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"Annabelle: Creation" is a prequel to "Annabelle", the doll from "The Conjuring". And you've probab...

"Annabelle: Creation" is a prequel to "Annabelle", the doll from "The Conjuring". And you've probably heard that this is better than the first a lot already.

"Annabelle: Creation" has no business being this good. Funny enough, the same can be said about 2016's "Ouija: Origins of Evil". It is strange that these two bizarrely similar films were released within a year of each other. Both follow up on terrible first films. Both are prequels of those terrible first films. Both shouldn't have been made. Both are extremely effective horror films. Oh, and both star the excellent child-actor Lulu Wilson. The similarities don't even end there.

The Mullins aren't the family they once were. In the early 1940s, Samuel and Esther (Anthony LaPaglia and Miranda Otto) lost their 7- year-old daughter, Annabelle (Samara Lee), in a tragic accident. As they were still grieving, Esther was seriously injured and has been bedridden ever since. Samuel is only a shell of the happy and loving father and husband he once was. Nevertheless, 12 years after losing their little girl, Samuel and Esther decide that it's time for some good-deed-doing. They open their large farmhouse to six girls and their caregiver, Sister Charlotte (Stephanie Sigman), when the orphanage where they lived closed. The girls range in age from about 7 to 17. The two youngest girls, Linda (Lulu Wilson) and Janice (Talitha Bateman), who wears a leg brace, are especially close, promising they will never allow themselves to be separated. Although they still hope to be adopted, all the girls love their new home. Yet there's still something "off" about the house – and it gets off- ier as the days go by. Samuel is kind, but gruff and the girls are basically afraid of him. They also wonder about his wife who rings a bell when she needs her husband and never leaves her room. Naturally, the orphans are curious about their new home and they're anxious to explore. As most of them run and play outside, discovering a dark sealed well in the process, Janice tries to enter an upstairs bedroom that Samuel sternly tells her is locked and never to be opened. Of course, strange sounds begin emitting from that room (at night) and when Janice approaches the door to investigate, she finds it unlocked. She enters, looks around and finds a creepy porcelain doll sitting in a chair inside a closet that is wallpapered with pages from a Bible. Janice closes the closet door, but it keeps opening on its own. A ghost-like figure from inside the closet approaches Janet, but then disappears. The scares just build from there and Janice becomes convinced that there is a demonic presence in that room and it wants her soul. She's not wrong.

The bar is low when it comes to horror film scripts. Even the best of the genre still have the occasional cringe-worthy line or plot hole (The Conjuring 2, I'm looking at you). All this to say, I'm going to go easy on the faults of Annabelle: Creation's script. The writing here is not bad by any means. There are cringy lines here and there, but that is to be expected. The characters make extremely poor choices, but even that is to be expected. The problem rests almost solely in the dull first 30 minutes of this film.

One of the oddest things is when someone does get killed, the Nun still keeps them in this house. At that point I felt like screaming "No, you idiot. Get the hell out, run away now."

I did like the setting of the film. The middle-of-nowhere concept is a real favourite of mine in horror movies. I also found the acting to be above average, especially when you consider a large number of the cast were child actors who can often come across very poorly. Lulu Wilson, who starred in another prequel-to-a-prequel (last year's Ouija: Origin of Evil) that received generally positive reviews, turns in a solid performance as the young Linda, who must contend with the haunting presence of the Annabelle doll manifesting itself into her best friend Janice. Wilson powers her way through any questionable character choices solely on the strength of her work. On the other hand, Talitha Bateman, playing the polio- afflicted Janice, handles her character's progression nicely, turning into a genuinely chilling presence as the film progresses.

The thing I think most people have to remember about this film, which I sometimes forget myself, is that Annabelle is just a doll... creepy looking, but just a doll nonetheless. She's not like Slappy or Chucky, where the doll is the soul in and of itself. The doll may act as a conduit for the demon however; we have known this since The Conjuring. However, this demon can also do it in its own form, or into a human, or anything else that it wants to... even more than one place at a time. Makes it kind of strange that Annabelle still remains the highlight of the film by the title, but these films are less about the doll and more about the entity, and that's fine with me. I just have to keep reminding myself that.

If you are a fan of horror movies and especially if you want to see some continuity with The Conjuring series, then this is definitely a must see movie. But if you are one of those people who do not like supernatural horror movies, then it would be best if you avoid this one. By the way, the movie had 2 post credit scenes. So you can wait and see them by waiting till the very end.

Dunkirk tells the true story of how the UK civilians, the Navy & the Royal Air Force, evacuated allied soldiers from Dunkirk, i...

Dunkirk tells the true story of how the UK civilians, the Navy & the Royal Air Force, evacuated allied soldiers from Dunkirk, in the midst of an intense battle, during World War II.

The story plays out in three parts and three timelines, the first story "The Mole" plays out over a week on the beach, the second "The Sea" in one day, and "The Air" in one hour. The soldier Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) tries to escape the beach any way he can from carrying the sick to hiding in an abandoned craft. He teams up with a silent soldier Gibson (Aneurin Barnard) to carry a wounded man aboard a destroyer but then they are both ordered off the ship so hide below the dock. They hear Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) and Colonel Winnant (James D'Arcy) discuss the situation on the beach. On a dock back in England, Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance) and his son Peter (Tom Glynn-Carney) see the Royal Navy commandeering boats so they decide to set sail themselves to help the truth bringing along young George (Barry Keoghan).

In the air, Farrier (Tom Hardy) and Collins (Jack Lowden) fly towards the beach. Their greatest worry beyond the enemy planes is fuel, especially when Farrier's gauge breaks. The two pilots take down enemy planes with stunning scenes of air battle, probably the best part about watching the film in theaters. Back on the beach, Timothy and Gibson escape a sinking ship and help soldiers out of the water. They venture to another ship where they allowed on board and given tea and toast. Gibson does not go below deck but Timothy goes with Alex (Harry Styles) to eat the food. When a torpedo hits that ship, the men scramble to swim above the surface and Gibson saves their lives by opening the door so they can swim out. Mr. Dawson picks up a soldier (Cillian Murphy) shivering on a sunken U-Boat. The soldier desperately wants to not go back to the beach at Dunkirk having seen what happened.

Nolan wrote the script, told from three perspectives—the land, sea, and air—to contain little dialogue and create suspense solely through details. Typical to Christopher Nolan, this movie is fantastic. Nolan directs the crap out of it. Not only is his camera-work fantastic, but the scenery he captures is beautiful. They manage to really nail the tone, with it being a little claustrophobic despite the location being a massive beach. The characters are stuck and there is absolutely no way for them to escape. Right from the opening scene, Nolan nails the tone and realism of the film.

On top of that, Hans Zimmer's score is far from only being the icing on the cake. In truth, the music proves to be something of a major character, assisting in the carrying of the rest of the cast through this horrible event. The music perfectly suits every situation, and whether or not you feel for the characters, the music makes sure you at least feel a little tense.

Speaking of the characters, there really aren't any. Sure, there are like 300,000 soldiers on the beach, yet we still feel for them. The main character has maybe four lines in the movie, yet the reason why he's so good along with the rest of the characters is because the movie sets up this horrible situation and instead of filling the movie with gratuitous war violence, a lot of it is psychological. When a character is desperately trying to escape from drowning you definitely feel for them. I don't know about you, but I don't want to drown. And even without speaking, the characters make decisions and do things that are completely logical and understandable. There are no dumb people in this movie, and as a result they prove to be very human. There is so much humanity in these characters, so it's very easy to relate to them in some way.

Part of why the characters are so humane, however, is because of the acting. From the big names like Tom Hardy and Kenneth Branagh, to the first-timers like Fionn Whitehead, there is not a single bad, or even average, performance in this movie. The lead, Whitehead, is absolutely outstanding in his first full-length film role, pulling off a very human performance simply by the way he moves, acts, and reacts.

The movie feels real too. The gunshots sound real, and the way the action scenes are shot are in-the-moment and authentic. When Hardy flies his plane and attempts to shoot down others, it's not epic. It's not really even that fast-paced. It's honestly just kind of tedious and frustrating, watching him carefully line up his shot before shooting. And again, the claustrophobia is very real. We get plenty of in-the-cockpit shots that show just how incredibly uncomfortable it would've been in that plane. Again, it's very real and no matter how 'weak' the characters are I felt for each one. And there's so little hope in this movie. Characters end up in terrible situations and don't always get saved last minute. Things happen that would happen in real life but in a conventional movie? No way. Just when you think the movie may be divulging to conventionalism it throws a grenade at your face and you remember that this is real.

If I can find one problem with this movie, it's that at times it felt a little slow. Not that it wasn't interesting, the movie is fantastic at showing the audience what happened without making it long and boring, but it does slow down from time to time. Certain moments may feel a little out of place, but in terms of the plot still make sense.

Overall Dunkirk is fantastic. Just about everything works, and you should absolutely go see it. From the music to the directing to the acting, it's great. Go see it. It's worth your money.

Finally, after a long year of waiting; we have Jon Watts' Spider-Man: Homecoming. Crossing between "high school romantic com...

Finally, after a long year of waiting; we have Jon Watts' Spider-Man: Homecoming. Crossing between "high school romantic comedy" and an action-packed adventure, this telling of Spidey's roots is refreshingly fun, albeit a little messy. Instead of introducing Peter Parker all over again, we're thrown right into his world. Peter is struggling to balance his superhero antics with his high school life, but when he discovers a new threat, he begins to hear a calling.

The story first starts off during the aftermath of the first Avengers film as a crew that seems to salvage and clean up debris is on the scene. The government takes over though leaving Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton) and his crew in a very bad state as he put everything he had in this cleanup. He ends up keeping some stuff that they had gotten the previous day and thus he and his gang begin stealing the high tech weaponry. Flash years later and Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is under the tutelage of Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr), well actually he is under the tutelage of Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau). He eagerly awaits another mission after the battle with Captain America and he eagerly awaits the end of each school day so he can go out and fight crime which oftentimes takes the form of stopping bike thieves and accidentally stopping people from trying to get into their own car. However, he soon runs into some thieves robbing an ATM using advanced weaponry and soon he will come face to face with the Vulture! He also tries to woe the girl he likes as Homecoming is soon.

This one was a fun movie as Spider-man is in the Marvel universe. So we get some comedy in there and we get some really good action sequences. It hits all the beats of a typical MCU film. It's lighthearted and fun, but gets serious when it needs to. It's your typical stop the bad guy shtick. If you've gotten sick of the Marvel formula you might be bored by this film, but if it's a formula that works there's no need to fix it. Plus, Spiderman, more than any other marvel character, fits with this formula. This is very much how the classic Spiderman stories were told. The character of Vulture is dark and not be messed with, and this is evident right from the start.Some people see him as a victim. He has a probably strong argument that he never got a fair shot. His most despicable act is killing a disobedient subordinate (a bad guy himself). He is an avid entrepreneur, keen on keeping his business running and his family happy. He doesn't want to destroy the world, or take over the city with his weapons. He doesn't want power, and is afraid of law, especially the Avengers. This makes him an atypical villain. He is not the selfish one here, Peter is. Producing weapons and selling them is blameworthy, but then again, this is exactly how Stark made his fortune, with the only difference that he was (probably) selling them legally. A minor complaint I do have is that Spider-man's spidey sense did not really seem to play that big of a role in his powers.

Tom Holland is the best Spidey yet, there's no denying. There's a great balance between his life as a student and his Stark "internship." He delivers his lines brilliantly both in and out of the suit. Also, his interactions with Jacob Batalon are perfect, they capture 'nerdy youth' in a nutshell. Then comes Michelle (Zendaya), a sassy student who keeps an eye on Peter and his happenings. She becomes a fun addition to the cast and I hope to see her return in the future. Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan plays a significant part. Jacob Batalon as Spiderman's best mate Ned manages to tickle some funny bones. Keaton delivers his lines very well.

Overall, if you were excited for Spiderman's solo outing in the MCU this film should give you what you were expecting.