Carpenter and David Cronenberg, but with more pop and fun.” People that say these kinds of things have never seen films by these two directors. Get their words out of your mouth and make better movies.

The hard part of this whole thing is that there’s a tease of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which will either make you say, “I should have just watched that” or “Man, that was such a better movie.”

You know what is great about this movie? The Asian ad campaign, that promised that Venom was the best boyfriend ever. This ad above? It says, “Life’s most beautiful moment is the instant when I hold up an umbrella for you.”

The non-awesome thing? The Eminem theme for the movie. It gets stuck in your head. But it’s so bad — va-va-Venom? Wow. Really?

Have I ever mentioned how much I love Predator? Maybe. I definitely mentioned how much I love Predator 2. Hell, I even talked about how much I like Predators. So when it comes to a reboot of the franchise, it better be something amazing. I’ve heard so many bad reviews of this movie — directed and written by original writer Shane Black with help from Fred Dekker — that I avoided it until it came out on DVD.

The truth is, it’s fine. But for a Predator movie, it better be way better than fine. It’s a movie that has trouble trying to figure out if it’s a buddy comedy, an alien movie or an action film. The original film went up against those odds and knew when to subtly go from a testosterone-fueled epic to a horror movie. This one doesn’t manage that quite as well.

It all starts with a Predator ship crashes on the Earth in the middle of Army Ranger sniper Quinn McKenna’s (Boyd Holbrook) team’s hostage rescue mission. You know how snipers work in the field in the middle of hostage rescue instead of being off on their own taking out targets. That isn’t the only military error here — Nettles discusses flying Hueys when the Army discontinued their usage in 1984 and switched to the UH-60 Blackhawk.

But anyways, McKenna hurts the Predator long enough to send its armor to his PO Box so that he has proof of alien existence when he’s taken by government agent Will Traeger (Sterling K. Brown) and sent to military prison.

Meanwhile, evolutionary biologist Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn) has been recruited to study the Predator alongside Sean Keyes, the son of Peter Keyes (Jake Busey, whose dad Gary played Peter in Predator 2). The alien wakes up and wipes out the lab, except for Casey who finds the bus full of military prisoners and escapes.

Those escapees include former Marines Gaylord “Nebraska” Williams (Trevante Rhodes, Moonlight), Coyle (the always welcome Keegan-Michael Key), Lynch (Alfie Allen, brother of Lily), Baxley (Thomas Jane, this character was named for the stunt coordinator of the first movie and whose Tourette’s was as a tribute to Black’s wife) and Nettles. They go to find McKenna’s ex-wife Emily (Yvonne Strahovski from TV’s Chuck) and son Rory (Jacob Tremblay, who was amazing in Room), an autistic child who found the package and has already used to blow up a house on Halloween. 

When they arrive, the Predator’s dogs ambush them. Just when they are about to give the alien his armor back, a larger Predator arrives to kill the first and lets them go. Soon, however, it realizes that the stolen alien equipment it seeks is with the military men.

Because no one can leave well enough alone, it turns out that the Predators are taking DNA from different planets and using it to make themselves better, faster, stronger and more like the Hulk. This goes against the theme of the Predators looking for sport in their hunt, which is presumably why the first Predator was here to give something to humans.

The big green Predator kills just about everyone other than Quinn, his son and Dr. Casey before they figure out how to take him out. In the end, Rory is helping the government translate the Predator’s language and it turns out that the equipment is a suit of armor that can kill Predators.

There were two different reshoots of the film, with the entire third act being reshot after test screenings hated the original finale. Black wanted there to be two versions of the home release — Predator AM and Predator PM, as the film’s original ending was during the day — but the studio didn’t want to pay to complete the special effects.

The original ending had the military prisoners and the army teaming up with even more good Predators to fight the upgraded Predator and other hybrids, which the fugitive was trying to steal and keep from the upgraded Predators. Edward James Olmos was a general in these scenes, as are plenty of moments in the trailers, which were all cut. Supposedly this third act was too talky, but cutting it out resulted in plenty of holes in the story and continuity errors.

Sadly, the original script ended with Quinn, Casey and Rory healing after defeating the upgraded Predator when a helicopter lands. Dutch, played by Arnold himself, would step out and say, “Come with me.” Sadly, Arnold read the script and turned it down.

Behind the scenes, this wasn’t without controversy. Director Shane Black hired his longtime friend, Steven Wilder Striegel for a minor role, despite Wilder being a registered sex offender since he pled guilty into trying to lure a 14-year-old girl into having sex over email. A few days before the film was finally edited, Olivia Munn learned of this and asked that he be removed from the film. At first, Black defended his actions until the backlash forced him to go back on his arguments. Of the actors in the film, only Sterling K. Brown initially stood with Munn.

The other issue is that there’s a thesis in the film that kids with Asperger’s and autism are actually the next level of evolution, which would be nice if it had any science behind it. I’m certain that parents of these children may not agree with this story.

I wanted to enjoy this movie. I did, but throughout, it felt like a failed opportunity for one of my favorite film series to be essential. Instead, it’s a throwaway that I won’t remember for long. And that’s pretty sad.

The thing I hate about superhero movies is the origin story. After a multitude of Spider-Man stories, do we really need another retelling of his origin? That’s the first — of many — things that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse does right. Much like how Grant Morrison retold Superman’s beginnings in one page in All-Star Superman, this movie tells you everything you need to know within one minute and goes right into the action. It expects you to know the expected, but then once it makes you feel comfortable, it tears the rug out from under you.

Here’s the low down for those of you that don’t read comics: there’s more than one reality and more than one version of Spider-Man, who may not always be a man. Written by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who left Solo due to creative differences, this movie is pure joy from start to finish. If you know and love the characters, it’s so amazing to see them treated properly on the big screen. And if you don’t, it’s so much fun to meet all new versions of a character you already love.

Beyond the Spidey you know and love, there’s Miles Morales, a gifted teen who struggles to fit into a new school. He loves Spider-Man, is often at odds with his parents and looks up to his uncle Aaron. While working on graffiti, he’s bit by a radioactive spider and suddenly has the same abilities as his hero.

After a tragic incident when the real Spidey battles the Kingpin as that baddy tries to uses a particle accelerator to bring back his lost wife and son, Miles must take on the mantle of a hero while working alongside the Spiders of other dimensions: Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man Noir, Peter Porker the Spectacular Spider-Ham, and Peni Parker and SP//dr.

The voice talent in this movie is absolutely amazing: Lily Tomlin is the best Aunt May ever, Nicholas Cage steals the show as Spider-Man Noir, who is from a world where it’s always black and white and smells like rain and it was great to hear comedian John Mulaney as Spider-Ham.

There’s so much of this movie that perfectly translates the language of comics in a way that few films have succeeded in accomplishing. Ang Lee’s The Hulk came close, but the animated styles of this film are constantly moving and even more alive than real action.

It’s also the first time I’ve seen a teenage world in a superhero movie that feels vibrant and now. Nothing feels fake, phony or forced about the school scenes. And the music is just as powerful as the film.

Of all the Stan Lee cameos in the Marvel films, the one here feels the most organic and perfect. It brought a tear to my eye when he sold Miles the costume and told him that all the costumes eventually fit. Kudos to the producers for remembering both Lee and Steve Ditko at the film’s end.

In case you didn’t pick it up, I give this movie my highest recommendation. While Infinity War may be the best Marvel movie ever, you need to have seen every single Marvel movie ever to get that. This is the kind of film that Becca could watch and enjoy without needing to open a single comic, which is just how she likes it. It’s not only the best animated movie I’ve seen this year, it may be the best movie overall.