Death Wish

Free Solo
Directors: Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Released: September 28, 2018

Oscar nominations:
Best Documentary (Won)

I don't mean to start out this review with such a morose statement, but I predict that the guy who this documentary revolves around will be dead by the time he's 40. Alex Honnold is 33 at the moment and he's known for free soloing which is where you rock climb without any ropes or basically any kind of safety gear. Sounds pretty stupid if you ask me. Two years ago he became the first person ever to free solo El Capitan, a massive rock formation in Yosemite National Park and it was captured on camera and thus this documentary was born. I vaguely remember hearing about this on the news when it happened.

Before I started watching this, I checked to see if he was still alive (I didn't know for sure!) He is, but even knowing that it still made me nervous while watching him climb so high without any safety gear! I can't imagine that they would still release the film if he had died. I mean, they wouldn't do that, would they?

In the mid-2000s, Honnold free soloed cliff walls  around 1,500-2,000 feet tall and this is where he started becoming known to people who follow this kind of thing (unlike me!) He has his eyes set on El Capitan because nobody has ever free soloed it and it seems like the reason that has never happened is because it seems impossible (and very dangerous!) They talk to a mountain climber (one of many they talk to and I don't remember any of their names) who has climbed El Capitan many times and he said he would never free solo it, although he has free soloed many other mountains in Yosemite.

Of course it would be stupid for Honnold to climb this mountain sans safety gear on his first try and the film documents him climbing it many times with ropes and harnesses and taking copious notes. We see pages and pages of a notebook filled with pretty much every little detail you can find on the mountain. It kind of reminds me of a playbook coaches uses in football games because he's using it to plot every move he'll make when he'll eventually free solo it. He has to assess every crack and crevice on the rock wall (some just barely big enough to hold only your big toe!) and determine which maneuver will be the safest. We see him fall on many of his trial attempts, but luckily he is attached to ropes so these trial runs are quite important! I don't remember if they said how many times he climbed El Capitan in the film, but I watched a TED talk he did and he said he climbed it 50 times within the last decade.

The mountain is divided into "pitches" and each one is given a name. One of his dilemmas while free soloing El Capitan will have to be choosing between "The Boulder Problem" route or "The Glass Wall" route. Both are very scary and seem impossible for someone free soloing. Also, both are high enough that if he falls, he's dead. In "The Boulder Problem", he will have very narrow crevices to work with and will have to know exactly how he plans to maneuver his arms and legs on each crevice. I think he even mentions that there's a small crevice just barely big enough to put his toe on. Towards the end of this pitch, he'll have to do a karate kick to reach a bigger rock he needs to get to and really stretch his leg to get to it. "The Glass Wall" is exactly what it sounds like: it will literally be like trying to climb a glass wall. In the end, he will choose "The Boulder Problem" route. I guess it was the lesser of two evils. There's another pitch called the "Monster Offwidth" where he says in order to get through it you have to do these crazy yoga poses and if you can't hold them, then you will die. It almost looks like he's climbing straight up a chimney because he's between these two narrow vertical rocks. It looks very claustrophobic to me! Needless to say this guy is in pretty good shape. While that is important, it still won't stop you from making a fatal mistake!

His camera crew consists of other mountain climbers and people who know him pretty well and this will be the first time one of his climbs will be documented. Even they have to assess the mountain to know where they're going to set the cameras and where they will film him. They are nervous because they don't want to accidentally kick a rock out of place or anything that could drastically change Honnold's outcome. They are also nervous about filming him because knowing he has a camera on him could add more pressure to Honnold and he could lose his concentration which is something he needs 100% of when doing something like this. While his family and close friends are supportive of him, none of them are thrilled that he wants to free solo this massive rock (or any formation of rock, really). His mom says she doesn't even want to know when he'll be free soloing or else she'll just be worrying while it's going on. His rock climbing friends tell him he does not have to do this; that he doesn't owe anybody anything. His camera crew friends are super nervous about filming this crazy expedition. You can't really blame anybody for being scared about his determination to accomplish this crazy feat because it's mentioned that every free solo climber (at least the well known ones) are now all dead. We get a little montage of how this one died and how that one died (yeah, basically they all fell off a mountain to their deaths). Some were in their 50s when they perished, others only in their 20s or 30s.

The person I feel the most bad for is his girlfriend, Sanni, who he met at a book signing in Seattle. Now I don't know how long they had been dating when we see them discussing his upcoming free solo climb and he says having her in the equation will not change his mind about free soloing El Capitan. It seems like they had been dating long enough that they bought a house together in Las Vegas so it seems like it's somewhat of a serious relationship. At the beginning of the movie Honnold is asked if he has a girlfriend and he says he's headed in the direction of having one, so I can only assume that part was filmed when he first met Sanni (if this is the same woman he's talking about) and he says he will always choose rock climbing over any woman. Ouch. Now, again, this was presumably filmed before they started having a serious relationship, but if I were that girl, I would be a little ticked off if I saw that. If I were her I would dump his sorry ass because he does not seem to care at all that she doesn't want him to do this because she's scared for his life. He's determined to do this whether or not anyone else wants him to or not. She is relieved (of course!) when she gets the phone call from him once he has successfully scaled the mountain and repeatedly tells him she is proud of him. Now I have no idea if they're still together or if he retired from the dangerous sport once he completed his White Whale of free solo climbing. He does mention that there's always a mountain bigger than the previous one that someone will try to attempt. He seems to make a good amount of money from sponsors so he could comfortably settle down, but the question is, does he want to? I think she would be stupid not to dump him if he does continue to free solo because why put yourself through that constant worry and trepidation?

I wouldn't say that Honnold doesn't seem to care about the possibility that he could die, but it almost seems like he doesn't care about the possibility that he could die. He seems more concerned that his friends would have to witness it if it did happen. He is not a reckless climber by any means as he thoroughly did his homework on El Capitan and knows how to turn his full attention to what he's doing while climbing, but that still won't stop you from the possibility of falling because any small wrong move you make could mean the end of your life. We see him get a scan of his brain and apparently his amydala doesn't get stimulated very much which could explain why he free solos, but it seems like he doesn't do other thrill seeking activities like bungee jumping or sky diving (though maybe he finds those too safe!)

He first attempts to free solo El Capitan in the fall of 2016 and wakes up super early when it's still dark outside. The thinking is they want to start at a certain time so the sun won't be in his eyes during critical moments of the climb. It's still dark when he decides to bail. I don't know exactly how high he was, but I think if he had fallen at that point, he would have only broken some bones. I guess he didn't feel comfortable going on with the climb, plus all the cameras were making him nervous. On the day of the accomplished climb, they reconfigure the cameras so they're not as obvious, though at certain points you see him saying something to the camera so they're not that hidden. I have to wonder if the complete darkness was the reason why he bailed the first time because this time it's daylight when he starts out. Yes, he had a flashlight on his helmet, but it was pitch dark!

He completed the task two years ago on June 3, 2017. It only took him just under four hours to climb up almost 3,000 feet which seems pretty fast to me...but what do I know. I literally know nothing about rock climbing. We see about maybe twenty minutes of the actual climb and the film speeds up at times (through the "boring" parts, I guess). We see him successfully complete "The Boulder Problem" and all the other scary parts of the mountain. One of the cameramen at the bottom who had his camera on a tripod turns around for the majority of Honnold's climb (pretty much when he's high enough to kill himself if he falls). I can't blame the poor guy; I knew Honnold survived this climb while watching it and even I was getting super nervous! I can only imagine how nerve-wrecking it was to be there while it was happening live. He (the stressed-out cameraman) said he would never do anything like this ever again.

To everyone's great relief, Honnold makes it to the summit and that is when he calls his relieved girlfriend. We never see how he gets down, though. Did a helicopter take him back down? Did he take the steps in the back? Did the two cameramen who were up there have an extra set of ropes? I hope he didn't have to free solo down the mountain!

I hope he doesn't feel any pressure to have to climb a mountain that's taller and more terrifying than El Capitan; I think he should just retire. He already accomplished his dream and lived through it and he might not be so lucky the next time or the time after that. It's just not worth it to gamble with your life like that!

Looking Back at Tragedy

We Are Columbine

Director: Laura Farber

Released: various dates in 2018 at different film festivals

The twentieth anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings was not that long ago (how is that possible? It seems like the ten year anniversary was only last year!) and I found this documentary on Hulu. The director is a former student of Columbine and she graduated in 2002, so, if you do the math, she was a freshman when the murders occurred. She interviews four of her former class of '02 classmates (two boys and two girls), a teacher who started his first year at Columbine as a freshman English teacher during the '98/'99 school year (yikes!), but is still teaching there, and Frank DeAngelis, who was the principal from 1996 to a few years ago when he retired.

So before you're wondering if any of the former students interviewed were in the library where ten of the thirteen murders and the two suicides occurred, no, they were not. Three of them were in their classes and one of them was in the cafeteria. The girl who was in the cafeteria tells the director it's very hard telling her memories of this horrific event, but she's only doing it because the director is her friend (she was also eating lunch with her that day) and she knows what she went through that day. As far as I know, she (or anyone else interviewed) didn't see anyone get killed in front of them, but if she has a difficult time talking about this, then there's no way someone who was in the library would want to relive their memories. I'm not saying that they had it "easier" because they're weren't at Ground Zero, because if I put myself in their shoes, where, if I was a freshman at my high school and two seniors brought guns to school and killed twelve students and one teacher before offing themselves, yeah, I would be pretty shook up and freaked out too. I'm surprised they returned to their school to finish their next three years of high school, because, honestly, I don't know if I would be able to do that. One girl said she knows where all the exits are anywhere she goes in case of something like that happening again and that any loud noises like fireworks or a balloon popping makes her anxious. I would also imagine a fire alarm going off also puts them all on edge since one was going off that day. I've never been in a situation like that and fire alarms make me anxious; I can only imagine what it does to them! 

The four former students go through their memories of that day. The girl who was in the cafeteria says she heard loud shots and thought it was a senior prank and then a teacher told everyone to get under the table, which she did with the other students she was sitting with. They later ran to a nearby house where the man who lived there called the police. She would later find out that one of the two duffel bags with a bomb inside was placed under the table she hid under...yikes! But luckily it didn't detonate. If you didn't know, this wasn't supposed to be just a school shooting: it was supposed to be a bombing that would rival Oklahoma City. Their plan was to "top" McVeigh and kill as many students and faculty members and then each one would be in a different parking lot with their guns and shoot any survivors streaming out of the doors, then they planned to kill any media and police that would make their way to the school. Yeah, their plan went a bit differently... In fact, DeAngelis points that out, saying they could have lost hundreds of people that day and that's how he knows there's a God. 

One of the former students who was in a locked classroom talks about how they were in there for hours (three or four, maybe by that time) before the police came in and told them to put their arms locked behind their heads and run out of the school. Unfortunately the police came right at the time he said he and a few of the other boys in the class had to use the bathroom so they got a trashcan to urinate in and right when he was about to go (in as much privacy the corner of the room could offer him), that's when they barged in. Understandably, that's the only humorous part of the film. He also says when they were locked in the classroom, he heard keys rattling in the door and a teacher came in without his shirt on, covered in blood, and rummaged through the cabinets before running out again. I have to wonder if he was helping the teacher who was shot and would eventually die? Or a student who was wounded when they got shot? We don't really find out what that was about.

The title of the movie comes from their rally cry which was created in 1989 by a coach. One of the interviewees said he thought that had transpired after the shootings, which, I can't blame him, as it has more of a poignancy. Before the shootings it jut sounds like an obvious statement. Also, he probably doesn't remember anything from his only normal year of high school, plus, as he adds, he was probably getting stoned somewhere!

Another former students says when he was running outside and a policeman told them to get away from the school, he had asked him if they had to return to class later that afternoon. He says now he realizes how ridiculous that was, but in that moment it was just a confusing and surreal moment. 

I never really though about it before, but the Columbine class of '02 had it pretty rough. They had one normal year of school before everything turned to hell and during their next three years, security was heightened to the max. That school probably became the safest school in America, ironically. They had all these security measures that was super frustrating for them. Think of the airports after 9/11. Remember how people used to be so lax about airport security? DeAngelis says that he knew the students hated the ridiculous security measurements, but the parents insisted on them. They also talk about how the media would always be harassing them for interviews and how tour buses would pull up to their school with tourists. Look, it's one thing if a couple of young idiots drive there in their own cars if they're into ghoulish things, but a tour bus? Someone is making money off of this? Ick. One of the girls was on the track team and volleyball team and when she would wear her uniform people at the other schools she was competing at would ask her if she was there THAT day. I won't lie; if I ever met someone that attended Columbine, I would probably think, Oh, they go to THAT school. (Why I would ever be conversing with a teenager from Littleton is beyond me, though!) 

As one of the girls says, "It's not a normal experience". Despite this, all four former students (who are in their mid-30s) have normal and stable lives. A couple of them are in steady relationships and they all went on to have some sort of career. One became a teacher at Columbine and he says he's one of five teachers there now who were students on the day of the shootings. Another became a social worker, another one is in the medical field, and one became a recording artist. One of these things is not like the other! Would it surprise you if I told you the stoner kid became the recording artist?

In this hour and a half documentary, there's probably really only about twenty minutes of interesting information. I find that even if you had never heard of this massacre, you really wouldn't be surprised by what the former students were saying. It's really more about their experience that day (though they don't really go that much into depth about it) and then how the rest of their high school career was like living after tragedy. If you are interested in the Columbine school shootings in much more detail, I would recommend two books. The first is called Columbine by the Denver-based journalist Dave Cullen. It's probably the most well known account of the shootings and goes into a lot of detail before, during, and after the tragedy. It's vey disturbing, insightful, fascinating, and while I was reading it, I would go, "What?...What?....WHAT??" Because there were a lot of things that shocked me; either things I didn't know or had forgotten or vaguely remembered. If you're into true crime stories, it's worth checking out. The other book is A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy and it's by Sue Klebold, the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two shooters. Her story about what happened that day is much more interesting and devastating than any of the class of '02 graduates who were interviewed. The parents of the shooters went through absolute hell and she talks about what it was like. She's only started sharing her story within the last few years and the book is really quite interesting. Not surprisingly, she is an advocate for parents checking their kids' bedrooms. I think it's a terrible idea for parents to snoop through their teenagers' stuff, but of all people, I can understand why she would insist parents to do that. It's probably never a bad idea to check under your kids' beds or in their closest just to make sure they're not hiding any guns or bombs. Both of those books made me cry while reading them; this documentary really didn't evoke any emotion from me. 

Don't Make a Sound

A Quiet Place

Director: John Krasinski

Cast: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millient Simmonds, Noah Jupe

Released: April 6, 2018

Oscar nominations:
Best Sound (lost to Bohemian Rhapsody)

I am going to review this movie the same way I reviewed Searching: first I will give a quick synopsis without spoilers, then I will dive into a more in-depth review that will include spoilers. Even though I found certain aspects of this film frustrating (which I will touch on in spoilers), I would recommend it.

The basic plot of A Quiet Place is that everyone has to be quiet because there are these monster/alien-type creatures that have very acute hearing (probably to compensate for their lack of eyesight) and if they hear any sound, they attack and kill. The aliens reminded me of something you would see in a season of Stranger Things, only this movie takes place a few years in the future (I believe it's 2021, so literally it's just a few years in the future!) It's a very suspenseful movie and it's clever how the family we are following (John Krasinski and Emily Blunt play the parents, Lee and Evelyn) have to adapt to living a silent life. They play Monopoly with felt pieces and roll the dice on the carpet, they never wear shoes, they use their hands instead of silverware when they eat, they listen to music through headphones, they have their yard outlined in lights that are usually white, but they can turn them red when there's an emergency. (I don't think it's a spoiler to say the lights will turn red!) In a way, they are lucky because their daughter (Millicent Simmonds) is deaf so the family already knows sign language and are able to communicate that way. However, I do question some of their soundproofing methods. For one thing, they have a whole bunch of framed photos hanging on the wall and if one of those drops, it's making a loud thud. Also (and I don't think this is considered a spoiler), Evelyn is pregnant and I'm thinking, Hmmm, is a baby what you really need right now? You live in a world where you're supposed to be quiet and you are adding something that cries and screams a lot? Yikes! They will have a solution to this problem which I will discuss in spoilers, so at least they do address it. I know what you're thinking: why would this be a problem when they already have children? Yes, that's true, but the three children they already have were all born before the aliens appeared. When we first meet the family, we are told it is "Day 89" and the youngest is four, making all the kids old enough to know what's going on and to not make any sounds. With a baby, you really can't tell it not to cry. 

This movie is on Hulu, so if you haven't seen it, go watch it, then come back and read the rest of the review because we are getting into spoiler territory now! 

Spoilers starts right now! 

So something pretty shocking happens within the first ten minutes of the movie. I'm not sure if you can count anything that happens so early in a movie a spoiler, but I thought I'd rather be safe than sorry. Maybe everyone already knew about this, but me, but I have to say I didn't see it coming at all and I was shocked! When we first see the family, they are all at an abandoned drug store getting supplies, including medication for their older son (Noah Jupe). The younger son, the four-year-old, wants a toy rocket, but his father tells him it's too noisy and takes out the batteries leaving both the batteries and the toy on the counter. In hindsight, his dad should have just taken out the batteries and let the kid have the toy, but I guess he thought it would still be too loud. The kids follow their parents out the door and the girl gives her brother the toy, indicating for him to keep it a secret. What she doesn't see is that the kid also grabs the batteries on his way out. I guess when I said that all the kids were old enough to know they need to be quiet at all times, that wasn't exactly true. I guess his parents didn't exactly put enough of the fear of God into him because, needless to say, he puts the batteries in the toy and it starts making loud noises. His parents are a bit further ahead of him and when they hear the noise, they just have a sheer look of horror over their faces. His father runs to try to save him, (even if he did catch him, I'm not sure what he could have done), but the alien is faster and just grabs him. It's very quick and you don't see anything, but they are setting the tone that these things mean business and being quiet is an essential part of survival. 

It's been a little over a year since the boy's death and Evelyn blames herself for not carrying her son home; the girl blames herself for giving the toy to her younger brother and she thinks that her dad blames her for her brother's death as well. The older son tells his father this when they are at a waterfall and are able to speak since the water is so loud that the aliens won't be able to hear them. 

Lee has been tinkering with his daughter's cochlear implant so she will be able to hear, which seems kind of ironic since they have to be quiet at all times, yet in a situation like this, it is important to be able to hear so you know if you have inadvertently made a sound or not. Whenever we get the POV of the daughter, it is completely quiet. When he tells her he has made adjustments to her hearing device, she angrily brushes him off, telling him it never works, so he just puts it in her hands. The daughter is angry because she wants to go with her father and brother as they leave to go fishing and gather supplies and she has to stay behind with her mother, but instead she sneaks out to her brother's memorial spot.

Of course on the day Lee is gone, Evelyn's water breaks. Before that, she had been doing the laundry in the basement and when she's lugging the bag of clothes upstairs, it gets caught on a loose nail which is pulled up, sharp side at the ready for a bare foot. The camera zooms in on the nail so we know it will come into play later. All I could think of was that scene from Home Alone; wonder if John Krasinski is a fan and paid homage to it, haha. When she does go into labor, she heads to the basement where that sharp nail is waiting for her bare foot. She has to clap her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. I'm telling you right now that if that were me, I would not only scream, but also be screaming a list of curse words. This is by far the worst scene in the movie and made me cringe! And it's not any better when we see her dislodge her foot from the nail. :::shudder::: While she does keep from screaming, she puts her hand up on the wall and knocks down a frame that crashes to the ground which inevitably alerts one of the three confirmed aliens that live in their area. We see it pass by the basement door so this gives Evelyn a little bit of time to put on the red lights to alert her husband she's in trouble and to set an egg timer that will distract the alien when it goes off while she hides in the corner of the basement. This poor woman is in labor, a nail just went up her foot, AND she has a dangerous creature after her. I mean, what else could go wrong?

When the egg timer goes off, she is able to escape and goes to the upstairs bathroom where she gives birth in the tub. Lee, who sees the lights, tells his son to set off fireworks to distract the alien (and it is distracted in the nick of time as it is on its way up the stairs to where Evelyn is about to give birth and she's trying really hard not to scream!). Once the fireworks go off, she lets out a loud scream. Lee checks on his wife and newborn son. And wouldn't you know, the baby starts crying, which of course, attracts the alien back to the house. We see how they plan to keep the baby quiet by putting an oxygen mask on him and putting him in a wooden box with a lid.

Guess what? We find out these aliens do have a weakness. The girl, who is wearing the new cochlear implant that her dad gave her, is heading home and an alien comes up right behind her and her hearing aid starts emitting a high-pitched sound which makes the alien back away. I know the girl can't hear anything, but I am surprised she didn't feel the presence of this large creature which was literally only a few feet behind her. This will happen again when both kids are being attacked by one of the creatures and the hearing aid will scare it away. You think this would have have tipped off the girl, but nope, when the kids are once again being attacked by an alien, this time while they're in an abandoned truck (which reminded me of the scene from Jurassic Park), the girl takes off her implant because the sound is so painful. Their father sacrifices his life by screaming to attract the monster to him, but not before he tells his children he loves him.

I think that's what I found so frustrating about this movie; why didn't they know what the aliens' weaknesses were before it was too late? It's not until the very end of the movie, when Evelyn and the three kids are all down in the basement, when the girl finally discovers her hearing aid is the key and is able to keep the first alien at a distance while her mother shoots it. I do love the very last shot of the movie where they see on the TV monitors they have in the basement that the other two aliens are on their way to the house because of the sound of the gunshot and Emily Blunt cocks the gun, ready to kill the last two. 

Clues

Searching
Director: Aneesh Chaganty
Cast: John Cho, Debra Messing, Michelle La
Released: August 31, 2018

I am going to write this review in three parts. First, I am going to give a basic plot of the movie without spoilers. I highly recommend you watch this movie without being spoiled because half the fun is trying to solve the mystery and if you knew who is or isn't involved, then it wouldn't be a satisfying watch. The plot of the movie is about a single father, David Kim (John Cho) trying to find his daughter, Margot (Michelle La), who's missing. At first, he thinks she's avoiding him because she's mad at him, but when he tries to reach her at her piano lesson, her teacher tells him she quit lessons six months ago (even though she's still been taking the $100 a week for lessons he gives her). He then finds out that she was invited to go camping with a group of friends, so he thinks that's where she is, but discovers that she never went. This is when he really starts to worry and  Detective Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing) is assigned to help find her. The gimmick of this movie is that the whole thing is told through screens: phones, computer, security cameras, news camera. Social media plays a huge part of the movie as David uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all of those to help find clues about Margot's whereabouts. There are very few times when you see two actors in the same room together; most of them communicate by FaceTime or video chatting or texting. I can only imagine that would have been very difficult to have no one to act against! So if you've never seen this movie, please go see it before you read the rest of the review! This is a debut of a young director and even though I had more questions at the end and some things seemed a little too convenient, I think it was a really good mystery movie and it's fun to watch a second time to see all the clues that were right in front of you and you get things from a different perspective when you know what happened.

In this next part, while I'm not giving away the main reveal of what happened, I will be talking about all the red herrings (as in any good mystery, you always have a few of those!), so I will be talking about the eliminated suspects. First of all, you always know the obvious ones are never the ones who did it. We get a couple of those here. David talks to a bunch of his daughter's classmates who were study group friends of hers and I never thought they were involved in her disappearance. For one thing, she didn't have any close friends and no one really paid attention to her. One of the first real suspects the movie wants you to think could possibly be involved (which meant he wasn't) was a guy named Derek Ellis who often made pervy remarks on her Instagram posts. I assume he was a classmate of hers. I don't know if he was a perv to just Margot or all the girls, but I'm surprised she never blocked him because in another scene when we see David looking at vlogs she did, she blocks a pervy user. David gets Derek's number (by paying $50! I thought he was going to get a bunch of results since he had a pretty common last name, but he gets the right guy.) At first, Derek refuses to tell David where he was the night Margot disappeared, but after David threatens to call the police, we find out he was at a Justin Bieber concert...and it's confirmed, haha. Once this case goes public and is all over the news with people posting their thoughts and prayers and theories about what happened on social media, David sees a post from Derek saying that Margot is with him and implying they've been having sex. It's another gross post, though I don't know which is worse: that or the girl in Margot's study group who told David they weren't close friends, but posts a YouTube video saying they were best friends. Thanks to Facebook and people loving to post where they are every minute of the day, David is able to find Derek at the movies and ends up beating him up. Detective Vick tells him to stop interfering in the investigation.

Another possible suspect is David's brother, Margot's uncle, who we meet early in the movie. I also knew this was a red herring because it seems to come out of nowhere and is only there to shock the audience as David finds texts between his brother and Margot implying something illicit is going on, like perhaps a sexual relationship, but I knew that wasn't it. Of course that isn't the case, but rather David finds out that Margot has been hanging out with her uncle to smoke weed. Hmm, is this a slight reference to Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle?

Another suspect is a girl Margot had been communicating with through a YouTube-like site called YouCast. It's the only made up social media platform in the movie. I understand why YouCast doesn't exist in real life because it's quite possibly the most useless thing. It's like YouTube in the sense that you post videos, but you're always live, so it's like when someone live streams on YouTube. Live streaming makes sense when you're a popular podcaster or YouTuber and have a live show where people can join in and ask questions or make comments. It makes sense when you have well over 100 people who are watching live. However, every time Margot goes on YouCast, she's lucky if she has even one "viewer". I guess the point of YouCast is to answer questions that people who join your cast can ask you. I've seen popular YouTubers stream live videos where they answer questions that people join in and ask, but Margot isn't a popular YouCaster; so how would people even know about her YouCast channel? It's just very weird. David goes through many of her videos and you can see that the highest number of people who ever viewed a single video was eight. It's no wonder, because the videos were super boring. Half the time she's having a one on one conversation with a young woman from Pittsburgh named Hannah who goes by the user name "fish n chips". Hannah types a question and we see Margot answer it verbally on the screen. It's a very weird way to have a one on one conversation with someone, especially when other people can listen in. It appears Hannah has a lot in common with Margot and she's the most prominent person in those YouCast videos, so naturally David wants to have her alibi checked out. Detective Vick tells him she was indeed in Pittsburgh at her job as a waitress and it was also confirmed by the girl's boss. So those are all the main suspects who seem the most likely, but they all have confirmed alibis. The plot thickens!

In this final part, I am going to discuss my prediction, then what really happened. I will say my prediction wasn't right, but I was kind of on the right track, but not really. But if you're still reading this and haven't seen the movie yet, this would be a good time to stop reading, go watch the movie, then come back and continue reading because some major spoilers are about to start right now! You have been warned! Do not read another word of this if you do not want to know who or what is behind the mystery! Spoilers start...NOW! 

Okay, so Detective Vick tells David that they got a confession from an ex-con who admits that he abducted and killed Margot. Of course this is horrible and David is overcome with grief, but I'm checking how much time is left in the movie and thinking, Hmmm, there's still half an hour left; something isn't adding up. Not to mention that even though they found trace evidence of the guy at the lake where Margot's car was found, her body isn't found. They can't question the guy because he killed himself after he taped the confession. And keep in mind this is the first time we're seeing this guy. I didn't know why he was confessing; maybe he just wanted the attention, but I knew he wasn't the reason behind Margot's disappearance.

Let me tell you who I thought was behind Margot's disappearance: I thought it was Hannah aka fish n chips, the girl Margot had been chatting with on YouCast. Like I said before, they have a lot in common, but one of the main things is that Hannah's mom is sick with cancer and Margot has a lot of empathy for her because her own mother died of cancer about a year ago. Because of this, David has a hard time talking to Margot about her mother and their relationship has been a bit strained. I didn't think Hannah lured Margot away or anything malicious like that, but rather Margot decided to run away. Of course, I probably thought that because that's the narrative being pushed by Vick. She finds that Margot had created a fake ID and the money she was apparently sending to someone was actually going to herself.

I was right that fish n chips was involved, but I was also way wrong! When David is going through his emails on the day of Margot's memorial, he gets an e-mail from the funeral service telling him he can upload photos of Margot to preserve her memory. After he does that, he sees a photo of a young redheaded woman holding flowers as part of the site's homepage. It's a different picture, but this young woman is clearly the same young woman fish n chips uses as her YouCast profile pic. Hmmmmm. I was like, WTF is going on here?!?! And then I was like, Aha! I knew fish n chips had something to do with this! You think they made her a redhead so you would think she was just a red herring? (Ha ha). But I knew better. Okay, so while I was right that fish n chips was somehow involved, everything else I didn't see coming...and probably should have. It didn't even occur to me the Margot was being catfished (duh!) and when David calls the young woman who he finds out is a stock photo model (her name really was Hannah, though) living in L.A., she tells him she has no idea what YouCast is and never spoke to the police. This probably should have sent a red flag to David, but he calls Vick and gets her secretary who reveals to him that Vick had volunteered for the job rather than was assigned to the case as he was led to believe. Long story short, Vick's son, Robbie, was the one who was cat fishing Margot. He had a crush on her, but was too shy to tell her and pretended to be "Hannah" and brought up things in the conversation he knew about her (hence the reason "Hannah's" mom had cancer) and Margot had sent $2500 of the piano lesson money to "Hannah's" Venmo account after she finds the same user name. To be fair, "Hannah" never asked for the money, but we do see fish n chips telling Margot how rough money is, so that's why Margot sent her the money. Margot may be book smart, but she seems a bit stupid. Why is she sending some stranger she's never met TWENTY FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS? This person could be lying to you, oh wait, they were! Robbie wants to come clean to Margot, but instead of talking to her at school or calling her on the phone, or even Facebook messaging her like any normal person would do, he FOLLOWS her to the lake around 9 in the evening where she's just parked and smoking weed, and then surprises her by getting in her car. Seriously, what kind of a creep does that? Not surprisingly, Margot starts freaking out and runs away with Robbie following her and "trying to explain", but she's still fighting against him. I believe this is the moment when she calls her father, who's sleeping, but I didn't understand why she didn't leave a message or leave the phone on while she was having the confrontation with Robbie. He ends up pushing her down a fifty foot ravine and calls his mother, who is conviently a detective. Instead of calling the police and telling them there was an accident (which it was) or making sure Margot was still alive (she told the police there was no way she would survive the fall because she didn't hear anybody calling for help, but didn't she think of the possibility Margot may have been knocked unconscious?), she goes through this elaborate rouse just to protect her son where she pushes Margot's car in the lake, then gets in touch with David to help him with the case where she sends him on a wild goose chase making him think she had run away with the story of the fake ID. A huge clue David gets that Vick was involved was that there's a photo of her standing next to the man who confessed to killing Margot. He was an ex-convict who had worked with Vick in some volunteer project and when he's making his confession, he's clearly reading from something so you know Vick was there making him read it, then killed him after. This crazy bee-yotch went through some serious lengths when all she had to do was call for help and Margot would have been fine. Actually, Margot was fine (well, alive, anyway) when they found her because it had rained for a few days so that meant she only had to go two days without water.

Sure, a few things make you go "Hmmmmm" and what are the odds that the random girl's photo Robbie chose to be to pose as fish n chips would also be the same girl on the funeral site, but it's a pretty impressive movie. I wouldn't want to watch the computer/phone screen POV all the time, but I felt like I did learn a few things about technology while watching this!

Social Anxieties

Eighth Grade

Director: Bo Burnham
Cast: Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton, Emily Robinson
Released: July 13, 2018

Every day I wake up, I thank God there was no social media when I was in middle/high school. I am so, so, SO thankful I didn't have to deal with all of that during my most awkward years of my life. Even though I didn't have to deal with that, I can relate with Kayla (Elsie Fisher), the protagonist, who, as you may have guessed from the film's title, is an 8th grader. It takes place during her last week in middle school. 

I think we can all agree that middle school is the worst time in one's life. It's that age when everything is so awkward and you're going through those gross and weird changes in your body. I mean, I didn't have a terrible experience in middle school, but it isn't one I would want to revisit.

I could totally relate to Kayla because she is super quiet and keeps to herself and I am like that too, especially when I was her age. I felt so bad for her during an early scene when the principal is giving out the superlatives (my middle school never did this, thank God!) and after they announce the winners for "Most Athletic" and "Best Eyes",  they announce "Most Talkative" and I'm thinking, Uh-oh. Are they really going to go there? And they do. They announce the "winners" (there's one for a boy and a girl) for "Most Quiet" and of course Kayla gets it. Oh my God, this was hard to watch. My heart went out to her and I wanted to yell at the school faculty. Who in their right mind would think a thirteen-year-old kid would want to win an award for "Most Quiet?" When you're that age being quiet  equals not being cool or not having any friends, so why would they think they would want that to be announced to the entire school? Plus, most quiet kids don't want to be singled out, especially at a school assembly. Really terrible on the faculty's part. 

While Kayla is quiet at school, she has a channel on YouTube called Kayla's Corner (or was it Korner?) where she makes videos about being an adolescent, like what it means to be yourself and putting yourself out there. I was thinking she had a huge following and how ironic it would be that this shy girl at school is a huge YouTube sensation that nobody at her school knows about, but no, we see that her videos only have a couple of views. To be fair, her videos are pretty terrible She says "um" and "like" every other word. I wouldn't want to watch that! 

Her mom is out of the picture and you can tell her dad (Josh Hamilton) is doing his best to raise her, but he just doesn't know how to get through to her. There were times when I was on his side, but there were also times I thought he overstepped and I was on Kayla'a side. During the first scene we meet him, we first see a close up of Kayla scrolling through her phone with earbuds in her ears listening to loud pop music. We hear a muffled noise and the camera pans back to show that she's sitting at the table with her dad eating dinner! (Well, she's not eating since she's too busy looking at her phone!) Her dad is trying to have a conversation with her and I'm shocked he's not yelling at her to get off her f**king phone while they'er at the f**king dinner table. We will find out shortly that he lets her do whatever she wants on Fridays, hence the reason he's not throwing her phone across the room.

Kayla's dad knows she's struggling at school with fitting in and gives her the parent pep talk. He tells her that he think she's really cool and has lots of cool interests and that she should put herself out there because if people knew about her and her interests, she would have friends. This also happens in the scene between Molly Ringwald and her dad in Sixteen Candles when she's telling her dad about the boy she likes and he tells her that if he can't see how beautiful and smart she is, then he's an idiot. As someone who's gotten the parent pep talk many times in my youth, I'm sure this fell on deaf ears for Kayla as it did for me. I mean, your parents are supposed to build you up and give you self confidence. No parent is ever going to tell their child, "You suck" or "You don't deserve friends". But it really doesn't mean anything when they're trying to tell their kid how awesome they are because, let's face it, parents are biased when it comes to their own kids.

Kayla has been invited to a birthday/pool party of one of the popular girls at her school. I don't remember her name, so we'll call her L'il Regina George. Actually, it was the mother who invited her and Kayla receives a bitchy Instragram message from L'il Regina George that says something like, "My mom told me to invite you to my party so this is me doing that." Yeah, this girl sucks. I would have been like, "F**k you, I'm not going to your party." But Kayla does go (probably because her dad knows abut it) and I felt super anxious for her when she's wearing her swimsuit and going down the steps toward the pool. I was listening to a review of this movie on a podcast and one of the hosts said he felt more anxious for this young girl in this movie than any character in any horror movie he's seen and I have to agree. Granted, I haven't seen many horror movies, but this one I could totally relate to Kayla and I could sense her dread. Let me tell you something: I absolutely hate parties/large social gatherings (with maybe a FEW exceptions). There is nothing worse going to a large gathering where you don't know anybody and you're shy or socially awkward. I would have gone into that bathroom and just cried which may or may not have happened once or twice in my life. At least it's a pool party so even though it may be awkward wearing a bathing suit in front of everyone, she can sort of preoccupy herself in the pool and doesn't have to just sit/stand there looking awkward if there was no activity involved. (This is why I avoid parties in the rare chance I'm invited to any!) She's by herself for a few minutes until a nerdy-looking kid swims up to her and starts talking to her and introduces himself as L'il Regina George's cousin. Even though Kayla is paying more attention to her crush, I know they're going to be friends by the end of the movie. (And I'm right).

After everyone is swimming and back in the house, Kayla does exchange some brief words with her crush, Aiden. I guess this gives her the confidence to take a turn at karaoke when that's the next activity at the party. While this is going on, we see another one of her YouTube videos where she's talking about confidence and how to obtain it. Maybe I'm just really stupid, but I had no idea if she had made this video BEFORE she went to the party, like she was hyping herself up to have the confidence to do something she wouldn't normally do or if she made it AFTER the party when she was on the high of being involved in something and probably thinking that she mattered. I'm going to guess she made it after the party just because she probably had more time. You know, you gotta record the video (and it might take more than one take), then you gotta edit it, then you gotta upload it.

A switch has gone off inside her and Kayla decides she wants to change certain aspects of her life. She wants more friends, she wants a best friend, and she wants a boyfriend. She makes a list of how to achieve these goals (using a notebook as in a literal spiral notebook with paper you tear out, wouldn't most kids today use a laptop?) This is where Kayla and I vastly differ. I never cared about having friends in middle school. I may have had a couple people I called friends during this time, but I mostly had acquaintances and I certainly never had a best friend. And I never even considered having a boyfriend, at this, the most extremely awkward stage in my life where I had glasses, braces, frizzy hair, and god knows what else that came with being a gross 13/14 year old. Yes, this is the time when every girls feels glamorous. Eww, who wants that? Even if I did want a boyfriend, I was aware enough to know I couldn't get one; as you can read from the description of myself, I was not cute! I never suffered from what the kids today call "FOMO" (fear of missing out). I could not care less if I wasn't invited to a party (because 1, I wouldn't have gone anyway and b), I did not care about making friends). I was never even aware of any social gatherings among my peers unless it was a school dance. Hence another reason I'm so happy social media didn't exist when I was an adolescent: I could remain blissfully unaware. But Kayla seems to crave being popular and I will give her props, that she does go for it. She does have the balls to talk to her crush. She just doesn't have a mundane conversation with him (well, she does at first), but after learning he's a total perv (to be fair, he is an eighth grade boy), she tells him she has naked photos of herself on her phone to show her boyfriend when she gets one and she's good at fellatio. I did laugh how during the boring part of their conversation, he's just mumbling "uh huh" to her and is focused on his phone but once she brings up the naked photos, she has his full attention. Someday she's going to look back at this and realize what a creep her middle school crush was. I thought we were going to get an extremely awkward/uncomfortable moment where they do go out and he forces her to do something she doesn't want to do, but the movie will take a different turn and she doesn't seem to pursue Aiden anymore. I'm guessing she realized that he was only interested in her for one thing and by the end of the movie she recognizes she has more worth than that.

I admire her ambition for wanting to have more friends, but why does she pursue L'il Regina George and her posse of mean girls? Why not make friends with people who are more relatable to her and will truly be good friends? When she goes up to LRG and her friend to thank her for inviting her to her party, the two popular girls are just not having it and are concentrated on their phones. Well, now Kayla knows how her dad feels when he's trying to talk to her when she's on her phone! There is a great scene at the end where Kayla tells off LRG, so good for her. But, really, she should have never tried to be friends with her in the first place.

Because it's the last week of eighth grade, the fact that Kayla will be in high school next year has been a running theme throughout the film. On one of their last days, the eighth graders go to the high school where they will each be paired up with a senior who will take them around and show them a day in the life of a high schooler. I don't know if many middle schools do this, but mine never did. There is this weird moment when all the eighth graders are walking down the high school hall in a single line with their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them. It's very odd; why are they making these 8th graders walk like they're in pre-school? The high school kids are laughing and taking photos and I can't say I blame them.

Kayla is paired with a girl named Olivia and she's very sweet and nice to Kayla and comes off as being a supportive older sister and it's clear that she is popular and has lots of friends and right away you can tell that she is the kind of person Kayla strives to be in high school. Olivia even gives her number to Kayla telling her to call her if she ever wants to talk about anything and Kayla does. (Even if I had a good rapport with someone and they told me to call them if I ever needed anything, I would have thrown that number away. I hate calling people because I always feel like I'm bugging them. Now if texting were around when I was in middle school, I wouldn't have a problem with that.) The girls chat about how much middle school sucks and Olivia asks Kayla if she wants to hang out with her and her friends at the food court at the mall. Of course Kayla wants to (hey, if she can't be friends with the popular girls her own age, she can be friends with seniors in high school! That will show L'il Regina George!) and she starts freaking out and drops her phone like a dork.

At the mall (which her dad drops her off at...is there anything worse than having to have your parent drop you off/pick you up anytime you want to do something? I remember a couple moments like these where my mom would drop off a friend and me at a movie theater, but luckily, since I didn't have many friends, I didn't have to worry about this too much), Kayla meets up with Olivia and her three friends which include another girl and two boys. (Haha, can you imagine if they were on a double date and Kayla was the fifth wheel? Awkward! But that isn't the case).

They get into a conversation about social media which made me feel super f**king old, but it was interesting. One of the seniors asks Kayla what grade she was in when Snapchat came out and when she tells them fifth grade, they're all aghast and shocked because they didn't have Snapchat until they were in eighth grade. I guess Elsie Fisher told Bo Burnham that nobody in middle school uses Facebook, so that is a line thrown in the movie. Who knew?  I guess they all use Instagram and Snapchat. Maybe because I'm so far removed from my middle school years, I do not understand the appeal of Snapchat. Even if I was in middle school, I still feel like I would think it's really stupid. If I were to rank all the social media platforms, that one would be at the bottom, maybe just above MySpace. Oh my God, who remembers MySpace? Terrible, just terrible. Remember how you could "decorate" it any way you wanted and have music cues so you could come across someone's visually blinding MySpace page that was purple and orange and some terrible early '00s song (like "Milkshake") playing. AURGH. MySpace was the f**king worst. I only had one (probably the most boring MySpace page in the history of the world) because my cousin suggest I get it. I barely had enough friends to make a "Top Ten" friend list. But enough about that. I'm here to tell you how much I think Snapchat is stupid. A friend suggested I get it, and I did try to download it but once I realized it would take up too much space on my phone and I was too lazy to sign up for something I knew I would never use, I abandoned that idea. I don't understand why you would want to send/receive something that will be erased thirty seconds (or however long it is) after you view it. What is the point of that? (Unless you're sending dirty pics, I guess!) The reason I like Instagram is that I can go back and view photos I took a couple years ago and I like having a little photo album. Maybe I'm just not cool/hip enough to get the appeal of SnapChat, but I think it is really baffling. And honestly, everything I've heard about SnapChat sounds super shady or gross, so I'm not upset about not being part of that culture.

The remainder of my review may contain slight spoilers.

One of the guys mention that some guy has been looking at them for a while now and when Kayla turns around, she sees her dad on the level above them. Apparently he never went home and just stayed at the mall to check up on her. Not cool. Don't spy on your kids. (Or at least be a bit more sneaky about it!) Needless to say, she is furious when she excuses herself to talk to him in private. He tells her he will leave (after bribing her with some spending money) and pick her up later, but she tells him she will get her own ride.

Remember when I said I thought there was going to be an extremely awkward/uncomfortable moment with Kayla and her crush? We do get a moment like this, but you can also add "terrifying" among the adjectives and it's with one of the guys who's a friend of Olivia's. I don't know how close of friends they are, but apparently Olivia isn't aware of just how much of a creep this guy is, otherwise I doubt she would not let CreepBoy be alone with Kayla in the car! Basically, she's in the backseat and he makes a comment about how it's hard to talk to her when she's in the backseat and she asks if she should climb up to the front, but no, he tells her he'll get in the back with her and he stops the car to do that. Already you can tell she's extremely uncomfortable. He makes small chat with her, and she's being polite, then he suggests they play Truth or Dare. Ugh. First of all, whoever invented that game needs to be shot...twice. This is the worst game ever. It's designed to make people answer super uncomfortable questions or do really stupid things. Also, seriously, who plays that game after sixth grade? NOBODY, that's who. Because by that time, you realize just how much of a stupid "game" it is. Anyway, as you can imagine, Kayla is not interested in playing the stupid game, but the poor girl doesn't want to do anything to anger him, so she just sort of plays along until he "dares" her to take off her shirt. She firmly tells him "No" and that she wants to go home. This was a really scary scene because you had no idea what was going to happen to her. Luckily it doesn't go any further than that, and he does take her home, but he's telling her how he wanted to "help" her so she's not "inexperienced" when she starts high school. Ugh, what a tool. Kayla is upset and begs him not to tell Olivia, which I thought was odd. He should be begging her not to tell Olivia! We never do see what the aftermath was; like did she tell Olivia?

The movie ends with Kayla having a heart to heart with her dad (which made me cry, I admit) and her making friends with the kid she met at the pool party, as I predicted. You can tell she's going to be okay in high school because she doesn't need to be the most popular kid and she realizes she's just fine the way she is.

Yes, middle school is the worst and social media is the worst (especially when you're an unpopular teenager!) and again, thank God I didn't have to deal with it when I was in middle school and thank God my middle school days are long over! By the way, I would never see this movie with my parents if I were in 8th grade because there are some extremely awkward moments! 

Video review

I haven't done a video review in awhile, so here is one I did of Avengers: Infinity War. Warning: THERE ARE SPOILERS!!

I'm Dreaming of a Netflix Christmas

It's time for another review of original Netflix Christmas movies!

Our first review will be The Holiday Calendar which stars Kat Graham aka Bonnie (aka the witch) from The Vampire Diaries as Abby a photographer who dreams of one day owning her own studio where she can work on selling her own photos instead of just taking photos for people's passports and Christmas cards which she only does "to pay the bills." Well, that job not only helps her pay those bills, but it helps her afford a super nice apartment! Seriously, for a girl who's moaning about not having enough money to pay the rent for an open space she wants for her own studio, she sure has a beautiful and spacious apartment with some super nice furniture. Though her dad is a lawyer, so I'm sure he's helping her with some funds. Her parents don't approve of her photography passion and want her to find a "real" job. Her dad wants her to work at the law firm like her older sister does. 

In the first minute of the movie we are introduced to Josh. At first I thought he was her brother, but he is introduced as her "oldest friend." They have a very sister/brother relationship, you know, goofing off with each other, but there will be a romantic relationship between them later on which I just don't see because he is always so goofy around her and they act more like siblings than a romantic pair. In fact, I didn't have any reason to suspect that they liked each other that way until Abby starts dating someone and we see Josh get jealous. I guess that's our cue we're supposed to be rooting for those two to end up together at the end. (Spoiler alert: they do). Josh is a successful travel writer and has been all over the world living this wonderful and fabulous life, making some major bank as we will find out later. 

Abby's gramps (played by Ron Cephas Jones aka Randall's biological father on This Is Us) gives her an antique advent calendar (in the shape of a house) that belonged to her (now deceased) grandmother and Gramps tells her Grandma wanted her to have it. I remember having advent calendars when I was little. It was fun to see the little surprise behind the door when you opened it; I remember one year there were little pieces of chocolates behind each door. (I'm pretty sure my mom got my brother and me each our own that year so we wouldn't fight over who got the chocolate piece that day!) When Abby takes it back to her (beautiful and spacious) apartment, she tries to open a few of the doors, but they won't budge, so she just assumes her gramps gave her a piece of junk. That night (which is the first of December), the clock strikes midnight and the calendar glows and the first door pops open to show a small wooden pair of black boots. The rest of the figurines will be more related to Christmas/winter such as a Christmas tree, candy cane, nutcracker, ice skate, snow flake, etc. Though I guess you could argue that black boots are what Santa wears. 

So the point of this calendar is that it is possibly a magic calendar. Each item of the day correlates with something that happened to Abby that day. For instance, the first day with the boots, Abby also receives black leather boots Josh bought for her in Italy. Even though this is before she starts dating the other guy, this is probably the first clue that Josh is into her. A guy does not buy a girl Italian leather boots (which you know cost a couple hundred bucks!) if he is not into her. This is the only instance of the calendar where there seems to be an eerie connection, but honestly, everything else just seems to be pure coincidence. I mean, everything is generic Christmas stuff, so of course you are going to encounter a Christmas tree or candy cane or a snow flake. There is nothing magical or supernatural about this calendar at all as Abby seems to think. (Hmm, I think she spent a little too much time in Mystic Falls!)

The second day the calendar reveals a Christmas tree and that's how she meets Ty (played by Ethan Peck aka Gregory Peck's grandson) who she will eventually start dating. They have a meet cute when she knocks the tree off of his car, then the next day when her advent calendar reveals a nutcracker, she finds out that his second grade daughter is a nutcracker in the school Christmas pageant. This has to be the smallest town ever because when Abby and Ty (Tabby!) go on their first date, who should walk up and see them when they share their first kiss? That's right, Josh. What are the odds of that? We see a montage of Tabby going on all these wonderful and magical dates and of course each one correlates with what little trinket the calendar reveals. When it reveals carolers, they are serenaded by carolers at a restaurant; when it reveals a wreath, Ty gifts Abby with one; and when it reveals a reindeer they go on a horse-drawn carriage ride. Eh, close enough.

Everything seems to be going great until Abby has a date with Ty on the same day that she promised Josh and another friend that she would go see A Christmas Story with them. Now what she should have done is canceled the date with Ty since she made the plans with her friends way in advance. But she assures her friends she'll be able to make the movie since it starts at 3 and the date is in the early afternoon. Ty doesn't tell Abby where they're going and he takes her to a soup kitchen, which seems a little weird for a date, especially a surprise one. While Abby is talking to some of the regulars, she learns from two guys that Ty often brings the women he's dating to show them what an altruistic person he is. Abby is late getting to the movie theater and it's sold out and Ty reassures her that her friends will understand because she was doing something much more important. Abby tells Ty about the calendar and when he mocks her about it, she breaks up with him.

There's a few more mishaps and misunderstandings between Abby and Josh (because they can't get together just yet since we still have half an hour left), but eventually they get together AND Josh pays for the studio she's always wanted since he's done so well as a travel-blogger or whatever he does. Abby also displays her photos and they get lots of attention and her parents tell her they were wrong about not backing her dream. We see Abby and Josh in their new studio one year later hosting a Christmas party (with some terrible hip hop "Christmas" music) and when they tell their guests they have an announcement to make, I'm thinking they're going to announce they're engaged, but nope, all they say is, "Merry Christmas!" Seriously, you're hosting a Christmas party and your big announcement is "Merry Christmas!"? Lame.

Before they end up together, there is some Inception-style flashback Abby has of the calendar and all the little trinkets and everything that had corresponded with it and realizes the fate of the calendar was pointing her in the direction of Josh this entire time. Remember when she thought the Christmas tree she knocked off Ty's car? It was actually her own Christmas tree she was hanging out by with Josh that same day! Or something like that.

So here's a fun little Easter egg (Christmas cookie?): there's one scene where Abby is about to watch something on Netflix (again, shameless promotion) and these are the movies/shows that are on her list: Christmas Inheritance (what a coincidence as you will soon see!), The Kissing Booth (SO terrible!), Set it Up (haven't seen), Glow (still need to see the second season), and Stranger Things (always a good choice). What, no A Christmas Prince of The Princess Switch?

Speaking of Christmas Inheritance, that is exactly what my next review is. It came out last year and it's about a spoiled party girl named Ellen Langford who's the heiress to her dad's gift business. Yes, that's right, a gift business called Home & Hearth. What does a gift company sell? Little trinkets? Kitchen gadgets and appliances? Jewelry? Bath and body supplies? Clothes? All of the above? I mean, literally anything you buy and give to anyone is a gift.

To teach her a lesson about where she came from, her father sends her to the small town of Snow Falls where he's from (she lives and works in NYC) to deliver a box of letters for Santa to his former business partner. She only has $100 with her for a 24 hour trip and can't tell anyone who she is, so she uses the alias Ellie London. Apparently the folks in the small town would know her name, but they wouldn't recognize her. Which is kinda weird if you think about it because you think they would know what the daughter (who appears on social media all the time) of one of the citizens who went on to have great success would look like. As soon as she gets there she doesn't have any cell phone reception, yet there is an Apple store in this really tiny town.

Ellen thought she would only spend a night at the Inn and give the letter to Zeke, her dad's former business partner, but he isn't there and there's a huge snowstorm that keeps her trapped there for a few days so she has to work as a housekeeper to pay for her room. Ellen already has a rich and handsome fiance back home who's a douche, but you know that's not going to last because she meets Jake, the owner of the inn and when they don't get along at first, you know they're going to end up together at the end. (Spoiler alert: they do.) Jake has this (unintentionally) hilarious backstory where whenever he hears "Silent Night" it makes him angry. This is because his ex (who's from NYC so when he finds out Ellie is also from there, he immediately  dislikes her) broke up with him at a restaurant while that song was playing. He must really hate the holidays because you can't escape that song. Can you imagine if Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas" was playing? Now that's a Christmas song you can't escape around the holidays!

So Jake thinks Ellie is just a spoiled rich city girl and blah, blah, blah, but he has a change of heart when she shows her compassionate side: letting the homeless man in during a bad winter storm, making Christmas cookies with And McDowell who runs the local bakery, and gathering nice items for the silent auction. This is how I know the small town has an Apple store because she persuades the guy to donate a computer. In the end she proves to herself she can handle the business (which she will inherent) and find the true meaning of Christmas. She breaks up with her douchy finance and ends up with Jake. There's even a cheesy line where he says, "Is this the part where we're supposed to kiss?"

Oh, and Andie MacDowell sings "Silent Night" at the end and it doesn't send Jake into a rage because he's in love now! Thank God for that! 

A Netflix Christmas

It's December. You know what that means...Christmas movie reviews! I'll first begin with a couple of Netflix original Christmas movies that were released just this year. It seems like Netflix loves to churn out Christmas movies.

We'll first begin with The Christmas Chronicles which stars Kurt Russell as Santa. It also stars Oliver Hudson and Kimberly Williams-Paisley (mini Nashville reunion!) as the parents of the two kids we follow, Teddy and Kate. When the movie opens we see a montages of Christmases the family has spent together from 2006 to 2017. In the current day, we find out that their fire fighter father is no longer alive and later we will learn the he died saving a family from a fire. Teddy and Kate seemed to be close when they were younger, but have seemed to drift apart. Well, what does Kate expect? Her brother is a teenager...why would he want to hang out with his little sister who is between the ages of seven and eleven years old? (I seriously have no idea how old she is). It is implied that they drifted apart after their father died. Tell me if you think this is weird: they used to call each other nicknames (and will resume calling each other once they inevitably reconcile at the end of the movie (like you didn't know that was going to happen!)) Kate called her brother "Teddy Bear" and Teddy called his sister "Kitty Cat." Is it me or do those sound like nicknames significant others would give each other, not siblings?

Kate is recording a video message for Santa (so that's what the kids are doing these days) and Teddy is about to let her in on a devastating truth, but he doesn't have the heart to disappoint his little sister, so he tells her, "There is no.....chance he's gonna watch your video." Kate wants to hang out with her brother, but he just ignores her and goes to hang with his hooligan friends. Kate follows him and records him helping his friend steal a car. She uses this as blackmail to get her brother to help her with finding out if they can catch Santa in the act. While reviewing some old Christmas footage, she sees a red-sleeved arm reach towards the Christmas tree. She is convinced it was Santa and wants to set up the camcorder, that night, which is Christmas Eve, to record him. She tells Teddy she'll destroy the incriminating tape if he helps her. Yes, that's right, it is Christas Eve and Kate was just recording her video message to Santa. No kid would ever procrastinate when it comes to telling Santa what they want.

Sure enough, they catch Santa and unbeknownst to him, end up in his sleigh. This is actually the first Christmas movie where the dangers of hypothermia and hypoxia are brought up when riding in Santa's sleigh. Of course you're going to get cold if you're several miles up in the sky going really fast. When Santa sees that there's two kids, he loses control of his reindeer and Kate is flung out of the sled and starts falling. Of course, Santa saves her, but you think that would have been the most traumatizing thing that has ever happened to her and she would just want to go home, but no! She wants to help Santa! His sleigh has crashed and he has lost his reindeer. The two kids from Massachusetts find out they're now in Chicago....(wait, why did Santa go from MA to Chicago without giving any presents to all the places in between?)

I did like the look of this Santa. Because he's played by Kurt Russell, he's more of a "cool" Santa (and we'll get this more in a later scene when he sings a blue-sy Christmas song with a bunch of convicts at a jail. Don't ask). He's not your typical "jolly fat Santa." Everything that is usually a snowy white is matted and gray (like his hair and beard and the fur trim on his coat. It looks like he's wearing a reindeer pelt around his neck...which is a bit messed up if you think about it! He also tells the kids he doesn't say "Ho, ho, ho" and that's "fake news." Ha-ha!

Santa tells the kids if he doesn't get his sleigh up and running in half an hour, then half the continent won't get their presents. We learn that it's important for Santa not to miss Christmas because, according to him, all the wars that have ever started were started the years he missed Christmas. WTF? Good job, Santa. So you're the reason for every single war that ever started! He tells them, "People need Christmas to remind themselves of how good they can be." This line and a following scene made me think this movie was going to be different that what it turned out to be. When they enter a restaurant, Santa knows the hostess (because he knows everyone) and that she wanted to be a fashion designer (because he knows what everyone wants), but she never had the money to pay to attend Parsons. I thought this movie was going to go an altruistic path and Santa and the kids were going to grant wishes for people they met along the way. For instance, giving the waitress the tuition money for Parsons. But alas, the movie doesn't go in that direction. Santa needs to fix his sleigh and find his reindeer and bag of toys so Christmas can go on (and so everyone doesn't wake up to World War III in the morning!)

They need a ride into the city (where the reindeer are) and Santa ends up stealing a car (it's okay because the car itself was stolen by someone who's always been on the naughty list). Kate finds and coaxes the reindeer out of hiding and she and Teddy fly them away while Santa is taken to jail for grand theft auto. That's when he sings with the other convicts.

Meanwhile, the siblings have discovered the bag of toys. It looks like a normal bag, but considering it's holding all the toys for all the children in the world, it turns into a Mary Poppins bag that can hold just about anything and everything. Kate crawls into the bag and is able to crawl further and further until she's in this black hole of gifts flying around. I laughed when an actual car is circling around her. This vortex takes her to the North Pole where she meets some interesting elves. They don't look dissimilar to the House Elves from Harry Potter. This movie was produced by Chris Columbus who also directed the first two Potter movies so maybe that was the inspiration. Also, there's a scene where the two kids stop outside a church to hear a choir and I'm pretty sure it's the same church from Home Alone, but we only see the exterior of it.

I need to touch on a minor fashion note for a sec: Kate wears this purple coat with a hood...and also a winter hat with a pom pom. (The winter hat is really cute by the way, it looks like a lot of confetti has been sprinkled on it; I would totally wear that hat). But what is the point of wearing a winter hat when your coat already has a hood attached to it? Seems a little redundant, no?

When Kate is in the North Pole she comes across a huge area filled with drawers upon drawers where Santa has apparently kept every single letter that every single child has ever written him. First of all, even though they only show us the "P" section (for Pierce, the surname of the kids) and even though what we see is pretty impressive, that thing would be MUCH bigger. Also, why does Santa save every single letter from the previous years? I understand why he would keep the letters of the current year, but why is he hanging on to Teddy's letter from, say, 2006? Also, does he keep all the letters from adults and senior citizens who wrote them when they were kids or do those get tossed when they reach a certain age? Does this mean Santa Claus is a hoarder? This is all very confusing.

So Kate convinces the elves to fix the sleigh, Santa is released from jail, and the kids help Santa deliver his presents to the rest of the continent because he's unsure if he will have time to do it himself. As a tearful Kate tells him, "There can't be Christmas without presents!", Santa tells them he'll be able to deliver the gifts twice as fast if he's not carrying his bag (and the movie has already established he's pretty fast when he is carrying his bag) and Kate will be the one to call out the names and addresses and throw the gifts to Santa while Teddy takes the reins, literally. It seems in this world kids only get one gift from Santa which seems pretty bogus to me. Can you imagine if you only got one present from Santa as a kid? Oh, man, I would be so ticked. We see a montage of all the cities they visit and this is the order they go in after they're done with Chicago: St. Louise, New Orleans, Denver, St Paul, Calgary, Anchorage, Honolulu, Vancouver, Seattle, Boise, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, L.A., and San Francisco. Is it me or do some of these seem out of order? Shouldn't Honolulu be your last stop? Why did he hit Seattle before Boise? I think Santa needs to learn some U.S. geography!

Teddy's letter to Santa was that he wanted to see his dad again and for a moment I was thinking, is the movie really going to go there? Are they going to bring back the kids' dead dad? No, he gets an ornament and when he puts it on the tree he sees a reflection of his dad who tells him he's proud of him. The movie ends with Santa back at the North Pole and he's with Mrs. Claus, who is played by, of course, Goldie Hawn. I should have seen that coming! And that's when I realized that Oliver Hudson is Kurt Russell's stepson. Now where was Kate Hudson's appearance?

This movie was fine, but nothing I would put in my must see movies to watch every holiday season. It's probably going to get lost in the slew of Christmas movies Netflix already has out and no doubt will keep churning every Christmas.

Speaking of the slew of Christmas movies Netflix churns out every year, our next Christmas movie  review will be The Princess Switch which stars a double dose of Vanessa Hudgens. Seriously, whoever pitched this to Netflix must have just finished watching The Parent Trap (the Lindsay Lohan version) because there are too many similarities. Vanessa plays Stacey, a baker from Chicago who finds out that her sous chef and best friend since high school, Kevin, and his daughter, Olivia (also Stacey's god-daughter) have enrolled her in a fancy schmancy world baking competition that takes place in the fictional country of Belgravia which I'm sure is near Genovia and Andovia. Hell, I'm sure they're all the same country! And don't worry, I'll get to A Christmas Prince in a minute. I was listening to a podcast review of this movie and someone called it "Bel-mashed potatoes and gravia" which made me laugh so hard.

We find out that Stacey recently broke up with her boyfriend of three years and just wants to mope around, but when she runs into him on the street (literally like two minute after she leaves the shop) and finds out he's seeing someone new, she changes her mind and decides to go to Belgravia with Kevin and Olivia. There seemed to be some hint that Kevin was into Stacey, but Stacey didn't reciprocate those feelings. As the movie progresses this seems more evident and it's clear that Stacey has put Kevin (who looks and sounds a lot like former POTUS Barack Obama) firmly in the friend zone. Olivia really wants her dad to get together with Stacey and even tells him that she wishes "they were a thing." Kevin tells her that they've been friends since high school and if sparks were going to fly, they'd know by now. To which the little brat replies, and I'm not joking, "You're not trying hard enough." Oh, no you did not, little girl! Stop trying to meddle in your dad's personal relationships.

They should have just called Belgravia "Christmasville" because that's what it is. Everything is decorated for Christmas, there are carolers, a Santa village, an ongoing performance of The Nutcracker, gingerbread making hut, etc. While Stacey is touring the studio where the competition will be filmed and held, she runs into Margaret Delacourt, the Duchess of Montenero (another fictional country...lol my computer automatically changed it to "Montenegro" the first time I typed it!)  who is set to marry Prince Edward, the Prince of Belgravia (who is played by the guy who played Gunner on Nashville...seems like everyone on that show is finding their way to Netflix Christmas flicks! Can't wait to see Hayden Pannetierre in the next one!) Oh! Did I mention they look exactly alike? Except that Margaret has shorter hair and some faux British accent going on. (Just like in Lohan-style Parent Trap!) Surprise! She's played by Vanessa Hudgens too!

There is somewhat of a (super lame) explanation of why the girls look so much alike. Margaret's great-grandmother's cousin ended up in the United States and his daughter married someone with the surname DeNofrio which is similar to Stacey's last name, DeNovo. So that would make them, what? Second or third cousins? Even if they were related, they wouldn't look exactly alike. Who has ever heard of identical cousins? At least in The Parent Trap, they're identical twins.

Margaret's only wish it to be a real girl and she wants to switch places with Stacey for two days so she can see what it's like to be "normal". She assures Stacey that Edward won't even be in town and the only thing she'll have to do is have tea with his parents. Stacey agrees to this and the only person who knows about this is Margaret's assistant. However, Olivia quickly figures out Stacey's not really Stacey when she can't do their complicated handshake (another bit taken from The Parent Trap). And also the fact that when Margaret makes breakfast the next morning, she burns everything, something Stacey would never do. She agrees to keep the secret, though.

Guess what? Edwards doesn't go out of town and ends up staying in Belgravia. Ruh-roh! Also, guess what? Stacey falls for Prince Edward and Margaret falls for Kevin. Insert groan here. There's a close call where the two couples almost run into each other at a toy store but the crisis is averted by the kindly man who keeps appearing throughout the film at just the right time and seems to know everything that is going on, almost like he has magical powers. You would think his character is going to have some kind of revelation in the end, but nope.

There's a really stupid scene where Kevin, Olivia, and Margaret-as-Stacey are painting ornaments in Chistmasville and Margaret has painted a heart on hers and claims, "Christmas should be about love." Kevin tells her that he's never seen her so sentimental and she actually has the gall to reply, "Maybe you don't know me that well." Yeah, no s**t. Of course he doesn't know you BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT WHO HE THINKS YOU ARE! And I'm guessing the real Stacey would never draw a heart on an ornament and get all sappy because he does know her. Duh!

Then we have another stupid scene where Stacey-as-Margaret is attending some royal soiree with the Prince and she is invited to play the piano as the Duchess is known for her remarkable piano playing skills. Of course Stacey doesn't know how to play the piano, not even the simple repeated four notes to "Carol of the Bells" when Edward suggests they play that as a duet. She blames it on "stage fright," but gimme me a freaking break! An accomplished pianist would be able to play four simple notes to a well known song. Yet nobody seems to find this very odd.

The best part of the movie (and when I say best, I really mean worst) is when Kevin and Margaret-as-Stacey decide to watch A Christmas Prince because that's Stacey's favorite Christmas movie. What the huh? That movie has only been out a year and it's her freakin' favorite Christmas movie? Seriously? SERIOUSLY? A Christmas Prince? Has this girl never seen Home Alone or Elf or It's a Wonderful Life? Has she never seen ANY Christmas movie if A Christmas Prince is her favorite? No shade to A Christmas Prince, but, c'mon! We even see them turn on the TV and scroll through the Netflix movies. Shameless promotion there, Netflix. However, I think they could have gone with two other options. The first is that they could have promoted the sequel to A Christmas Prince, which I believe was released a week or two after this one. They could have Margaret-as-Stacey say that she loved A Christmas Prince and that she's so excited to see the sequel and they could even show a little clip from the movie. But personally, I think they really missed the mark by not combining the two worlds together and having them exist in the same universe! Hello, Netflix! You could have had Vanessa Hudgens x 2  and her two beaus attend the wedding of whatstheirnames in A Christmas Prince 2 and you could have whatstheirnames attend Duchess Vanessa and Prince Edward's wedding at the end of this movie! I have no doubt that Belgravia and Andovia are right next to each other. There could even be a crossover movie called The Christmas Princess Switch. Obviously I am a genius! Whoever missed this at Netflix really dropped the ball. A missed opportunity in the Netflix universe if there ever was one.

When it is revealed that the girls have been impersonating each other, neither man is upset in the slightest that they've been deceived for the last two days. In fact, Edward proposes to Stacey and they get married at the end of the movie (which is about three minutes away from that point, although in the course of the movie it's the next year.) It is just ridiculous that she agrees to marry someone she's only known for TWO FREAKING DAYS!! I guess she really wanted to be a Princess! I must say, their wedding cake is on point. Even though they don't mention it, I'm sure Stacey made it. Who the hell makes their own wedding cake, especially one that elaborate? Who has time to when they're planning a wedding? And they all lived happily ever after. I especially love how Olivia wanted her dad to get together with Stacey, but is just as content with her dad getting together with Stacey's doppelgänger.

My Pet Raptor

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Director: J.A. Bayonne
Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard Howard, James Cromwell, Rafe Spall, Toby Jones, BD Wong, Jeff Goldblum

Spoilers ahoy!

I know the new Jurassic World movies get a lot of flack, but I still enjoy them. I think they are much better than Jurassic Park's two awful sequels, but that isn't a very high bar to cross! Look, there are a lot of stupid things in this movie that don't make any sense at all, but we'll cover all of those. As you may remember, in the previous Jurassic World, which only took place three years prior, many people were killed after everything went to hell at the dino theme park. The park is gone, but the dinosaurs still roam the island where there's a volcano that's expected to erupt "at any moment." Hang on one second. Nobody checked with a geologist first to see if opening this park (that was only open three years before the volcano would erupt!) on this island would be a good idea? (Obviously, it was NOT a good idea with or without a volcano!) So even if dinosaurs hadn't gotten loose and killed a bunch of visitors, both people and animals would have died in the inevitable volcano eruption. That's really reassuring.

There's a global debate over what should be done about the dinosaurs. Do they deserve the same recognition as other endangered species? Should they be protected from the volcano or left to die on the island, as Ian Malcom (in a cameo reprised by Jeff Goldblum) suggests because they should have never been cloned in the first place. Of course Ian Malcolm is going to be against the rights of the dinosaurs. He's had two harrowing experiences with them. (Though I don't believe that The Lost World or JPIII are canon in this rebooted Jurassic universe, but correct me if I'm wrong).

Our two heroes from the previous movie, Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) go to the island to help an operation get the dinosaurs safely off of it. I understand why Owen is there because he has a relationship with Blue, one of the raptor he raised and trained in the previous movie. By the way, while I remember one raptor (there were four total) being killed in that movie, I don't remember two more also being killed, but apparently Blue is the only living raptor left. (Hmmm, I went back and read my review for that movie and I do mention only one raptor remains alive). It's a good thing Blue was the one who lived because she seems to have the best relationship with Owen. We see training videos of Owen working with the raptors when they were babies and Blue is the only one to show any sign of empathy. When Owen sees what would happen if he was vulnerable the other raptors try to attack him, but Blue tries to comfort him. And, yes, it is very cute. It doesn't make much sense for Claire to go, but ironically she is the one who has to persuade Owen to help her rescue the animals, namely Blue. When did Claire become such a bleeding heart for these animals? She never seemed to care much about them in the first movie; she only cared about the profit they brought in. But in this movie she is all about their rights and saving them. I will say she does seem more soft-hearted towards the herbivores, though!

Hey, that staff looks familiar!

She is recruited by Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), who is - get this - the partner of John Hammond. Uh...why were we never told this in Jurassic Park? Because they just made him up for this movie, that's why! He and his assistant, Eli Mills (Rafe Spall) have a plan to move as many species as they can to another island. However, while Lockwood's intentions are pure, Eli's are not and right when we met him I knew he was going to be a bad guy. In fact, a lot of the predictions I made about this movie came true, that's how transparent it was. He wants Claire and Owen to help him because Owen is the only one who can get Blue. Eli has plans to create a new dinosaur using Blue's DNA and the DNA from the Indominus Rex, which, you may remember, was the genetically created dinosaur from Jurassic World who was the one who started all the havoc and was eventually done in by the T-rex. The movie starts with two guys locating and collecting the remains of the I-Rex underwater. They and the little bubble contraption they're in are swallowed whole by the mosasaur, the huge aquatic dinosaur that makes a great white look like a guppy. When one of the men is trying to communicate with them, telling them he is going to shut the underwater gate, he (obviously) gets no reply. This guy has to be the stupidest person in this movie (although he has some contenders!) because when the other men on the truck are waving and screaming at him, he shouts, "What is going on? I can't hear you!" Uh...what do you THINK is going on? Let's see, you're on an abandoned island where dinosaurs are roaming freely and people are frantically shouting at you and telling you to get on the truck. Seriously, you would have to be a moron to not understand that there is probably a big dinosaur with big teeth somewhere in the area, and sure enough, the T-rex is right behind him. The other men make it to a helicopter and are able to fly away and they send down a rope to the man who manages to climb on it, just barely missing the chomping jaws of the T-rex. As they were flying over the water, I knew right away that the mosasaur was going to jump up and grab him, but I also thought he was also going to take the helicopter down with him, but it manages to fly away. I did re-watch the trailer and that scene is in it, so maybe subconsciously I must have remembered that, but I honestly didn't know it was in the trailer. There is another scene from the trailer that I remember vividly and I'll talk about that when I get there.

What is it with the new Jurassic movies creating new species of dinosaurs? Are the dinosaurs that actually

roamed the earth not scary enough? Do we need something more ferocious than the T-rex? It used to be that the velociraptor used to be the true villains of these movies, at least the first movie. I remember them in TLW, but don't think they were as prevalent and I'm sure they're in the third movie, but I don't remember anything about that movie (which is probably for the best!) But in these new movies, they have decided to make raptors friendly and cuddly pets. Okay, maybe not quite, but they have strangely become dinosaurs we're rooting for. They're still dangerous, but if you're Chris Pratt or a friend of Chris Pratt's, then they will not try to kill you. I guess this is why we need new dinosaurs to be the Big Bad.

This new dinosaur is to be called the Indoraptor and Mills has plans to create it to be trained and used as a weapon for military combat. This was brought up in Jurassic World by that movie's bad guy played by Vincent D'Onofrio and I was thinking to myself, Wait, where is he? before I realized, that duh, he was the bad guy in that movie, so of course he had a vicious death! Let it be known that if you are a bad guy in the Jurassic movies, you will get a horrible, gruesome death, although still not as  horrible and gruesome as the woman who worked for Claire and watched her nephews when they came to visit the park.

A paleo-vet working on her very first patient

Claire and Owen join a team led by a man named Wheatley (Ted Levine). He is a terrible character, pulling the teeth out of sedated dinosaurs to make a necklace and just treating the animals inhumanly all around, so you know he's going to get a horrible death. (Spoiler alert: he does!) There are two new characters who are brought in to help Claire and Owen. They are really there to serve a purpose: when the movie needs them, they show up, when they aren't needed they conveniently find a way to get a rid of them (and no, I don't mean they get eaten by dinosaurs...since they are on the good guy's team, they don't die). They are tech nerd Franklin (Justice Smith) who is there to help them with anything computer related and Zia (Daniella Pineda) is a paleo-veterinarian  who has never seen a dinosaur in her life...huh? She is there to help Blue who gets shot by one of the men who is there to aid in the capture the animal.

The volcano erupts and our heroes manage to make it on a boat that has secured many, but not all of the dinosaurs. (I actually have no idea how many dinosaurs were on the boat and how many were left on the island to perish). There is a really sad scene of a brachiosaurus bellowing and crying as she is being swallowed up by smoke and fire. Wasn't that how Little Foot's mother died in The Land Before Time?  If a baby brachiosaurus had come up to her, I surely would have lost it! (Although, technically, Little Foot and his mother were apatosauruses, which are (I think?) the same thing as a brontosaurus? IDK. It's a good thing I'm not a paleontologist! We do see a mother and baby triceratops which share a very tender Dumbo-esque moment which is very cute.

The boat is sailing back to the California coast where Lockwood's massive mansion is located. This house makes the house in Home Alone look like a shack. It's a residence, museum, and laboratory all combined in one huge building. There's also an underground system of cages where they keep the dinosaurs in. They have come to the building to be auctioned off.

A man named Eversol (Toby Jones) is heading the auction and he has brought a bunch of his wealthy clients from all over the world to the mansion to bid on the dinos. What exactly do they plan to do with these dinosaurs? We do hear that one man wants to buy a baby triceratops for his kid. (And major points to that kid if he names his new pet Cera). What happens when that baby grows up? I suppose a lot of these people are going to exploit these animals and have people pay to see them. We know the theme park in Jurassic World was open for ten years, but I always imagined that not even one percent of the world's population ever got to see it because the tickets had to be astronomical, not to mention the flight to Costa Rica. So there's probably a huge mass of people who have never even seen a dinosaur (like the veterinarian who has specialized in dinosaurs!) I do wonder about the one man who wanted to buy TWO carnivores. There's something shady with him. Also, how do these people plan to take their new pets home? How does the man from Indonesia plan to take his ankylosaurus home? (The one he got for a great deal for only ten million dollars. Seriously, does that seem pretty cheap to you for paying for a dinosaur? I know the ankylosaurus might not be as well known as the T-rex or a stegosaurus, but it was still an extinct creature brought back to life! Even the 21 million that was paid for another dinosaur (was it the allosaurus?) still seems quite low.) I would love to know who would have bidded on the T-rex and what they planned to do with that monstrosity. However, before we get a chance for her to be put up on the bidding block, all hell breaks loose.

As a "special treat", they bring in a prototype of the Indoraptor to show prospective buyers. It is not for sale as it still needs to be tweaked by the geneticist, Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong). The Indoraptor looks similar to a raptor, but is bigger, as we will later see the two fighting each other. It is supposed to follow human command, which I find laughable because this thing does not look like it's very obedient! All the dinosaurs are brought out in cages and this one is snarling and snapping at the bars. Eversol demonstrates the effects of the new species by pointing a laser at some poor guy sitting in the front row (and he looks a little nervous!) The dinosaur locks on to him and when a trigger sound goes off, that is his signal to attack. I really thought he was somehow going to get out and kill the guy (not to mention everyone else in the vicinity), but that doesn't happen...yet. He does try his darnedest to get out! Even though this is only a prototype and not ready to be put on the market ( I don't think it will ever be ready!), it goes to an Eastern European guy for almost $30 million. I want to know what this guy plans to do with that creature!

This is around the time Owen makes a distraction by unleashing a

stygimoloch, a human-sized dinosaur that starts butting into people. Everyone runs out and the Indoraptor is left alone in its cage where Wheatley sees it and decides to sedate it and get one of its teeth for his necklace. In one of the stupidest scenes in the movie, as Wheatley is attempting to pull one of the teeth, we see the dinosaur open its eye, then close it again and almost smile in a cartoony way. It literally made me groan out loud. Why do we need that scene? Of course we know the dinosaur is still awake and is pretending to be out. Of course we know that this character, who has already been established to be a villain is going to get a horrible and gruesome death at the hands (or should I say teeth, haha) of this evil and terrible creature. We don't need the cute hints that this Big Bad is about to strike. It's so dumb. Well, of course Wheatley realizes the dinosaur is not out and gets his arm bitten off before being killed. The Indoraptor gets out of his cage where he kills and attacks Eversol in an elevator. There were about four other people in there as well and I assume they probably got it as well. I feel bad for them because they really didn't do anything wrong...

So now we have this creature (said to be the scariest in the Jurassic franchise...don't they say that with every new creature they create?) loose in the mansion. The only bad guy still alive is Eli and he has smothered Lockwood with a pillow. As with every movie that preceded this one, a child comes into play. This time, it's a young girl named Maisy who is the granddaughter to Lockwood. She spends most of the movie whispering, "Grandpa, Grandpa!" We assume she's the daughter of Lockwood's daughter who was killed in a car accident. But then we soon learn that she is not his granddaughter, but rather a CLONE of his daughter and Hammond cut his ties with him because he thought what he did was "unholy". Yeah, cloning humans...probably not a good idea. I mean, look how it worked out for Michael Keaton in Multiplicity.

Claire and Owen join up with the girl and they all get chased by the Indoraptor around the mansion. Supposedly this thing has a keen sense of smell, but somehow can’t sniff its prey out when they’re all literally right below its nose. I know she’s just a scared little kid, but Maisy does something really stupid that puts her as another contender for the stupidest person in the movie (though, she is a clone, so at least she has that excuse!): she runs away from Claire and Owen (who has a gun) and hides under the covers in her bed. Like that’s really going to help you. Also, her room is easily three times the size of my apartment. The shot of the claws reaching towards her in the bed is the one I remember from the trailer and I remember thinking, How is she going to get out of this one? I knew she was going to be okay because while the kids in Jurassic movies come very close to their demises, they never get killed off. At the very last second, Owen comes in with his gun and shoots the Indoraptor, but it doesn’t seem to affect it and when he runs out of bullets and is about to be cornered, who should come in and save him? Blue, his trusty pet velociraptor. I saw this coming a mile away. The two dinosaurs fight and the Indoraptor ends up falling into a glass ceiling and impaling itself on the horns of a triceratops model. 

Meanwhile, the other animals are dying from a poisonous gas that has been let lose and Claire wants to free them, but doesn't  know if she should, but Maisy steps in since they’re clones like her and they also are alive. Mmm, I don’t know if that was such a good idea, but I did feel bad for the dinos, so I may have done the same thing. We see them all running out of the building and of course Eli gets his comeuppance when he gets eaten by the T-rex. It’s been awhile since we’ve seen the T-rex eat anyone: I don’t think she had any human snacks in Jurassic World. It looks like the next movie is going to be about all these dinosaurs running amok on the West Coast and I’m sure plenty havoc is to be had. It also looks like the T-rex made her way to a zoo because she is shown roaring at a lion who roars back at her. Please…that lion would be shaking in its fur! 

Throughout the film I noticed some callbacks to the first movie. When they return to the island and are looking at the brachiosaurus in awe (the first dinosaur that dinosaur vet Zia has ever seen) is very similar to when Alan and Ellie see the brachiosaurus (in fact, it might even be the same one). The scene where they’re running away from the erupting volcanos and all the other dinosaurs join them reminds me of the scene where Grant, Lex, and Tim are running away from the flock of Gallimimus. The scene in this movie is a little more alarming because not only are they trying to not get struck by hot spewing lava rocks, but every type of dinosaurs is running in their direction: not just ostrich-sized ones. It’s really a wonder nobody got trampled on. And the scene that gave m a real flashback to Jurassic Park was when Maisy, who is running away from the Indoraptor, gets into a dumbweighter and is desperately trying to shut the door and manages to pull it down a second before it reaches her. This obviously reminds me of the scene from the original movie when Lex gets into a pantry with the same kind of door and wants the raptor to come to her to get it away form Tim, but she can’t shut the door and it ends up attacking her reflection. 

I did learn some new things from this movie: I learned about dinosaurs I’ve never heard of before like the aforementioned ankylosaurus, and stygimoloch, the baryonyx, and the carnotaurus.