“Ready Player One” (Action/Science-Fiction: 2 hours, 20 minutes)

Starring: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn and

Director: Steven Spielberg

Rated: PG-13 (Violence, bloody images, some suggestive material, partial nudity and profanity)

Movie Review: Director Steven Spielberg directs this adventure based on Ernest Cline’s book. 

“Ready Player One” is a pop-culture engagement, covering the last 50 years. It is a modern “TRON” (Director Steven Lisberger, 1982) on steroids. It cleverly uses a virtual world video game, a mixture of live action and animation, to create a good entertainment.

A dystopian Earth during the year 2045 is the setting for this adventure. Earth’s overpopulation, energy deficiencies, economic immobility and prevalent social problems have created enormous problems. To escape the real world’s problems, people turn to the OASIS, a virtual-reality simulator accessible via visors and other technology. 

Enter Wade Owen Watts (Sheridan), a skilled player in OASIS. He is the first player to discover a clue for finding an Easter Egg. If Watts can find all the clues, he stands a chance to inherit a fortune from the game creator James Halliday (Mark Rylance). Watts and his online friends are playing against many other players including the ruthless corporation Innovative Online Industries led Nolan Sorrento (Mendelsohn).

Video games and simulated reality combine to create a masterful entertainment. Zak Penn and Ernest Cline’s script is dynamic. The writers provide plenty of action with their story. They prove Cline’s novel is as worthy.

Plenty of nice visuals and action sequences are noteworthy also. The characters jump between the real world and virtual world OASIS frequently. The pace is usually fast and never boring.

The action, computer-generated imagery and the entertaining variables make this movie a grand popcorn flick. Those same entities also mask some weak or inconsistent story elements. Still, “Ready Player One” provides enough enthusiastic moments that it shines.

Grade: B (Play the game.)

“Acrimony” (Drama/Thriller: 2 hour, 1 minute)

Starring: Taraji P. Henson, Lyriq Bent and Crystle Stewart

Director: Tyler Perry

Rated: R (Profanity, violence sexual content and nudity)

Movie Review: Acrimony means, bitterness, anger or resentment. “Tyler Perry’s Acrimony” inspires such emotions. It is a cheap, soap-operatic knockoff of “Fatal Attraction” (Director Adrian Lyne, 1987).

Melinda Moore-Gayle (Henson) is a faithful wife to husband Robert Gayle (Bent). She feels he has done nothing but been lazy and spent her money while she works. When Melinda thinks Robert has had an affair with an old flame, she becomes enraged with the betrayal. She loses control and violence ensues.

Material in “Acrimony” can be observed in television’s “The Haves and the Have Nots” weekly. Perry, who directs and serves as a producer also, penned the script. It consists of over-the-top characters and narrative stereotypes. The characters are inconsistent and the story shifts during the final third of this photoplay.

Henson plays crazy well. She is a talented actress, but her time as Cookie Lyon on the FOX drama series “Empire” has handicapped her. In “Acrimony,” her Melinda Gayle, although gratifyingly amusing, is Cookie on steroids and crack.

Grade: C- (The conventional psychological drama inspires acrimony.)

“Seven Days in Entebbe” (Drama/Thriller: 1 hour, 47 minutes)

Starring: Rosamund Pike, Daniel Brühl, Eddie Marsan

Director: José Padilha

Rated: PG-13 (Violence and strong language)

Movie Review: “Seven Days in Entebbe” offers a worthy story. However, it is marred by emotionless screenplay writing, which renders characterizations that fail to impact. 

The 1976 hijacking of an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris is the inspiration for this mild retelling. The goal of the abductors was to capture Jews, citizens of Israel, to force the release of prisoners. The details of the hijacking and the audacious rescue are the goals of the screenplay. It aptly offers audiences a good timeline, but it fails in other areas.

For a movie about a serious incident, it is not as richly engaging as it could be. The movie creates many characters — some more interesting than others — and they all appear to have valid reasons for their actions. The problem is the movie does not require one to care enough about their actions.

Grade: C (“Seven Days” should create an intense drama but such never materializes.)

*Playing in larger cities

“God’s Not Dead: A Light in the Darkness” (Drama/Religion: 1 hour, 46 minutes)

Starring: David A. R. White, John Corbett and Ted McGinley

Director: Michael Mason

Rated: PG (Thematic elements including violence and suggestive material)

Movie Review: Many think to save a religion, they must vilify others using fear tactics. As people of faith, we are taught to love one another. When we fear one another, we do the opposite of our faith. For 1 John 4:18 indicates, “There is no fear in love.” 

“God is Not Dead: A Light in the Darkness” misleadingly uses fear tactics to rally the faithful before turning its aim at what ails the Christians.

The Rev. Dave Hill (White) and the congregation at St. James Church face multiple problems when his church is unexpectedly gutted because of a fire. The fire prompts the governing members of Hadley University to pressure Hill and the church to vacate its properties. 

The university has been getting an outpouring of calls to remove the church from its campus. However, Hill was raised in the church and fights to keep it where it is.

The movie spends a great deal of its time promoting the notion that people are determined to destroy the church. Not until the final quarter does the movie address the real problem of religions today. Places of worship are too busy discussing what they are against that they omit what they are for. 

This is where the movie finds its driving force. Before that, it is wandering the dark with clichéd themes.

Grade: C (Predictable photoplay needs more light.)