The First Purge:

As you might expect, given its 18A rating and its hyper-violent subject matter, this is a profane movie filled with anger, violence, and blood.  Surprisingly, it also has a most interesting political undertone that points to governments that cannot be trusted.  There have now been four Purge movies, with this being a prequel that shows us the origins of the one night each year in America in which anything goes - robbery, murder, mayhem, you name it.  We are introduced here to The Architect (Marissa Tomei), a PhD psychologist who has been working with the new presidential administration, the NFFA (New Founding Fathers of America) Which is struggling with massive national debt and the inability to keep law and order in the land.  The Architect has demonstrated a social experiment in which, for a restricted period of time, just one night, America can let off steam and do whatever it wants.  The rest of the year, everyone pays attention to their jobs and families as their aggression and hatred has all been bled off.  So it all starts with an experiment on Staten Island, doing a sort of trial purge in that location to see whether or not this is something that can continue.  Turns out that not too many people are up for the killing and raping, and they use the night to party.  The government is not happy, and intervenes, to liven things up.  There is plenty of tension, a lot of frightening moments, and not much that we see being predictable.  Executive produced by Michael Bay (Transformers), if you can stand the heat, this is a good action thriller.  Rated 18A. 

Sicario: Day of the Soldado:

"Sicario" means "hitman: and "Soldado" means "Soldier" in Spanish.  The second of a trilogy, this one follows the original film from 2015. Josh Brolin is once again Matt Graver, recruited by the US government to lead the fight against the cartels which, in Mexico are more powerful than the police, the army, or the political leaders.  Benicio Del Toro is Alejandro, a Mexican attorney whose family was killed by the cartels to send a message showing that no one is immune. There isn't a time or a place in this film when you are not riveted to the screen.  The action, both physical and emotional, charged with various kinds of weaponry, is dizzying, and the story has layer upon layer of complexity.  It's an outstanding depiction of the brutality of what goes on every day, from the smuggling of migrants across dark borders late at night, to the huge amounts of money that the drug business, and now the human trafficking business.  We see Graver, once again tasked by US officials, to make the next logical move against the cartels.  He offers a simple solution - get them to start a war on one another, forcing the rest of their operations to shut down or slow down.  To get this done, a plot is hatched to, in the vernacular of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, "kidnap a prince."  If you kidnap a prince, the kings will go after one another and fight your war for you.  Graver had been a covert operative in the Middle East, and now he sets to work to make it happen in Mexico.  Nothing is easy though ... the operation runs into trouble early on, and the US Government cannot be party to it ... soon everyone is disavowing everyone else, and the fight is on at both macro and micro levels.  An outstanding movie, and if it were based on a novel, which it is not, I would be out buying volume three right now to see where the story goes.  Rated 18A for violence.

Leave No Trace:

This is a film-festival darling that got a lot of notice in small festival venues, but didn’t get much distribution, and had very little at the box office.  Ben Foster is Will, an Iraq war veteran and single-parent, who suffers terribly from PTSD. As a result, he trusts no one, does not trust the system, and lives off the grid with his 13 year-old daughter named “Tom,” short for “Thomasina.”  They live in a public park outside of Portland, OR, and make occasional trips into town for necessities. Will makes his money by selling the drugs that the VA gives him to treat his condition. Everything changes when a jogger, running through the woods, spots Tom.  Soon the authorities are involved, there are hearings and court dates, and Social Services sets Will up with a job packing boxes on a tree farm, Tom gets placed in a school, and for the first time, socializes with people her own age. Will can’t handle the pressure of being under the eye of those who run the program, and he scoops Tom up, and they leave, once again finding a place, an abandoned cabin, off the grid.  Tom comes to realize that what afflicts her Dad does not afflict her, and she want to have a life. Very well-reviewed, and an interesting, but unusual film. Rated 14A.

The Good Cop (2018):

This is not your father's "Taxi!"  Tony Danza stars as a disgraced NYPD detective who spend several years in prison - or was that just a cover?  Danza, who was Tony Banta on the series "Taxi," has not aged well.  When Taxi ended in 1983 he was 32 years old.  Now he is 67 and he looks every day of that, as Tony, Sr., still on the force, and now in an uncomfortable relationship with his son, Tony, Jr. (Josh Grobin) who is the extreme opposite, a rule-following young cop who lives in the shadow of his not-so-nice father.  There are ten episodes in the series, and you can start out with the pilot that shows us how all of this came about - and it's billed as a police-comedy.  Rated M for mature audiences.

Hilda:

This one is for the kids, a Netflix exclusive animated feature about a little blue-haired girl and her adventures in the land of Trolls.  Based on a British comic book, Hilda lives in a land of elves and friendly giants, but leaves her comfortable home for the city of Trolberg and many mystical creatures, some exceedingly dangerous.  Not too scary for ages eight and up.  Rated PG.