Movie Review: ***^ If (2024)

 IF stands for Imaginary Friend.  The story of this movie is all the IFs are eventually forgotten.  Their children eventually grow older and forget aboyt them.  Bea (Cailey Fleming) is 12.  Her mother became ill and passed away.  She is now with her paternal grandmother (Fiona Shaw) as her father (John Krasinski) is in need of heart surgery.  Upstairs from her grandmother's apartment she discovers some interewsting creatures, IFs.  Cal (Ryan Reynolds) is trying to help IFs find new children.  Blue (voice Steve Carrel) is purple and Blossom (voice (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) is like a dancing bee.  They recruit Bea to help them find matches.  At first they have poor success; but then start getting IFs back with their previous children.  But the person in need of an IF is Bea herself.  

This movie is written and directed by John Krasinski.  It is about navigating life when things do not always go right, when we have trauma.  The story is about out there but works in the end.

Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

 This is a very good Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) movie except for just before the end.  Indiana Jones is in pursuit of the Dial of Destiny, as is Dr. Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelson).  Voller is a Nazi who wants to go back in time and effect a different result to the war.  His men are unscrupulous.  They seem to kill people right and left.   They are trying to get a piece of the devise from Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), Dr. Jones' god daughter.  She knows that her father gave the piece to him to destroy it.  Of course Dr. Jones did not destroy it, but has stored it safely in the university vaults.  Helena gets the device, and is away with it, leaving Dr. Jones to deal with the peopler chasing her.  They both get away in the end.  They all end up in Morocco, where Helena is selling her piece.  In all the action Voller ends up with the piece.  Helena has a young friend, Teddy (Ethann Isidore) she rescued from the streets when he tried to steal her purse.  

The next stop is scuba diving in order to find the other piece.  Of course our villains show up just as they are finding it.  More murders take place, Dr. Jones' friend Renaldo (Antonio Banderas).  The the hel of dynamite they are able to get away and then decipher the clue which leads them to caves in Cicily.  In the end Voller comes away with both pieces and puts them together.  He then calculates how to go back in time to 1939 as he intends to kill Hitler, thus freeing Germany from him, so they can win the war.  Dr. Jones tases him that his calculations are wrong--and in fact they are.  They over shot their time and end up in the Roman Greek war long ago.  Having gone back in time in an airplane, they meet Archimedes (Nasser Memarzia), the inventor of the Dial of Destiny, who then took it apart so it couldn't be used.  He is the only person who could help them get back to their own time.

Now the part I don't like.  Suddenly Dr. Jones wants to stay in the past.  Helena punches him in the jaw to knock him out and the take him back.  I do not think there was motivation for Dr. Jones to stay nor for Helena to knock him out.

Karen Allen as Marion and John Rhys-Davies as Sallah have cameo parts.  They were both in the first Indiana Jones.

Movie Review: ****Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

If you ever wondered how Chewbacca and Solo hooked up, this movie gives the answer.  They met in prison.  Chewbacca being the monster who was suppose to do away with Solo, but instead they form an alliance, and go off to a life of smuggling--very ill.
What was not expected was the serious love relationship between Solo and Qi'ra.  They are a thing at the beginning of the movie on Corellia, and then separated by circumstances.  However when they finally get back together there is still steam between them. 
This movie has plenty of futuristic adventure.  It also has an intriguing plot.  There is a major twist when at the end of the movie Darth Maul is introduced. 
Great fun here.  I must admit I prefer Harrison Ford, but this Solo does an admirable job.

	Alden Ehrenreich	...	Han Solo
	Joonas Suotamo	...	Chewbacca
	Woody Harrelson	...	Beckett
	Emilia Clarke	...	Qi'ra
	Donald Glover	...	Lando Calrissian
	Thandie Newton	...	Val
	Phoebe Waller-Bridge	...	L3-37 (voice)
	Paul Bettany	...	Dryden Vos

Dryden Vos plays the villain, smuggler who doesn't hesitate to take a life to protect his interest.  We see a card shark, younger version of Lando Calrissian.  Beckett is the head of a smuggling ring where Chewbacca and Solo land.