***** Exceptional
**** Great
*** OK
** So So
* Blah
Allegiant is the fourth in the
Divergent series. A civil war is brewing
between the remaining factions and the Divergent group go beyond the wall to
see what is out there. Great series. Lots of action and strong women roles.
****
Austenland is about a Jane Austen
fanatic, "Jane", who has grown up in love with Jane Austen books. Now
as an adult, she re-reads, re-lives, or re-watches the stories constantly in
her apartment surrounded by 18th century British everything and is
perpetually single because she lives her life in this fantasy. She decides to
spend her life savings on a vacation to the Austenland
resort which guarantees total cultural immersion and romance. Unfortunately she can only afford the cheap rate: accommodations in the
servant's quarters, dowdy dresses, no extras. The other women are caricatures
of comedy, goofy, silly to the point of irritation. The resort actors paid to
woo them are equally animated. The first half of the movie I kept thinking whoever wrote this HATES Jane Austen fans. However,
Jane keeps taking walks on the grounds in order to escape the boredom of
perpetual needle point, the irritation of the cackling guests, or the
frustration of being treated like she is second class. She meets one of the hired
help and begins her own private romance away from the manor with the stable boy. Then the scowling,
gorgeous Mr. Darcy-like character flirts. She begins to feel confused
between reality and fantasy. There were times the stupid humor was irritating
and I think the main character could have been written better. Well, the whole
movie could have been written better as it had way more potential than what it
delivered, but I liked the idea and I liked the climax where the fantasy all
comes falling down around her. ***
The Answer Man is about an author
who writes a book called Me and God filled
with questions to and answers from God. Everyone thinks he talks to God and his
fans besiege him for answers to their burning questions. He's an angry guy and somewhat reclusive secluded
in his stunning New York apartment lined with bookshelves. He spends much of
his time trying to figure out how to really talk to God. Then he starts
interacting with people and those encounters change his life. It was good .
****
Birth is about a widow (Nicole
Kidman) whose husband has been dead for ten years and she's about to remarry. A
ten-year old boy shows up on her doorstep, claims to be her dead husband, and
begs her not to marry as it would be a mistake. He convincingly knows intimate
details of her life and her dead husband's life. The whole thing is very weird. First, the
woman's family invites the kid to stay with them. Personally I'd be curious,
but I'd be appropriately creeped out and wouldn't invite him for overnights. If
your kid started acting weird and a strange family invited him to move in with
them, would you think that is acceptable? Second, Nicole is naked in the bath
and this ten-year old walks into the bathroom, undresses and climbs into the
bath with her. That was really, really creepy. Watching this grown woman who is
convinced he is her dead husband and plans to run away with him was all very
pedophilic and creepy. ***
The BoxTrolls What amazing
animation! It was all puppetry. The characters were so outstanding and
well-developed in their evilness or adorableness. Their facial features and the
way they moved were mesmerizing. The special effects for the sets were
outstanding, too. Darling story. ****
A Case of You is about a writer who
has a crush on a barista at the local coffee shop. He stutters and gets tongue
tied every time he's around her because he is so insecure. To compensate he
finds her Facebook page and studies everything she likes so that when they do
finally officially meet, it will appear as if they have everything in common
and she will think he is the perfect man. I remember discussing this phenomenon
with a friend years ago and how many people early in relationships will not be
themselves and instead be the person they think the love interest wants them to
be. I think she called it "reflecting." I spent most of my youth
reflecting... Anyway, his past demons do reveal themselves so the audience
understands why he is so insecure and afraid, and of course, she makes the
mistake of telling him she's falling in love with him...which he doesn't trust
because, after all, she doesn't know him. It was a very creative and
interesting take on the love story genre. ****
Cold Mountain How many times have I seen this movie? I've
lost count. So outstanding. It's definitely one of my top ten movies of all
time. *****
The Cove is about the slaughter of
dolphins in Japan, the activists who are trying to stop it and the Japanese who
are trying to cover it up so they can continue because they are greedy and
violent. Dolphins are considered pests that eat the fish supply. The movie
discusses the levels of mercury in dolphin meat, but how the Japanese are
trying to sell the dolphin meat to the mandatory school lunch programs. The
lead activist is Ric O'Barry who bought, trained and cared for the Flipper
dolphins in the 1960s which started the dolphin show craze contributing to
their exploitation, has been working for the last 35 years to free captive
dolphins and stop the slaughters. Excellent, yet horrifying movie. So sad. I
can't get the bright blood red water out of my head. Humans are so horrible.
****
Dear Eleanor is about a young girl
who's mother runs to a meeting to introduce Eleanor Roosevelt, gets hit by a
car, and dies never getting to give her introduction. The daughter and her best
friend road trip from California to New York so she can give her mother's
speech to the First Lady. It was about mourning and closure. The grief was
good, but the rest was very goofy and unrealistic...they pick up an escape
convict. Hmmm.... The scenery was beautiful. **
Delores Claiborne I know I've seen
this movie before many years ago, but I couldn't remember it at all. It's about
a housekeeper (Kathy Bates) accused of murdering her employer and a vindictive detective
who tried to have her indicted for murdering her husband many years before. I
love the quote "Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hang on
to." Excellent story and lots of intrigue. Kathy Bates was superb. All performances
were excellent. ****
Dirty Grandpa is with Robert DeNiro
and Zac Efron. I had grave reservations about this movie and worried it would
be incredibly stupid. Someone at the library said it was really funny. No, it
was really stupid. I didn't even get to the point where Zac Efron takes his
shirt off, and you know he does. Not sure why this kid who is a very good actor
is in all these bad movies. *
Easy A is about an intelligent,
witty, although invisible high school student (Emma Stone) who lies to her best
friend telling her she is busy so she can get out of going camping with her and
her weird parents. It escalates when she continues the lie and pressed by the
friend, falsely admits to losing her virginity. Word travels fast. To compound
her fall from grace, her English class is reading The Scarlet Letter, hence the film's title. Clever tie-in. I always
like a good title. Since she now has the reputation of being the school slut,
she decides to dress and play the part. Her gay friend asks if she'd pretend to
have sex with him so he can pretend he's straight so the bullies would leave
him alone. It snowballs from there when all the school's misfits hear about her
willingness to sacrifice her reputation and they start paying her to help them
spread rumors about their sexual desirability to increase their popularity. It
was very creative and well-written. All-star cast. I love her parents - I wish
I had parents like that. ***
Freeheld is the story of New Jersey
detective Laurel Hester (Julianne Moore) who as she was dying from cancer was
refused pension benefits for her domestic partner (Ellen Page). This is about
her fight for equality which lead to gay marriage rights. Great performances.
Moore's wig was cheap, ugly and a distraction. I know they were trying to make
her look like the person the story was based on, but couldn't they find a wig
that looked like real hair?? Who wears their hair like 1970s Farrah Faucett in
2006? ***
Four Christmases is about Reese
Witherspoon and Vincent Vaughn who for years have lied to their four families
telling them they do international volunteer work during Christmas. They end up stranded at the airport during a
snow storm and are interviewed by a TV news station about their trip to Fuji.
Feeling slightly guilty but only because they were caught in the lie, they
begrudgingly spend Christmas visiting their four dysfunctional families. I love
the line "you can't spell families without lies." LOL **
Get a Job is about a group of young
adults (featuring Miles Teller and Anna Kendrick) just out of college who are
all trying to figure out how to get jobs. The underlying theme addresses the
entitlement of this generation who have grown up getting awards for nothing,
good grades for mediocrity, trophies for
losing, and praise for just existing. They carry this self-gratification,
apathetic attitude into the job market. They have no concept of actual success,
professional behavior, or working toward a goal. Bryan Cranston plays a father with
an old-school work ethic who has lost his job and now has to compete with this
younger generation. It has some LOL moments. Love the kid who gets a job as a
middle school chemistry teacher. ***
Guernica was an historical fiction based
on the true events of the massacre of a Spanish village just before WWII by the
Nazis who were experimenting with new methods of warfare. Good story, lots of
human interest to make you feel the pain and suffering. Beautiful scenery.
Nazis were disgusting. The Spanish government has never apologized to the
survivors of this village. ****
Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby and
Fred Astaire. I can't believe I've never seen this classic movie. I thought I
saw them all. Other than the dancing and the singing which was passable, the
story line was fairly appalling. Conniving asshole purposely and repeatedly
steals girlfriends away from the nice guy. It was horrible. And the quote,
"Women has to have things told the right way"...because they are too
stupid to figure it out otherwise. Black face performances. The staging was
horrible. In one scene the two actors who were talking to each other had their
backs to the camera the whole time. Entertainment has come a long way since
1942. **
I Have Never Forgotten You is a
documentary about Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Lots of
film footage, excellent story, wonderful man. ****
The Invention of Lying is about how
the world would be if nobody lied. It was very depressing with people throwing
insults at one another and telling them exactly what they think of them. Then
the main character (Ricky Gervais) discovers lying and his whole life changes
as he becomes better at it. While trying to comfort his dying mother who is
afraid of the great unknown of eternity, he invents the concept (lie) of heaven
and the "man in the sky" who makes everyone happy. It was very
thought provoking. The message I got was
lying produces a much better and happier existence. All-star cast, even the bit
parts were played by celebrities. ***
Joy is the story of Joy Mangano who
invented the self-wringing Miracle Mop and sold it on infomercials with much
success. She starts out a wife, mother, daughter, and granddaughter supporting
several generations of her dysfunctional family and in horrible debt. As a
child she grew up with a very active imagination creating inventions, but with
more and more responsibility all that creativity was squelched. She's
constantly being told she's incapable and then allows her relatives to screw up
her life at every turn. It takes her a while to find her strength. Jennifer
Lawrence who is one of my favorite actresses is, as usual, brilliant. Also
included are Robert DeNiro, Bradley Cooper, Diane Ladd, and Isabella
Rossellini. It was a good human relations story about perseverance. Really bad title
lacking in creativity. ***
Love the Coopers was a
Christmas-themed story about a dysfunctional family who goes through the
motions of familyhood but they lie, mistrust, and resent each other as they
meet for the holiday dinner. (Common Christmas theme for the modern movie....) The
all-star cast made the performances excellent. It had two problems. The first
was the narration. It was irritating and I kept thinking the writer must not
have had any confidence that the dialogue was good enough to describe the
characters and tell the story. I found it very strange and distracting. Then
there was the family dog. Big, ugly mutt who was allowed to jump up and eat
food off counters, jump up on tables and eat food off plates, and jump on
people sitting in chairs and eat their food. This went on THROUGHOUT the whole
movie. It was disgusting and unnecessary which indicated the writer was
probably some bad dog owner who thought a bad behaving dog would be a gimmick
to save the plot, again, indicating no confidence in the story. Bad dog owners
always think everyone loves a dog. Now I kept trying to make sense of this
idiotic inclusion and could only see it as a symbol of the family dysfunction.
Bad parents are always bad dog owners and vice versa. They are incapable of
raising well-adjusted children and for the same reasons don't have the
intelligence and are too lazy to train and socialize a dog. Maybe that was the
point? Then near the end the grandfather is watching his family and thinking
wonderful thoughts and I thought, Oh, he
must have been the narrator? I still didn't see the point of the narration
though. Well, no, the very last scene
is at the Christmas tree with only the DOG looking out the window at the
neighbors' houses with neighbor dogs looking out their windows. The fucking DOG
is the narrator of the story! It makes
absolutely NO SENSE whatsoever and there was no connection between the movie
themes and the dog. Remove the idiotic dog and the idiotic dog narration and it
would have been a great movie. The dog was a cheap shot. ***
The Meddler is with Susan Sarandon
who plays a Brooklyn widow who moves to Los Angeles to be near her daughter.
She is overwhelmingly needy and obviously lonely. The underlying reason for
this constant "meddling" is she is mourning the death of her husband
and is most definitely lonely and directionless. It's a great story about growing old and
finding one's place in the world after the death of a loved one. Sarandon had a
great Brooklyn accent. ***
Meet Me in Montenegro is an unusual
love story about a screenwriter who was deserted by a woman years prior after a
whirlwind six week romance in Montenegro. She left no reason in her note and he
was devastated. Years later after a break up with another woman, he is sent to
Berlin for a meeting as a last ditch effort to resurrect his filmmaking career
and meets the woman from years past by accident. In three days he is to return
to L.A. and she is heading to Budapest. Great art. I kept thinking how wonderful to be young and foolish and
carefree... ***
Meet My Valentine was about a
control freak who finds out he has brain cancer and less than a year to live.
He decides he wants to find and approve of his wife's next husband and his
daughter's new father so he puts his wife's profile on a dating sight and
starts interviewing men. When he has to list her interests on the website, he
has no idea which speaks to how they have grown apart. She's has decided
although she loves him she no longer likes him and is considering separation.
His new-found interest in her sparks a romantic rekindling. I totally get the
purpose behind his plan, but it was a little unrealistic if he thought he could
keep his illness from his wife and then do all this work to find her a man
WITHOUT her approval. Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. Needless to say
it was very sentimental. Good performances. ***
The Perfect Man is about a man (Liev
Schreiber) who is a pathological philanderer and his wife (Jeanne Tripplehorn)
who finally gets fed up and leaves him. He's lost without her, crying,
drinking, stumbling around. She wants to figure out why he is the way he is so
she pretends she's a random, accidental caller and engages him in conversation.
I don't know. I don't have much respect for men who have no respect for women
and then whine and carry on like babies when they lose the ones they love nor
do I have any respect for women who allow men to act like turds. I just can't
give him an excuse and call it OK. ***
See You In the Morning 1989 Jeff
Bridges and Farrah Faucet when they are young. Really boring. Nice 1980s
clothes. *
The Silent Storm is about a minister
on a deserted Scottish Island who's brain has been warped by thinking too much
about the Devil. There is some strange history with his wife which leads one to
believe she is in debt to him in some way. She's a closeted herbalist, or,
according to the minister, of evil persuasion. He's religiously abusive.
"OBEDIENCE IS GODLY!" A teenage orphan who has been labeled as a SINNER
is sent to live with them so the minister can beat the Devil out of him through
work and prayer. Before he is able to abuse the kid too much, the minister
hears the call of God and craziness takes over. God told him he must dismantle
his entire church, tied it to the fishing boat, and haul it to the mainland. He
leaves the young man with his young wife alone together...and you know that was
not a smart move. Beautiful scenery, great performances. Religious people are
insane. ***
Star Wars: The Force Awakens A week or so ago by chance I found
out that Adam Driver was the bad guy in the latest Star Wars movie. Really? Adam a bad guy. With all that charming
quirkiness he's usually in comedies. I ordered it from the library and while
waiting for its arrival Princess Leia died. Watching it was my mourning ritual
to honor her. Anyway, I failed miserably as a Star Wars fan. I think I saw the first two movies only because my
best friend was a fanatic, but then I lost interest. This one was fun. It has
all the adventure and excitement of the original movies, but the heroes are
older! They looked great too, Harrison
Ford, Mark Hamill (teeny tiny role!), and especially Carrie Fisher. As always I
love the multicultural themes - all those species living and working together
in harmony. Of course, the plot is left wide open for another sequel. I don't
think Adam died...he'll be back. Great role for him. The night I watched it
Debbie Reynolds died and it felt like my childhood died right along with her. I
normally don't bawl like a baby when celebrities die, but this time I did. ****
Stonewall is a historical fiction
based on the 1968 riots in New York that mark the beginning of the gay rights
movement. Great presentation on the
civil rights issues and great performances. So sad how families have rejected
their children forcing them out of their homes and on the streets. ****
Tenderness is about a teenage
psychopath who gets off on the intimacy of killing women. He gets released
early from prison and meets a stalker-girl who has been obsessed with him.
Russell Crowe plays the detective who was on his case and tracks him after his
release. The opening introduction is very intriguing with Crowe narrating about
two types of people in the world: those who chase pleasure and those who are
running from pain. Interesting movie. ***
Too Die For is about Suzanne Stone
(Nicole Kidman) an exceedingly ambitious woman obsessed with being on TV as a
reporter or news anchor. Her new husband (Matt Dillon) wants her to stay home,
help run the family business, and pop out a few kids. She resents his attempt
to deprive her of her dream. While filming a television special on teens, she
begins an affair with Joaquin Phoenix (who is very young in this movie!) and
manipulates him into killing her husband. Kidman's performance is amazing and
she is stunningly gorgeous with her perfectly presentable clothing and
well-coifed hair. ***
Unbroken is the story of Louie
Zamporini, Olympic medalist in track who survived being stranded in a lifeboat
for over a month after being shot down in the Pacific during World War II, then
captured and tortured and kept in a prison camp by a Japanese psychopath.
Amazing story. It never ceases to amaze me that people can be so absolutely horrible
to others. Humans disgust me. ****
Winter's Tale I'm not even sure
where to begin with this one. It's about a man (Colin Farrell) in 1915 who
falls in love with a girl who is dying, but there is this battle between good
and evil. Everyone has one miracle to give, but the demon who resides over New
York hates goodness.... Or something. It was as weird as my description sounds.
There was a whole lot of time travel although it didn't make much sense. It had
an all-star supporting cast: William Hurt, Russell Crowe and Eva Saint Marie.
(Where has she been all these years?) and then Will Smith shows up as Lucifer.
Really!! He's got a great voice for the Head Devil. Great sets and atmosphere.
The flying white horse was outstanding. It was a little too fantasic for me to
wrap my head around, but it was definitely interesting especially with all that
tear-jerking death. ***
