I thoroughly enjoyed “Unsane.” The movie starts with a simple enough premise about a young women (Claire Foy), living on her own in a new city, struggling and feeling a little lost and depressed. She goes into see a therapist and ends up, mistakenly, so it seems, getting checked into an inpatient facility for observation. As a therapist, I kept cringing because I would never want people to watch this and think a person could go in and see a therapist, making super vague statements about depression and not wanting to live a life where she felt this depressed and automatically getting checked-into an inpatient facility. You share Claire Foy’s journey and feel scared and outraged but as the movie continues to unfold, you start to question what is the truth/reality. It is an intriguing premise and such fun to watch this film and not know exactly what is going on and whose reality is the “true” reality.

Jay Pharoah (SNL) is excellent as the trusted friend on the inside. Some people had issues with the fact that this movie was shot entirely on an iPhone. I personally thought it was fine to watch and looked and felt really good considering it was shot on a phone. It almost gave it a vintage, old-school feel, which I liked. Sometimes movies look too clean these days on the big screen, so I appreciated the more real look of the movie.

Grade: B+

I will admit, you give me a movie with Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams together and there is a slim-to-none chance that I’m going to hate it. I will see almost anything with either of these individuals, so put them together and you have one of my theatrical dream-team duos. It’s actually hard to believe that they haven’t done anything before together since they had a natural ease with each other in this film. “Game Night” is a very funny movie. It is strong from the start and doesn’t really ever fizzle out. It was great to Jesse Plemons and Kyle Chandler together again as a huge Friday Night Lights fan. I enjoyed see Plemons in a more comedic role. He was hysterical playing the odd neighbor you never want to invite over. The story got a bit absurd towards the end but overall was an engaging story with a steady stream of humor and jokes.

Grade: B+

There is very little to not like about this movie. It’s a fairly straight-forward story (no pun intended) about a teenage boy who is gay but hasn’t yet come out to his friends or family. He starts communicating with another student at the school who is also gay but who also hasn’t come out yet. The movie is part teenage comedy, party romantic comedy and part mystery as you are trying to figure out who this secret love interest is throughout the film right along with Simon. I found a few aspects towards the end of this movie a bit less plausible and inserted only to create drama for the movie but other than that, a thoroughly enjoyable film.

Grade: A-

This movie quietly snuck into the theatres during the ruckus of Oscar season and I missed it. If you go into “Annihilation” thinking you are about to see a movie like last year’s “Arrival,” guess again. You are actually going to see something more akin to “Alien.” “Annihilation” is shot going back and forth in time, dropping us in the middle, and going back to the beginning to see how we got to the current point in time. Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac are great (as always). A lot is unknown while watching this and some questions get answered, a lot do not. The journey is beautiful, scary, tragic and a lot unnerving. Is it an alien movie? Is it about the balance of mother nature? Is it about the end of our world? 

Grade: 75% of the movie (the first 75%) gets an A, the last 25% gets a C+

As a fan of the book, I was disappointed with Ready Player One. Although it was an exciting movie and visually very slick, it took almost all of the “heart” of the book out of it and inserted it with action. Instead of building up the story, it dropped you in right away to the hunt and the action. Every place it could have slowed things down or focused more on the story, instead of the action, it chose to have another chase scene. I enjoyed seeing Mark Rylance as the eccentric Halliday. The cast was excellent with a special shout-out to Lena Waithe (from “Master of None”). If I hadn’t read the book or were more into the sci-fi aspects of this story, I’m sure the rating for this movie would have been higher, but this just ended up being a disappointment for me.

Grade: C-