Unfortunately, as time went by, the Godzilla franchise lost sight of what made that first movie hit so hard, often dipping into campy production. Godzilla had lost sight of the grounded nature of the first film.

Don’t get me wrong, I love just about every Godzilla film for what they are, but there was something keeping many of the movies from breaking the B-movie mold. I will note that “Shin Godzilla” and the American-produced Godzilla films are some of the best in recent memory, definitely taking steps towards the glory of the original, however “Godzilla Minus One” puts just about all of these honorable mentions to shame, especially the American releases.

With a budget that director Takashi Yamazaki recently implied skewed under the originally reported 15-million-dollar mark, “Godzilla Minus One” manages to put some of the most impressive visuals in the franchise to screen. The movie doesn’t stop there either and instead takes a far less worn path for the franchise by spending time developing its cast of human characters.

You never quite care who gets squashed or splattered in the Godzilla films of past, and “Godzilla Minus One” seems to know that. For once, you’re rooting against Godzilla’s path of destruction. The movie almost feels like it’s concocted in a lab; just when you start to get an itch for Godzilla action, he’s there, but you’re never bored when he’s not.

I’ll admit, at first, I was a little iffy on the nature of the acting style from some of the cast, but they still succeeded at making me feel for them. At the end of the day, any problems I found with this film would feel like a nitpick, and I think the movie succeeded in everything it set out to do.

Very rarely is there a movie that goes above and beyond its predecessors in such a spectacular way. For once, I can say this movie is not just a great monster film, but a great film in general. The bar has been set, and the trajectory of Godzilla has been righted.

Spotlight Score: 10/10

My girlfriend, on the other hand, treated this movie as if it was the second coming. A longtime Barbie fan, she practically burst into tears of joy almost every time the trailer came on.

As the release date crept closer and closer, the hype train inevitably began to grab hold of me, and eventually, I hopped on the “Barbie” bandwagon. Now that “Barbenheimer” has officially arrived, here’s my take on the first half of that cinematic duo straight from someone who could’ve swore they would be more interested in the second.

Immediately, the movie is something to behold. Barbieland is filled with pastel-painted backdrops and brightly dressed inhabitants with just as colorful personalities. If you take nothing else from this review, it should be that this movie is stunning to look at.

The set design, the costumes, the choreography, and the music are aesthetically phenomenal. It immediately sucks you in with an incredibly charming introduction and a number of flashy dance sequences, so much so that when you have to leave Barbieland, it sort of deflates you, and for good reason.

The plot once Barbie hits the real world becomes a bit convoluted and unfocused. Narratively, it appears like the movie doesn’t know what to do with itself, which is unfortunate because the story it does provide is promising. If “Barbie” had scaled itself down a bit and stuck with a more singular narrative focus, I think it would have been more impactful and prevented the drag that comes mid-late runtime.

Luckily, the movie ends as strongly as it started, satisfyingly wrapping up characters and giving us a great, bombastic conclusion.

Of course, I need to mention the wonderful performances by the two leads, especially Ryan Gosling as Ken. Call me biased, but Gosling stole every scene he was in with his delivery of a bubbly, goofy Ken that was just a delight to watch. Margot Robbie also delivers an extremely impactful performance that manages to bring both depth and soul to a portrayal of a plastic doll.

I will say at first, I struggled to understand what the demographic was for this movie. “Barbie” is PG-13 and definitely leans into its rating with plenty of inside jokes and adult humor, some just shy of being outright crass. Through some rumination, I think the movie makes it clear who it’s for, though.

“Barbie” is a film for those who used to be fans of Barbie or grew up playing with her. A child will surely get decent mileage out of this movie – it’s bright and colorful, after all – but the intended message definitely hits hardest for an older audience who can fully grasp its well-delivered feminist themes.

I would implore skeptics not to blow off this film, especially if you’re a fan of the art of cinema.

Spotlight Score: 7.5/10 – I think that’s the highest rating I’ve given a movie for the Spotlighter

The real opening of the movie is actually very promising too. The use of practical effects and the charisma of leading man Chris Pine are fun, despite what feels like almost a parody of a generic tragic backstory that the movie sandwiches in-between wink at the audience-style gags. You’ll think nothing of this backstory at first, likely believing it will take a backseat to the swashbuckling the movie seems to promise. Unfortunately, you’ll find yourself mistaken.

The movie discards almost all promises of a good fun romp in favor of an overly serious and lore heavy crawl. I am not overly familiar with Dungeons and Dragons, other than through cultural osmosis, but I would assume that a dungeon master worth his salt would try and avoid well-trodden story lines like “fetch this item to defeat this powerful wizard” or “we must break into a fortress to get hidden treasure.” I could be wrong, but I just couldn’t shake that pervasive gut feeling.

“Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” doesn’t just take the most mundane elements from D&D either, but also from heist movies. All the classics are here from, “we need you for one more job” to the age-old, “we need a guy who can break into an (insert super secure safe no one has ever broken into ever here).”

These complaints would admittedly feel nitpicky if the cast had any semblance of chemistry. As characters are probably the most important part of Dungeons and Dragons, you would think this movie would put time into working out a cast who can play off each other nicely. A quality team chemistry can elevate plots that are otherwise barebones to new heights, especially if they come with an entertaining backdrop.

I don’t fault “Ocean’s Eleven” for being a generic heist movie, for example, because I enjoy the cast and their chemistry. The heist plot serves as a backdrop to seeing the characters interact.

Instead, “Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” ends up simply being pretty boring. While not aggressively bad or offensive, it assaults you with lore constantly and rewards you with very little character moments or general good times.

Maybe if you’re big into Dungeons and Dragons, you might get a kick out of the nearly endless references to the game. If you’re not though, I wouldn’t waste the trip to the theaters. 

Spotlight Score: 3.5/10

“Scream VI” is the latest movie in Hollywood’s era of embarrassingly obvious lack of ideas and original IPs. Sam and Tara Carpenter, along with their cannon fodder friends, are drawn back into the growing cult surrounding the Ghostface killer.

Unfortunately, it all plays out almost exactly in the way every Scream movie plays out, so the rehashed beats and meta theme will likely feel familiar. Nonetheless, the movie does offer up some entertainment and laughs that caught me off guard. Despite my initial reluctance at the general existence of this movie and its rehashing of a well-tread franchise, I found myself letting go and embracing the cheap entertainment of “Scream VI.”

The dialogue is what’s to be expected from a movie like this. “Scream VI” uses its fair share of, “How do you do, fellow kids?” lingo, but not as heavy-handedly as it could have. When the movie leans on that stereotypical dialogue, it did make me chuckle rather than groan too.

More often than not, people tend to see these movies for the violence rather than the characters, however. With that said, I was not disappointed with the kills. There’s some fun gore and great kills, something I remember feeling was missing from the last installment bar the final twenty minutes. The set pieces are also really fun, ranging from a packed train car on Halloween night to an abandoned movie theater. 

Not all is well with this aging horror franchise though, starting with the mystery at its center. “Scream VI” desperately wants to be a whodunnit, like the movies before it. It just doesn’t actually give any kind of clues as to who the Ghostface killer could be.

“Scream VI” goes so far as to have a character explicitly tell you that the identity of the killer is unknowable. This aspect really deflates the ultimately derivative reveal at the end because it’s already established that it could literally be anyone. When the moment of discovery finally comes, you simply don’t feel any sense of shock or revelatory understanding.

The flick also tries to be meta, also like the franchise efforts before it, and falls on its face. While “Scream VI” pokes fun at the fact that they’re in a slasher movie, it’s just that – a joke. The characters aren’t smarter or more knowledgeable about the situation, no matter how much they talk about horror movie cliches. Characters go down dark alleyways, split up and are generally unaware of their surroundings.

All of this is recipe for disaster, which I happened to find ridiculously entertaining. For example, this movie must take place in an alternate reality where guns are a relatively new invention, so people can’t fathom that they’re meant to be long range weapons. Characters literally run at each other with guns, leading to one moment at the end which made me laugh out loud with its ridiculousness.

Another point that made me laugh was the appearance of Jedi force ghost Billy Loomis, who plays the devil on the shoulder of Sam Carpenter that was shown in the last film. His appearance, despite sparsely used, is very jarring, deifying a random murderer that the franchise never felt it had future intentions for. The movie even pulls a “Last Jedi” with the very plastic-looking knife that Loomis used in the first movie. 

Despite all of those faults and goofy touches, I’m nonetheless grateful they were added in lieu of more traditional sequel beats. If you’ve liked the Scream movies up till now, I can’t imagine you being disappointed by this movie – force ghosts and eye-rolling ending in all.

Spotlight Score: 5.5/10

After actually seeing “Cocaine Bear” though, I am more than a little underwhelmed with the product. If, after first seeing the trailer, you wondered how the scriptwriters were going to make an entire film based on an urban legend-style true story about a bear who ate some quantity of cocaine one day, I’m here to tell you that they really didn’t. 

Filled to the brim with random side characters and poor acting, I found myself losing track of the all-filler plot. The real crime of it all is that the movie is painfully unfunny. It often felt like a modern “Saturday Night Live” sketch stretched out to over an hour and thirty minutes, with weird character choices and long roundabout ways of delivering mediocre jokes. 

I’m not kidding when I say “Cocaine Bear” has an overabundance of characters. The movie introduces a range of fodder to make a couple “Eek, it’s a bear! That’s not just any bear that’s a bear doing cocaine,” jokes before the bear kills them in over-the-top, gore-fueled ways. 

Along with the requisite bear jokes, there’s also the humor you expect from movies like this. The typical mixture of genital jokes, gross-out humor and just plain people swearing that always highlights these flicks. 

Continuing with that cookie cutter theme, there’s also a subplot with kids, as is apparently necessary for every piece of retro 80’s media to have post-Stranger Things. Unfortunately, this so happens to be the most shoe-horned inclusion I’ve seen in any recent movie, not exactly warranting the use of even more castmembers.

Try to forget all about those random characters that most viewers, and apparently the scriptwriters, don’t particularly care about for a minute though. Instead, let’s talk about the bear. It’s a big CGI bear that rampages between the cringey dialogue and weird subplots. 

A startling lack of practical effects were employed to make the bear a bit more grounded, making the parts where the movie tries to be tense or scary laughable. The bear stays as a CGI creation, even during the moments when it seemed well within movie magic to at least try and make it more realistic. Would it have been so hard to make a bear paw from practical effects or splice in footage of a real bear? If done correctly, that could have even gone a long way towards adding some more humor to the fairly bland movie as well. 

You do get a fair amount of bear action for your buck at least, but the character moments and plots are so boilerplate that anytime the bear isn’t on screen, you’ll be wishing it was a different movie.  

The ending actually tries to make you feel emotions too, which is probably when the movie got real laughs out of me. It roughly tries to transition into some kind of 80s “Goonies” movie in the last half hour after being a crude stoner comedy for the rest of the earlier runtime. 

All in all, if you think a bear doing cocaine is so hilarious that you’d like to hear people exclaim about it for an entire movie, you might get something out of this. Otherwise, you’ll probably find “Cocaine Bear” rather unbearable.

Spotlight Score: 2/10

If you thought this movie would be anything but trash, the opening “animation” (slideshow) that dumps out a weak set-up to the events of the movie will immediately dispel any doubts. Don’t worry if you miss it though, there’s a second intro to the movie. Don’t worry if you miss that one either, “Blood and Honey” doesn’t reference the material again.

If you had hoped to at least get some good gore or kills for your money, the movie has fooled you twice, shame on you. Standard slasher kills and cardboard cutout characters get old quickly, and the seemingly short runtime suddenly feels long.

Interesting enough, as this uninspired horror flick limped along, I began wondering if the movie’s blatant unoriginal exploitation of its humorous premise was actually making me more creative. The number of missed opportunities I caught left me wondering if the writers were simply that creatively bankrupt. I find it hard to believe that budget played a role in the failure of this movie.

Small things like writing “get out” in blood on windows felt like it could’ve been such an easy win. No one thought to write “oh, bother” instead or something that would add some kind of character to the film?

I could spend this whole review rewriting this movie, but therein lies the one saving grace – if there is one for this film. From a certain perspective, “Blood and Honey” feels like a Mad Libs movie that could be fun for people who are in on the joke. If you find amusement in mentally picking apart movies like I did, you might find some level of enjoyment in the film.

Overall, the movie just takes a fun premise and does nothing with it. Even an hour into “Blood and Honey,” I found myself pleading with the movie to give me some kind of twist, even a dumb one just so I could feel something, but it never came.

As a result, “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” is a really fun movie if you’ve somehow ever felt yourself imagining how you would create your own Winnie the Pooh horror film. You can sit back and think about the many missed opportunities and obvious plot points that the movie instead abandons during its runtime for bog standard, asylum level movie making.

Spotlight Score: 1/10