Just Mercy Is A Courtroom Drama With Plenty of Empathy And Great Performances

Lawyer Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) has just graduated from Harvard with a law degree, which means there’s only one clear course of action to take one. That’s right, Stevenson is going to move down to Alabama and create a non-profit law firm that specializes in providing free legal services to death row inmates. It’s a crusade that’s highly unorthodox, to put it gently, especially considering Stevenson is a Black man trying to fight against a justice system that inherently sees people of color as immediately guilt. However, Stevenson wants to use his lawyer's gifts to help the most underserved of American citizens. After all, these are not inhuman monsters, but people who could be anybody. Heck, Stevenson himself observes to his Mother at one point that “It could have been me, Mama”

Godzilla: King of the Monsters Is More of a Pauper Among Modern Monster Movies

The greatest enemy Godzilla can never seem to defeat is not King Ghidorah nor Biollante nor Baragon. No, it's boring human characters, even the rightfully iconic 1954 Godzilla movie that introduced the world to this gigantic lizard couldn't evade the problem of having the majority of its human characters be dull. Why they don't just let Godzilla and the other monsters take the spotlight in these movies, I'll never know, but here we go again with Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which ramps up the amount of monster mayhem compared to Godzilla (2014) but ends up devoting way too much screentime to an overstuffed cast of disposable humans.

Long Shot Is More Agreeable Than Memorable But At Least It's Frequently Funny

Though they usually have enough gross-out gags to fill out an army of Seann William Scott starring vehicles, comedic vehicles for Seth Rogen and his fellow cohorts like Judd Apatow have always had a penchant for treating romantic subplots with surprising levels of seriousness. Starting with The 40-Year-Old Virgin back in 2005, these types of films seemed to make a promise to viewers to keep the jokes about male genitalia coming at a steady rate but also to treat romance as something with actual weight and heart. Trying to balance raunch with heart has had varying degrees of success, but it is an element that separates it from, say, Happy Madison or recent Will Ferrell vehicles where heartfelt moments feel obligatory rather than affecting.

Den of Thieves Is The High School Musical Of Heist Movies

In the eleven years since 300 made Gerard Butler a superstar complete with an iconic catchphrase ("THIS! IS! SPARTA!"), I've never found him to be a particularly memorable actor. I don't mean this as a slight against Butler as a person (he seems friendly enough in interviews, never heard of any scandals associated with him), but as an actor, he always comes off as generic and wooden. Sans his surprisingly effective voicework in the How To Train Your Dragons movies, there's no trace of personality or energy to be found in his turns in movies like Olympus Has Fallen, Geostorm or Gods of Egypt. With all that in mind, imagine my shock upon watching Den of Thieves and thoroughly enjoying his manic turn as a bad cop who seems to have always just come back from snorting immense amounts of cocaine.

Ingrid Goes West Has Refreshing And Entertaining Things To Say About Technology

We all use social media these days, but if you think you're hooked on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all those sorts of apps, just wait until you meet Ingrid (Aubrey Plaza). This is one person whose fixation on social media goes well into the unhealthy territory and her aggravation over seeing Instagram pictures of her "best friends" wedding that she wasn't invited leads her to attack said "best friend" at that wedding. After that, she's been spending some extended time at a mental institution, hoping to get her life in order...until she finds the next target of her obsession, a Los Angeles social media icon by the name of Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen).