***** Exceptional
**** Great
*** OK
** So So
* Blah
Alone Yet Not
Alone was the story of a German
family who emigrate to the Pennsylvania area in the 1700s during the French and
Indian War. The Delaware Indians want their land back and after the British told
them they get nothing they begin terrorizing the settlers, killing the adults
and kidnapping the children as replacements for their tribal members who were
killed off by smallpox. The story is based on true events and follows the
experience of this family's little girl. Performances were really horrible. Men
playing the Indians were really embarrassing. The fake German accents were
horrendous. The lead actress as an adult I think must be a model. She did more
posing than acting, but she was just too gorgeous for the part. The story was
good, but unrealistic with lots of violence, but no blood. The murder and
mayhem were only suggested. ***
American
Pastoral is about a high school
football player heir to a glove factory (Ewan McGregor) and a beauty queen
(Jennifer Connelly) who get married, live the most idyllic life imaginable out
in the country, and raise a crazy-ass, out of control, smart mouth, daughter
(Dakota Fanning) who ends up being a teenage unibomber during the 1960s
anti-war revolution. It was such a sad, depressing movie. Once again I said,
"I'm so glad I never had kids." Excellent performances especially
from Jennifer Connelly. ***
East Side
Sushi is about a Latina woman who
is a really good cook. Her father works two jobs and runs a fruit stand. She
helps him out by selling fruit until she gets robbed. She sees a wanted sign in
the window of a Japanese restaurant and applies. After working in the kitchen
for a year, watching the sushi chefs and experimenting at home, she gets really
good at sushi, creating Mexican-style sushi rolls. The restaurant owner refuses
to promote her...she's a woman and the wrong nationality, after all. So she
enters a sushi contest. It was really good. I think they should have called it
"Konnichi-Juana" though. That was what the sushi chef at the
restaurant called her, but maybe movie goers wouldn't have understood what it
meant. It was a great story on multiculturalism and race relations. ****
Ender's Game is a futuristic sci-fi about aliens who came down to
earth in hopes of colonizing because their planet is dying. They attack, we
attack, and the legend has it we destroyed their army. Fifty years later and we
are still preparing for their return by training the smartest kids on earth.
One moves through the training ranks (Asa Butterfield) and ends up the
commander, then he finds out he's been played. All-star cast with Harrison
Ford, Ben Kingsley, Hailey Steinfeld, Viola Davis, and Abigail Breslin. ***
Free State of
Jones It amazes me when I find an
outstanding movie, especially one I've never heard of! Matthew McConaughey
stars as Newton Knight, true story of a Confederate soldier who defects to
bring the body of a young boy home and starts an army rebellion of deserters
and runaway slaves to defy the Confederate Army ravaging their properties. This
is a side of history we never hear. Not all white people in the South were
racist and not all supported the Civil War. Knight was also in a common law
marriage with a former slave and started his own interracial community. His
descendants still live in Jones County and their heritage and the history of
the whole county is a source of community pride. However, I watched the bonus
and his family has segregated themselves into the Black Knights (those who are
more African American) and the White Knights (those more Caucasian) and don't
get along. Wow. That's disturbing. What was the point of the rebellion if the
leaders family doesn't even get along? Such a dishonor to his memory. Great
story. Excellent performances. Love the gun-shooting women. As it should be.
*****
The Good Lie is a fictional story about the Lost Boys of Sudan and
follows the experiences of a group of children from a village that was
massacred. They walk about 1,000 miles to Ethiopia then Kenya and live in the
refugee camp for 15 years before they are granted a visa to come to the USA.
Reese Witherspoon is their employment case worker. Great story, great
performances. So horrifying and sad so many were left orphans yet survived
against all odds. ****
Hidden
Figures is about the space race
in the 1960s, but more specifically about three African-American women who
worked at NASA in engineering and computation amidst all the sexism and racism
that was going on during that time. Great story and excellent performances. It
was interesting they were in the "computation" department and the
girls were called "computers." Loved it. Very inspiring. ****
Hostile
Borders is about a young Mexican
woman who was brought to the states as a child with her illegal immigrant
parents. When she is caught in a credit card theft ring they deport her. She
doesn't speak Spanish and goes to live on her father's ranch. She ends up
getting involved with some kind of smuggling. What a mess, but it's hard to feel sorry for
her when she's such a loser. Do they
really just deport them without any kind of prosecution? That seems really
wrong. ***
I Am Michael was a weird story about a gay activist (James Franco) who
decides to give up being gay. Such a tormented soul. He decides the panic
attacks he is having are God speaking to him, calling him on a path toward God.
According to Wikipedia, the panic attacks were caused by celiac disease.
Hmmm... It was very strange to say the least. I kept thinking maybe he had a brain
tumor and I was hoping by the end he'd come to his senses. So weird. It's a TRUE story! Great
performances, just a weird story. ***
La La Land...Six Academy Awards? WHY? First, it's a great
throw-back to the early Hollywood musicals. It kind of reminded me of Singing in the Rain and I LOVE Singing in the Rain. It also has that
Hollywood follow-your dreams theme, too, and that alone probably got it votes
for awards. People in Hollywood followed their dreams so it resonated with them.
I love it that someone is still making musicals...and that's where my love ends.
I wasn't moved by the songs. At the very
least the songs in a musical have to hit you over the head so you want to hear
them over and over again. I thought Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone were horribly
miscast. Neither of them could sing. Having them break into random song with
those whispery, wimpy voices struggling to hit notes they were unable to hold
was wrong. I could envision Anna Kendrick in the lead role. I think she has the
talent to give those songs voice and she can probably dance. In fact, the movie
kind of reminded me of that movie she was in about being a Broadway actress,
something about five years (?) and it was weird that time jumped five years in
this movie, too. Clearly neither of them could dance. Even with the big dance
productions the dancing was adequate. But maybe the point was not everyone gets
their dream. I hope there was a point. If Gosling is playing the piano, he's
awesome. The jazz music was great. The soundtrack and lip syncing didn't always
match which drove me nuts. The love story started out really sweet and
old-fashioned but then it felt depressing right to the end. The blackout
between scenes was odd although they were probably trying to copy old Hollywood
scene changes from the silent era along with the large "The End" scrolled across the screen at the end. Kind of
disappointing and I don't see what all the fuss was about. ***
Mike and Dave
Need Wedding Dates Wow. Zac Efron
has become the stupid movie king. This one is about two idiotic brothers who
destroy every family function they attend with their moronic humor and immaturity.
They are told they must find suitable dates for their little sister's Hawaiian
wedding so they place an ad on Craiglist. Two equally idiotic girls see them
on talk show and decide they can be
smart enough to fool these two morons into believing they are "good"
girls thereby winning a free vaca to Hawaii. One of the girls is played by Anna
Kendrick. Hmmm...didn't she win an Academy Award? Is she that desperate for
work? I really thought the movie would have some redeeming features because of
her presence, but I was really wrong. Zac doesn't miss an opportunity to take
his shirt off. Of course. **
Now You See
Me is about four street magicians
who are hired to pull off a huge heist. Lots of celebrities in this one: Jessie
Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and my favorite, Mark
Ruffalo. I didn't even predict the ending. It was good, except I felt like I
was constantly in the dark or one step behind the whole time which I think was
the point. ***
Ordinary
World is about a rocker guy
(Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day) who was about to be famous then left the
band to have a kid. Twenty years later he's a man-boy turning forty, he still
acts like a kid in a rock band only he's a middle-class, middle-aged family man
who doesn't seem to think most of the time and his family just smiles at his
uselessness. On this day everyone forgets his birthday, his brother fires him
from the family business for not pulling his weight, so he pays for a fancy
$2,000 a night hotel room and calls up all his ex-band mates for a party. What
a mess. At the end of the day more than $3,000 in debt because the party trashed
the room (of course) he finds out it wasn't even his birthday. He didn't quite
know what day it was...and this wasn't about drugs! It was an odd, yet
irritating story about someone who derailed his dream and wouldn't let it go,
but yet is attempting to live a typical, ordinary life and failing miserably.
So sad. **
The Overnight
is about this clean-cut couple
(Taylor Schilling and Adam Scott) with a
young son who move from Seattle to Los Angeles. They are worried about making
friends. They meet another couple (Jason Schwartzman and Judith Godreche) with
a young son at the park and they are invited over for dinner. From dinner, they
put both kids to bed and it escalates from smoking pot, to watching weird porn,
to discussing the guy's paintings of butt holes, to skinny dipping, to drinking
in the hot tub, massage parlor sex shops, and clearly they are being groomed
for some swinging orgy. It was funny and weird at the same time. The ending was
great. ***
Passengers was an amazingly bizarre story that was absolutely
fascinating, or an incredibly imaginative sci-fi with a whole lot of humanity -
which is the only kind of sci-fi that should exist. It's about a space station
heading to another planet filled with 5,000 (?) people who have been put into hibernation
pods for the 100 year journey. The ship gets hit, damaged, and one of the
hibernation pods opens prematurely (Chris Pratt). He gets out, freaks out, and then
goes stir crazy for a year even considering floating himself into space and
ending it all. One day while roaming aimlessly, he sees this woman sleeping in
her pod (Jennifer Lawrence) and for months he studies her biography, listens to
her tapes, and reads all the books she's written. He falls in love with her and
torments himself over the decision whether he should wake her up so he has a
companion knowing his self-centeredness would condemn her to die on the ship
without ever reaching the new planet. Fascinating story about life and human
relations. Kudos to the person who wrote it. Excellent performances by all. I
love Jennifer Lawrence. Chris Pratt had so much
soul. ****
The Pool is about a young eighteen-year old Indian boy from the
country who works as a hotel boy in the city but dreams of going to school to
improve his life. His ten-year old friend works for a restaurant and together
in their free time they sells plastic bags on the street until the government
bans plastic bags. He sees a big house with a pool and watches it from his
perch high on a tree overlooking the estate planning how he can swim in that
pool. His friend suggests he break in one night, but he doesn't want the stress
of doing something illegal - he wants to feel welcome. He follows the home
owner and his daughter around town and works his way to getting a job helping
the man maintain this huge gardens. No one ever swims in the pool. There is an
estrangement between the man and his daughter, but you don't find out what is
going on until much later in the movie. The two boys befriend the daughter and
they go sightseeing all over the city. It was a great movie. The ending was
unexpected and rather uplifting. ****
RED 2 If you like the spy genre, you will love this movie.
It's about an international spy/hit man/government agent (Bruce Willis) who has
"retired". His partner (John Malkovich) shows up while he's shopping like
a normal guy with his wife at Costco. He informs him he has a bad feeling that
they are in danger...then his car blows up...but he's not really dead because
he faked his death. But there is some weapon of mass destruction that everyone
is looking for and bad guys think he knows where it is, but he doesn't. So they
all go looking for it along with every other international spy in the world. It
is a comedy, but not a stupid comedy, with lots of people dropping dead left and right. All-star
cast besides Willis and Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker, Catherine Zeta-Jones,
Anthony Hopkins, Brian Cox, Neil McDonough, Helen Mirren...I think every role is
played by a well-known actor. Mirren is the English spy...she is absolutely
hilarious and really gorgeous. She is my idol. I want to be just like her when
I grow up. Zeta-Jones is the Russian spy - she looks just like Natasha from
Rocky and Bullwinkle. The Asian guy with the fancy suit and Justin Bieber
hairdo I've never seen, but he was excellent. Great chase scenes (especially
the last one with that blue car). The weird thing was the first time I tried
watching it I just couldn't get into it. Maybe it was too fast or the plot too
complex. I've never liked spy movies. I've never even seen a James Bond my
whole life. And I don't really like superhero comic movies and this is a DC
production. I turned it off. Then I realized I didn't even get to the Hopkins
part and on the previews he was absolutely insane. Literally. So the next
evening I tried watching it again. I might have been less tired or more
patient. I don't think I liked it any better, but I got through it. ***
Sky is about a French woman on vacation with her husband
in the Southwest. Her husband is a bit of an abusive pig and one night he comes
back to the hotel drunk, tries to rape her, and she bashes him over the head
with a lamp. She runs, dodging police every chance, then three days later she
turns herself in only to find out she didn't kill him. She visits him in the
hospital and then dumps his sorry ass. Freedom! She heads to Las Vegas because
that's where the truck driver is heading, meets a guy who thinks she's a
hooker, falls in love with him, but he's not interested...he's dying. It was a
very good and interesting human relations movie. ***
Southpaw was about a former foster child, now champion boxer
(Jake Gyllenhaal) who's wife (Rachel McAdams) gets killed and he falls apart,
loses his house and custody of his daughter. Outstanding death scene. He's
suspended for a year but finds a trainer (Forest Whitaker) who is willing to
take him in and give him a job so he can get his life back together and regain
custody of his daughter. I don't see the attraction of boxing, watching men
beat the hell out of each other. So creepy. Great performances by all. ***
Suicide Squad
was a weird, over-the-top comic
book character movie about the worse criminals on the planet gathered to fight
something. It was unbearable and I only lasted about twenty minutes. I really
hate these hype-up superheroes. No humanity what so ever. What is the point?*
