June Movie Reviews

*****  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?*