***** Exceptional
**** Great
*** OK
** So So
* Blah
Anesthesia was about this mix of people
questioning the meaning of life. It was a little too abstract for me and even
the lectures of the college professor went way over my head. I normally don't
like Kristen Stewart but she was really outstanding in this movie and had some
great lines on the futility of life. **
Arrival is a sci-fi with a whole lot of human
emotion thrown in to make it less science-y. It's about this linguistics expert
(Amy Adams) who is called to help the government try to translate alien
language when twelve extra-terrestrial ships land all over the world and no one
knows who they are nor what they want. The octopus-like creatures make strange
whale-like sounds and when Louise starts showing them words they spray black
ink-like substance on the glass partition creating abstract shapes. Because
Earth is divided into various countries all with different leaders, many with
their own alien ship to deal with, we humans can't quite get it together and
sharing information on each of the ships becomes problematic. Naturally China
and Russia decide to do their own thing and plan to attack their ships (idiots)
based on misinterpretation of the alien communication. It was long, drawn out,
somewhat boring, and Adams was unemotional through most of it. It was like
she was in a trance. which might have been appropriate, but still irritating. The
music was obnoxiously irritating although fitting in a weird way. There was
time jumping, too, although you don't realize what is going on until the end.
Actually I'm still not real clear what was going on...and that's how I know
it's sci-fi! **
A Ballerina's Tale is about the rise of Misty Copeland,
first African-American principal dancer in a major ballet company. Lots of
history on other African-American dancers. Just watching her exercise exhausted
me. It was fascinating especially the part where she talks about the pain
tolerance of dancers and we find out for two long she was dancing with
fractured bones! Eeeew. Excellent documentary. ****
The BFG is based on Roald Dahl's book of the
same name about a little orphan girl with insomnia and one night she sees a
giant roaming the streets of London. Afraid she will tell other humans about
giants, he snatches her and carries her to Giant Land to live with him in his
very cool cave. The other less friendly giants want to eat her so they have to
figure out a plan. Outstanding!! Good lord! Talk about bringing this book to
life and with such wonderful special effects. *****
Blood Relative was about a young woman who ran away
from her broken home and multiple step-fathers when she was a teen. She
contacts her ex-con, ex-biker father (Mel Gibson) while on the run after
shooting her drug-cartel boyfriend. It doesn't take long before they find her.
He taps into his connections with various gangs, prison inmate friends, and
biker clubs for assistance all the while trying to not violate his parole. It
was really good. I don't normally like shoot-em-up movies with lots of
violence, but this one wasn't so mindlessly bloody and the plot was excellent.
Great role for Gibson. ****
Born to Be Blue was based on a true story about
trumpet player/heroin addict Chet Baker and his rise then fall then rise again.
Outstanding performance by Ethan Hawke. The time travel and flashbacks were a
little discombobulating, color to black and white, but that's just me.
Depressing story due to the drug addiction. ***
Denial is about the libel trial between a
Holocaust professor (Rachel Weisz) and a Holocaust denier who claims the
Holocaust never happened and the very strange English legal system where the
defense has to prove the accuser is wrong. It was good. Weisz fake Queens
accent was irritating, but maybe it was supposed to be. ***
Effie Gray is the true-ish story of art
historian John Ruskin's wife (Dakota Fanning) who he ignored and treated like
garbage. This story line was featured in the movie I saw about the Pre-Raphaelite
artists a while back. Most of the plot deals with her marital situation which
was very depressing. In the end she falls in love with artist Everett Millais
and gets a divorce which is unheard of in the 1800s. Most of the performances were excellent, but
the plot was slow and not very interesting. Dakota Fanning rocked a great
English accent, but if the character was supposed to be Scottish...hmmm? Her
character was very stoic which might have been appropriate, but Fanning tends
to be unemotional no matter what character she's attempting and that's not a compliment. **
Every Thing Will Be
Fine was about a
writer (James Franco) who when driving in blizzard conditions on a country
detour hits a boy on a sled. He gets out and the boy is sitting in front of the
car in a stupor. He sighs and thanks God. He walks the boy up to the house,
carries him on his shoulder, makes conversation, and when he reaches the door
the mother asks where her other son is. The driver didn't realize the older
brother he hit was under his car. A really memorable scene! The movie is about
how this man and the dead boy's family deal with such a trauma. Interesting.
Maybe a little slow. The music was really melodramatic like a ghost story which
was a little unsettling. ***
Fantastic Beasts and
Where to Find Them the latest J.K. Rowling film about a British wizard / magical creature
advocate (Eddie Redmayne) who travels to America carrying a suitcase full of magical
creatures. When bad things start happening, it's all blamed on the few innocent
creatures who had escaped. Redmayne's character, Newt, was such a quirky, nerdy
guy with so much bizarreness he was just another creature. The story was
incredibly convoluted with way too much going on, way too many theories and
rules and weird names of things it lacked connection. Even the never-ending
special effects were so bombarding the exhaustion of it inspired...apathy. Oh, another building falling apart, another
explosion, another poof of smoke, ho hum. The thing that makes Harry Potter
is so lovable is it is all about humanity: relationship bonding between
friends, family, community, and situation. Lots of human emotion. This was like
a bad sci-fi trying to be clever through fantasy with individual players either
for or against society lacking connection. Even the protagonists were
antagonistic toward each other. Destruction rebuilding effects were cool and
the ecological/animal protection themes were excellent although I think they
could have added much more emotion through these fantastic beasts. Colin
Farrell plays the bad guy and then he changes into Johnny Depp! I wonder how
much Depp got paid for his five second cameo? **
Fences is about a former baseball player for
the Negro League in the 1950s. Now he's a garbage man supporting his family.
Lots of long-winded speeches about life. It was written as a play and it feels
like that. Even though the performances were outstanding, especially Denzel
Washington, I didn't care for it as a movie. I wanted it to get to the point of
the plot but it just rambled on. *
The Founder is about how Ray Kroc (Michael
Keeton) built the McDonalds empire. Fascinating. He teamed up with the
McDonalds brothers to franchise their fast food restaurant based on speed,
quality control and product reputation, signed a contract giving them ultimate
control of the product and as he was losing money he found the "back door"
and bought all the land out from under them!
They threatened to sue him but realized they already lost and were
forced to sell the whole franchise corporation and their namesake to him. Kroc
was a great businessman, but the story was pretty sleazy. The imitation
milkshakes said it all! Great story. ****
Hell or High Water What a stupid title. I guess it could
be worse, but I know it could be better. This movie is about two Texan brothers
(Chris Pine and Ben Foster) who go on a modern day bank robbing spree. The bank
recently foreclosed on their family ranch, wheeling and dealing their mother
before she died in the sleaziest way possible after oil was discovered on the
property. Jeff Bridges plays the almost-retired Texas Ranger who goes after
them. Excellent performances, excellent sets (the dirt and dust of Texas), and
excellent thought-provoking story. I enjoyed the intrigue as it wasn't clear
why they were robbing banks (sorry for disclosing too much) and I love a
corporate greed revenge theme. Great ending. ****
Hey, Hey It's Esther
Blueburger is a
strange coming-of-age story out of Australia about a weird little girl who goes
to a very pompous, mundane private school where no one gets her and everyone
teases her. She has no friends, spends her lunches alone in a room, and
befriends a duckling from the science department until it ends up dead for a
dissecting project. She does have a brother
who is just a bizarre as she is. She meets a girl from the local public school
and begins skipping her school so she can go to school with this other girl
where she blossoms in the misfit group and proceeds to find notoriety as the
school bully. I hate the title. **
Jungle Book (2016) Outstanding. I loved, loved,
loved the cartoon version as a kid. This one featured a human boy and a whole
lot of digitally enhanced animals, some looked very real except they were
talking, some didn't. Great voices by Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Scarlett
Johansson and Christopher Walken. I was surprised they included the songs
although I think it was easier to add the music to the cartoon movie. Beautiful
sets. Loved it. Kids would absolutely love it although it does get a little
violent and scary. ****
A Monster Calls Good lord, I had no idea what this
movie was about. I had just watched The
BFG and the previews for this movie looked similar: kid, companion giant, special effects. I had no clue. It's was about kid who is dealing with his mother who is
dying from cancer. Yeah, he's also dealing with bullies, an absent father, and
a witch of a grandmother, but it was more about the fear, anger, guilt from
anger, denial, isolation, and the fantasy world created to avoid the
reality. Spot on. I sobbed. With the
exception of the bullies, it was my story, same age and same evil grandmother
and absent father. It hit a little too close to home. Outstanding performances,
awesome special effects, beautiful settings and scenery. The watercolor/ink illustrations were
beautiful. Great themes. ****
Moonlight is about the evolution of a gay black
man from boyhood growing up in the hood with a drug addict for a mother,
bullied constantly through school, and coming to terms with who he is as an
adult. Very sad on so many levels. Great performances, but it was a little
slow. I had no idea what was going on the first half hour. ***
Pelé was
the story of the famous soccer player from childhood to the World Cup.
Excellent story. Excellent performances. The kids were adorable. ****
A Perfect Day is about a group of humanitarian aid workers
during the war in the Balkans in 1995. A man, or as they constantly refer to
him "the fat fuck," from one of the villages fell or was thrown down
the local well and his dead body has contaminated the water supply. Due to a
number of conflicting bureaucratic regulations with various peace agreements,
it's forbidden to get him out even though the village desperately needs water,
but even if they could they can't find a rope and spend much of the day
searching for one while encountered dead cows laying across roads which is
known to be a trap for mines. The characters are hilarious (Tim Robbins and
Benicio del Toro), but the war themes are heartbreaking. It was good. Loved the
dog. Vicious animal on a rope. They decided to slip him some tranquilizers, but in the end, as they say the tranquilizers only made him worse. Then they zoom into the dog. Hilarious shot of the dog. LOL. ***
Pete's Dragon I've
got a theme going on here - kids with friendly, giant companions. There seem to
be a lot of children's films based on books produced just in the last couple
years. Every time I come across one I think hasn't
this been out for a long time??, but I think I'm just remembering it from
my days as a children's librarian. This
movie started out the total opposite of a children's movie: car accident with
dead parents, tiny boy alone lost in the woods with wolves chasing him. Jeez. Enough
to give kids nightmares. Then the dragon saves him and the dragon is like a big
playful kitten that chases its tail, sleeps on its back, jumps, rolls, plays
with anything that moves, sneezes, and flies. And very protective. The dragon
didn't look as realistic as I would have liked BUT it was lovable and friendly
and after the horror that was the beginning of this story, the dragon needed to
be like a big, friendly, cuddly, green furry stuffed animal. Adorable story. Great performances. It's
a North American Jungle Book only without the singing...oh, there is one song, but
animals don't sing. Great role for Robert Redford with his animal rights
advocacy. *****
Snowden Is he a traitor or a patriot? This is the
story of Edward Snowden, his background, his government experience and pretty
much his disgust with the sleazy way the American intelligence operates. Clearly he's a patriot. ****
Time Out of Mind is
about a homeless man (Richard Gere) as he exists in the city, negotiates the
bureaucracy of shelters, keeps safe on the streets, sells his clothes for
alcohol, and deals with his demons. Most of the framing is filmed through
windows, from the building out to the street or vice versa, however, what was
exceptionally striking was the soundtrack. Lots of noise. There is never
silence and usually three to four different sounds intermixed on top of each
other - people yelling, people talking, pigeon wings flapping, traffic, sirens,
coughing, singing, tapping, horns honking, music, utensils clanging, laundromat
dryers banging, new voices screaming, different voices laughing, both the
inside building and outside street noise simultaneously. And it's all amplified over the dialogue
between the main characters. Really ingenious. Then Ben Vereen shows up half
way through playing another homeless man who talks loudly non-stop and follows
Gere around. All this clatter was incredibly irritating to me as someone with a
hearing sensitivity, but added so much to the experience of being homeless and
mentally ill "lost" in a large city. There was an unsafe element to
the noise and I just wanted peace. STOP THE FUCKING NOISE! At one point near the end of the movie Gere's
character explains to someone when his life fell apart, he couldn't stop the
noise in his head. Ah ha! It was very depressing and a little slow, but I think
even the speed of the movie was purposeful as well. Really brilliant filmmaking
which is why it gets such a high rating. ****
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