Logan Lucky is as giant an August surprise as anything I ever could have hoped for, the delight I felt watching only exceeded by the knowledge audiences were going to get to experience all this jovial throwback ebullience for themselves starting this weekend.

I left the theatre. What could have been an interesting foray into a new world of killers, bodyguards and international enforcement agents instead proves to be a mindless piece of fluff and not much else, and for a story about lethal marksmen who never miss their shot The Hitman’s Bodyguard up being well wide of the target the majority of the time.

Much like last year’s Ouija: Origin of Evil was a prequel that proved to be a monumentally massive improvement over its anemic low budget horror predecessor Ouija, Annabelle: Creation somehow, some way bucks the odds and proves to be a superior motion picture to its woeful 2014 precursor Annabelle.

There’s little room for the characters to breathe, their collective journeys never evolving in ways that feel authentic or genuine. Jeannette’s transitions happen because the story requires them to, not because they feel organic to her own personal story, diluting the inherent power of her resilient perseverance to achieve by a substantial margin.

Landline gets what makes people tick, doesn’t shy from reveling in the good, bad and ugly as well as all the gradations hiding in the various grey areas. It’s very good, and as such ends up being a movie I can’t help but hope finds its audience.

For these young women, Step is life, but it is also something to strive for, to believe in and to use as a means to make the leap into the unknown, hopefully to even greater achievements. For the viewer, Step is a wonder, and for the life of me I now can’t imagine a world where this documentary does not exist.

“I hope that people are talking about education and expanding education, putting more money and time into schools. I hope that mentors or coaches or people who never thought about being mentors or coaches are having conversation to get involved with someone, because if you reach only one person, there’s no telling how many lives may change or be impacted.”
– Gari “Coach G” McIntyre

“It always excites us to share a story that doesn’t feel super developed in our culture and in our narratives on our screen, I feel like it’s also really nice to tell stories about women and for women…I think that I like making art for us and not for them. I’m not trying to divide genders here, but I do feel like the stories that I gravitate towards are stories about women.”
– Gillian Robespierre

There’s no cohesion, no rationale why one event that transpires leads to the one directly following it. It’s a big, monstrous waste of time, energy, resources and talent, The Dark Tower a forgettable misfire that does injustice to King’s source material and sadly belongs in the bargain bin collecting dust.