May Movies Keeping Momentum

It's hard to imagine movie momentum keeping such a steady pace this deep into the year, but 2018 is something special. We've seen records be destroyed, "Black Panther" was a masterpiece, "Proud Mary" gave us a powerful Black female lead only for Taraji P. Henson to turn around and stun in "Acrimony." "Ready Player One" gave us a blast from the past and "A Quiet Place" has given us high hopes for the future of thrillers. And "Avengers: Infinity War" was...just wow. Now, May is here and it looks just as strong with big titles across the board, including "Tully," which you can already read about here. Here are the other films you need to see this month.

Life of the Party

Coping with the recent divorce of her long time husband, a house wife decides to start her life anew by cultivating career options with attempting to obtain a college degree at the same university that her daughter is attending, leading to her getting caught up in a cross generational whirlwind of college party lifestyle.

In all fairness, between Melissa McCarthy’s fairly recent upswing in well received comedies such as “Spy” and “St. Vincent,” as well as the recent trend of terribly marketed trailers representing surprisingly solid films, the chance of this one being a surprise hit is always present.

What little marketing we have seen of the movie however, comprised of the same loud and flat humor belonging to any dime a dozen Hollywood comedy released in any given month is not particularly comforting.

Breaking In

When a mother takes her children to the estate of her recently deceased father while she attempts to settle some family business, she gets more than she planned for when a group of home invaders intent on making off with the estate owner’s wealth force her to fight for the lives of her family and herself.

Similarly to the aforementioned “Life of the Party,” “Breaking In” does very little distinguish itself from being yet another generic trashy thriller manipulatively playing on the fears of paranoid middle American homeowners living in tumultuous times of political polarization.

There are nevertheless a few good signs to take note of, not the least of which are Gabrielle Union herself knowing how to make more of this sort of material than what exists on the page and the hand of director James McTiegue, who’s done solid work on “V for Vendetta” and “Sense8.”

Deadpool 2

Ryan Reynolds makes his return as the Merc with the Mouth, bringing his deadly skills and smack talk back to take on a mutant from the future known as Cable, forming a team to face him in the process. While the marketing for “Deadpool 2” has been nothing but stellar, I’ll admit to sharing a fair bit of skepticism in if it can live up to the hype.

The balance between action, moderate stakes, and comedy that made the first film work so well is a fine balance to tread that can easily tip over and lightning can be fairly difficult to catch in a bottle twice, even if Reynolds appears to still be killing it.

Time will tell if “Deadpool’s” second outing can keep the trend of quality R-rated superhero flicks alive.

Solo: A Star Wars Story

The origin story of Han Solo has to be one of the more creatively bankrupt choices that Disney could have possibly made with regard to what interesting nonlinear “Star Wars” story could be told cinematically. The mystique of the character is part of what made him so magnetic to begin with and no appreciation is to be gained by knowing exactly where he came from.

With that said however, the trailer do seem to show off that Ron Howard knows how to direct one hell of a space western. Besides that, we all know that Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian will be worth the wait alone.

Will “Solo” be the first major stumble of the franchise under Disney’s oversight, or defy the odds to be a decent entertaining movie in its own right? We’ll all find out Memorial Day weekend.